Labour leader Chris Hipkins apologises to mayors on behalf of the PM

Friday, 23 August 2024

Labour leader Chris Hipkins has apologised to mayors and councillors on behalf of Prime Minister Christopher Luxon.

In a facetious laugh line for the audience at the Local Government New Zealand annual conference on Friday morning, Hipkins said mayors and councillors deserved a “respectful partnership” with central Government.

“I am sorry you did not get that this week,” he said.

Hipkins also attacked Luxon for his criticism for councils’ spending on “nice-to-haves”, at the same time implicitly jabbing the prime minister for his wealth.

“It’s all very well to describe a community swimming pool as a nice-to-have, if you have a pool in your own backyard,” Hipkins said, to applause.

“You might not value the local playground, if you can afford to buy your kids whatever experience they want – but most hard-working Kiwi parents aren’t that fortunate.”

Hipkins’ speech to the mayors, councillors, and officials at the Tākina convention centre in Wellington was a direct rebuttal of Luxon’s message for the crowd on Wednesday.

The prime minister told councils “the days of handouts” are over, ratepayers were “sick of white elephants” and don’t expect to pay for “the laundry-list of distractions and experiments that are plaguing council balance sheets across the country”.

His Government also published a regional deal framework which showed it was willing to strike joint infrastructure plans with councils, but while there would be renewed funding tools for councils there would be no direct central government funding.

“City and regional deals are a great idea, but we need to be upfront about how we're going to fund them. If the financial burden simply falls back, once again, to ratepayers, they are going to fail,” Hipkins said.

He committed that a future Labour Government would produce no “unfunded mandates” for councils.

Hipkins’ speech was also a defence of the prior Labour Government’s track record of investment in communities.

“I stand by the investments that we made and the investments that we were intending to make in the future of our country. Let me be frank, I wasn't prioritising investments we were making based on whether or not I would be the person that got to cut the ribbon on them when they were completed.

“We need to think longer term as a country when it comes to our future investments. It's ironic that the current Government are now talking about wanting bipartisan consensus when it comes to infrastructure investment after exiting, often with little justification, so many of the investments that were underway when they took office,” he said, in a reference to cancelled projects like Auckland lightrail, and new InterIslander ferries.

Speaking to reporters afterwards, Hipkins said the prime minister had been “patronising, condescending, and offensive” to local government.

“You can’t lecture people, insult them, and then say, ‘Oh, and we want to work together’.”

Hipkins said Luxon’s Government had cancelled many projects - including the replacement of an intersection at the end of his own road, where “people are dying every year”. NZTA had postponed the project due to changing Government’s directives.

“It’s just crazy, we can’t run a country like this … where every three years everything changes for long-term infrastructure investment.”