Hipkins confident as Labour gathers in Auckland

Saturday, 29 November 2025

Luke Malpass is politics, business and economics editor.

OPINION: When Chris Hipkins stands up at the Labour Party conference on Sunday to deliver his keynote address, he will be in the strongest position of any opposition leader since Rob Muldoon defeated Bill Rowling in 1975 to turf out a government after a single term.

He leads a parliamentary caucus in good heart. Labour is consistently out-polling National, has maintained internal discipline, and has even released some politically risky policies over the past couple of months.

There is now a real sense of optimism within the party — something far from guaranteed after the 2023 election.

Many assumed that after such a dreadful result, where Labour barely secured a quarter of the vote, the party would spiral into desperation, back-biting and disunity.

While Hipkins was not blamed internally for the loss, the natural gravity of opposition was expected to catch up with him.

Instead, the party has held its shape remarkably well.

Hipkins puts this down to a very open — but private — reckoning with what went wrong in 2023. People feel heard, he says, because they have been. The real test of that will come over the next 12 months.

“It’s not just grievances, because in many cases, it's nothing personal. It's just, ‘I wish we hadn’t done that,’ or ‘I wish we’d done this,’ or ‘I wish we hadn’t done it that way.’”

The party’s process identified several key lessons. The first was that Labour tried to do too much in government, and now needs to pare back what it promises — and campaigns on.

“So take cost of living. We didn’t have one or two bold things. We had lots of little things. And I think New Zealanders can now see the country needs to change, and so they do want to see some decisive — but well thought through — answers,” he says.

Hipkins also argues that while Labour will promise fewer things, those policies must be both bold and credible.

He clearly believes the best strategy is honesty: acknowledging the scale of the problems and the likelihood that fixing them will take time. He also insists that, if Labour wins in 2026, it will be far better prepared for government than in 2017.

Crafting that into a compelling political narrative, however, will be more challenging.

Inside National, there is a long-running joke that Hipkins is “good at nothing” — a jab based both on its assessment of his time as an education minister and prime minister, and what it claims is opposition that has simply relied on being quiet and letting the crappy economy do the rest.

The first part is opinion. The second part is undeniably true. Labour has not chased every passing headline. Sometimes in politics — especially opposition — the hardest and smartest thing to do is keep quiet.

It already feels distant, but in early 2023 Christopher Luxon did the same during the Auckland floods and Cyclone Gabrielle. The public wanted to hear from the new prime minister, and National’s momentum stalled. Luxon stayed quiet until the crisis passed, then resumed campaigning.

In opposition, Labour has chosen its targets carefully, and Hipkins has largely held the line — refusing to move at anyone else’s pace.

During an interview with The Post ahead of the conference, he sits in his office looking relaxed, confident, and more energetic than at points in the past.

By nature, he is low-key and laid-back. Internally, one criticism has always been that he is low-energy. There is little evidence of that now.

The conference will be held at the ASB Theatre on Auckland’s waterfront. It has been oversubscribed — the theatre seats 600, and Labour is now organising overflow rooms. Hipkins says it will be the largest conference attendance the party has had in a decade.

All leaders hype these things, but there is clearly enough of a whiff of victory to get the party faithful moving. This weekend will show just how excited they are.

Polling consistently suggests a tight election, with a left bloc of Labour, the Greens and possibly Te Pāti Māori firmly in contention. One recent poll even put Labour at 38%.

Whether that proves an outlier or a trend will matter enormously. If it becomes the latter, Labour will begin pushing harder on the message that it needs to be a large anchor party. Hipkins believes voters dislike the perception that ACT and New Zealand First push National around.

If National stays in the low 30s, a returned coalition would be even more NZ First-flavoured and less stable. Labour sees that as a strategic opportunity — and National worries about it for the same reason.

There will be no major announcements at the conference, Hipkins confirms. The plan was always: three significant economic policies — capital gains tax, the Medicard health policy and free GP visits.

Now the focus is re-energising the grassroots and getting the machinery humming heading into election year.

But the climb remains steep. Since World War II and the founding of the modern National Party, there have only been two one-term governments — both Labour, in 1957 and 1972.

New Zealand voters are not especially prone to buyer’s remorse. And while Labour’s current position is promising, the pressure will intensify next year, and the unity the party values may be tested as more policy lands and harder decisions are made.

There is always the risk the wheels come off.

But we are in unusual political times. The prime minister — like many leaders globally — is deeply unpopular.

The more sensible heads within Labour are under no illusion that Luxon’s failure to connect with the public to date has been a key reason for its relative success. It is also notable that Labour strategists are terrified when National leadership talk comes up. Quite aside from the fact that the unknown is always a politician’s biggest fear, they want Luxon to stay right where he is.

The social fabric stretched through Covid-19 and inflation has not tightened again.

And the economy has not bounced back. New Zealand remains in a per-capita recession. How that shifts will matter more to voters than almost anything else.

For Labour, everything is still in play. This weekend will be a telling marker of where the party really stands.