Meet Barbara Edmonds, Labour’s new economic chief
Luke Malpass sits down with the woman picked by Labour leader Chris Hipkins to fill the big shoes of her predecessor as the party’s finance spokesperson.
When Grant Robertson announced his retirement from politics, it was clear how much his presence loomed large over the Labour Party. Finance Minister for six years under two prime ministers and Labour’s finance spokesperson for the best part of a decade. He had been the rock around which Labour had built what became six years of government.
After his departing comments, Labour leader Chris Hipkins appeared with Robertson’s replacement: Barbara Rachael Fati Palepa Edmonds. In Parliament since only 2020 and already with eight ministerial portfolios under her belt, Edmonds will now be the new face of Labour’s money and economic management.
But who is Edmonds? The Post sat down with the woman who has internally been considered a future star of the Labour Party since she won the seat of Mana, centred in Porirua, north-west of Wellington.
Almost universally known as ‘Barb’, she is a remarkable mixture of warmth and no-nonsense straight talking, while not veering into bombast. Aged 43, she has spent much of her career as the sole breadwinner of a family of 10. She is open, very difficult to dislike and well-regarded across the political divide.
Economic trade-offs
To date, Edmonds is still in listening mode when it comes to the economic flavour of the Labour opposition under her stewardship.
The political challenge is not to be understated. Labour saw its party vote almost halved between 2020 and 2023 and in the final months of the Government it became apparent that Hipkins had made a captain’s call and jettisoned a wealth and capital gains tax package that Robertson and Revenue Minister David Parker had been working on for months. Parker quit as minister, saying his position was “untenable”.
Tax will clearly be one area of debate for the party, though its importance to Labour has often been overstated. The party will also require a clear-eyed assessment of what went well and what went poorly under Robertson. Edmonds takes the job at what the party hopes will be its nadir as it rebuilds.
“The main thing for me is basically to be able to provide the party a really clear understanding of ‘these are the trade-offs we’re going to have to make’. Yes, there’s the political endgame of winning the 2026 election. But actually, if we want to have a cohesive economic system here in New Zealand, we need to think about all the different elements of that system, not just the tax part,” she says.
Edmonds says that she was first sounded out for the job by Hipkins once Labour came to opposition and it was clear that Robertson would be leaving soon as well. She sought counsel, including from Robertson.
“Grant... was like, you know, you can do it and I said, ‘oh, you know, I’m not highly political’.
“And, yeah, so, internally, I was questioning whether I could do the politics side. [The] technical side [is] fine. I’ve dealt with budgets for a long time in my career.”
Hipkins called her the night before she was announced. “My initial reaction when he rang me – it was just, yeah, I’ll do it for the team.”
The back story
Edmonds’ story is a fundamentally Pacific migrant story, a familiar one in New Zealand.
Her parents, determined that their children were going to get a good education, came to New Zealand from Samoa in 1976. Initially arriving in Ponsonby, the family soon moved to South Auckland.
The week before Barbara was born in 1981, the youngest of four, her mother was diagnosed with cancer. She died when Barbara was just four. In order to support the family her father, Selani, left his job as a Navy admin clerk and went on the benefit, determined to raise his children.
Edmonds begins to wipe away tears when talking about her mother’s death – and she points out that the death of Efeso Collins last week has brought a lot of emotions back up – she was at Auckland University with the late Green Party MP.
The family moved to the North Shore, and courtesy of capitalising the family benefit, built a home, close to what they saw as good schools. Barbara was educated at Catholic Carmel College, a Sisters of Mercy school. She became head girl and has extremely fond memories of school, throwing herself into sport – representative netball in particular.
Her college years would shape her in more ways than one.
“Each day you’re walking through different worlds. You know, you’re going to school with some of the richest people in New Zealand, and then you’re going home and there’s not much money there. And you basically don’t have much money for food. But my dad sacrificed a lot for that. And he still was paying off our school fees for about 10 years later, because the school allowed him to do that.”
Edmonds says the school imbued a mentality that girls can do and achieve anything.
“The expectation is when you finish college, you go to university,” she says.
You can’t be a slack student
But during her second year of university, life took an unexpected turn, when she fell pregnant to boyfriend Chris.
“Obviously it disappointed a lot of people that I got pregnant, you know, culturally, because you know, I’m Catholic as well.
I say I assume by the reaction that she wasn’t married at the time and she bursts out laughing: “Hell, no... not yet, and we weren’t married for another seven years after that.”
But she says having children young – and unexpectedly – just increased her motivation to succeed.
“I think for a lot of reasons; just that drive and purpose was there when I had my girl in my second year of law school. I just thought, you can’t be a slack student.
Edmonds begins to wipe away tears when talking about her mother’s death - and she points out that the death of Efeso Collins last week has brought a lot of emotions back up - she was at Auckland University with the late Green Party MP.
Your family frickin’ depends on you.
“And you know, my husband [to be] had made that decision to still be in a lowpaying job for me to go through study.”
By the time she had finished her law and arts degrees in Pacific studies, 5½ years later, she and Chris had four children and were expecting a fifth.
Eventually there would be eight children: Acacia, Arkaid, Agape, Patience, Prayer, Salem, Yahzel, and Harmony.
She regularly hews back to the fact that she has been the sole breadwinner for much of her career and the difficulty of making ends meet.
Paying the bills
“Eight children in nine years, finished my two degrees, moved down to a different city, took up a new role, and then the sole income in a family of 10.
“Some money matters even at this rate. You know, even though I’m a backbench MP.
“When we were studying we had eight bucks in our hand at the end of the week once we paid all the important bills.
“I remember when the car had to go to get a frickin’ warrant of fitness. And you’re stressing because it’s just, like, how are we going to be able to afford it if it needs repairs?
“So I think that just the understanding of the value of every cent and dollar, not just every dollar, but every cent.”
It is her career before politics that many in Labour are banking on to make her a good minister of finance. She, Chris and family relocated to Wellington in 2009. While in Auckland she worked in insurance for “about eight months”, saving up money to move to Wellington for her to take up a job in the policy unit of the Inland Revenue Department. After five years she moved to a solicitor role, heading a team of accountants and lawyers working on national determinations of tax laws.
Unusually for a future Labour MP, she then worked for National Party minister Michael Woodhouse and then Judith Collins.
“I worked for Woodhouse first for about nine months and then John Key resigned. Portfolio reshuffle and then I got Judith.
“They were good people to work for and I learned a lot of skills from both of them.
“And I think a lot of the skills I've learned in tax and policy-making [are] all transferable across different portfolios, you know, so, obviously, when I was a minister, I had my eight portfolios, but actually I’d seen a whole lot of different portfolios before that.”
She worked as a ministerial advisor for Stuart Nash before being tapped to run for Labour in the seat of Mana, with Kris Faafoi going onto the Labour list. Edmonds said she knew Faafoi not from politics, but from her life in Titahi Bay and the Porirua area.
“I’d actually met Kris Faafoi – he was my local MP at the time – through community stuff. Because yeah, I had this life here [in Parliament], but actually, I was on the boards. I was running the committees. I was the pro bono lawyer for the rugby club.”
“I’ve done plenty of sausage sizzles over the time.”
She chaired the finance and expenditure select committee, during which time National leader Christopher Luxon described her as “very, very smart, she’s very, very considered and I really admire her work”.
Where to for Labour?
When Hipkins became prime minister there was another promotion and during the course of 2023 she held various ministerial portfolios, including economic development, internal affairs, revenue and Pacific peoples as well as associate minister roles in finance, housing, immigration, cyclone recovery and health.
It is, however, the approach to the nation’s financial management and economic views that will now be most scrutinised.
While she is not yet ready to talk in any meaningful way about Labour’s new policy platform – and is mindful of the fact that the party needs to settle on policies, rather than just her – she is happy to talk about the general thrust of her thinking in the area.
“Sounds so boring – but prudency (sic). You know, it’s really clear that the long-term fiscal pressures that New Zealand is facing have been well signalled. I can probably go through almost every monetary policy statement in my term here and basically you look at the books and you’re thinking, OK, we’ve got some pretty big, big headwinds coming our way, you know, some are international, and some are obviously, you know, domestic.
But clearly she is thinking broadly about how Labour can reinvent itself ahead of 2026 in a way that is relevant to New Zealanders and can take on the National-ACT-NZ First coalition.
“I think the value of having basically worked in the world of tax and understanding how income distribution happens, how revenue was raised, that's actually a small part of what an economic manager needs to do or steward needs to do,” she says.
“You have to have a fiscal vision. You have to have a strategy and a plan in order to action that and I think the thing for me is, I’ve come through a very different upbringing to probably what an economist or, you know, finance minister might look like.
“The challenge will be to basically bring that real world experience – understanding my communities and their needs as well as what the business community needs. Because I’ve done that in commerce. I’ve done that in insurance and bringing them together to basically have a really cohesive system that basically makes sure that it's fairer for everybody.”
She is under no illusion of the political challenge and internal and external political debates ahead. I ask he how she plans to manage that.
“Same way I’ve managed my life, right? Whatever the challenges are, you just be really clear on the purpose and on your intention and the values that you basically fall back on.
“And you know, we’re going to have big discussions.”