Inside Labour conference: The pitched battles and open questions as Chris Hipkins asks party to dream smaller

Monday, 1 December 2025

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ANALYSIS: While the Labour Party conference was humming down in Auckland’s Wynyard Quarter, former finance minister Grant Robertson was also in town - humming a different tune.

Robertson was 2km up the road at The Others Way - a music festival on K Road featuring bands like The Bats, who Robertson pledged allegiance to long before committing to the Labour Party.

His absence was apposite given the extent that Labour - only out of office for two years - spent the conference trying to move on from the last Government and where it ended up.

Not that Labour was shrugging off its history. It just wanted to look far further back to the period it was last in Government The tea towels at the merch stand have Savage and Lange on them - not Jacinda Ardern (except for one featuring every Labour PM). And the list of policy achievements are heavy on things Helen Clark managed, with perhaps Ardern’s winter energy payment and the Matariki public holiday thrown in for good measure.

This exemplifies the tension at the heart of Labour’s attempt to be the first Government to return after only one term in opposition since 1975 - and the first Labour one to do it.

On the one hand, the party is led by two of the most senior members of that Government - Chris Hipkins and Carmel Sepuloni. Hipkins of course was also integral in the Government’s Covid response which, whether people are complimentary or critical, is a period most simply want to forget.

But on the other, Labour wants to convince people that this is going to be a very different government, with new ideas and more importantly new focus.

The desperate race for seats

Labour was meeting in the Wynyard Quarter at the ASB Waterfront Theatre. With the weather warm, Labour delegates milled around in the building, having side meetings and catch ups over drinks and coffee in the surrounding establishments, all bustling far more than the doom and gloom economic commentary inside the hall would suggest.

MPs and delegates had a chance to let their hair down at the traditional karaoke fundraiser not far from the venue. Willie Jackson opened proceedings but it was MPs Cushla Tangaere-Manuel and Jenny Salesa who stole the show - singing so well few others in the caucus felt the need to get up. Chris Hipkins floated around the room telling war stories and posing for selfies - even in a crowd of confirmed Labour luvvies, a touch awkward around strangers.

Gossip at karaoke and across the conference naturally focused on some of the brutal selection battles across the country for electorates. A Labour Party selection - even in a seat that the party won’t win - is still the main way into the caucus for Labour hopefuls, eager to shape the party not just in 2026 but well into the 2030s.

Some battles have already been decided.

In Wellington, list MP Ayesha Verrall beat out Ōhāriu MP Greg O’Connor for the new seat of Wellington North, and CTU economist Craig Renney beat out disability advocate Nick Ruane and ECE teacher Allanah Clarke for Wellington Bays. These seats are both held by the Greens but Labour are confident enough to put up a proper battle for them.

This is not the case in Auckland Central, which Green co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick holds with a 3800-vote majority. The Post understands two candidates are circling here - former MP Naisi Chen and former Auckland councillor Pippa Coom - but both see it as a “party vote” campaign, although Hipkins told us that Labour would be running for both ticks in every electorate.

While this means they won’t come to Parliament via the seat directly, this is a seat with a huge media spotlight and a lot of pressure - a great spot to battle test yourself for a high list placing in 2026 or 2029. Failed mayoral candidate Kerrin Leoni is also keen on a seat - but faces a tough battle as the safer Labour seats of West Auckland are sewn up for sitting Labour MPs Carmel Sepuloni, Phil Twyford, and Vanushi Walters.

And questions remain. Will Damien O’Connor - currently living in Dunedin - move back to the West Coast to try to win the home of the Labour movement back again? Will Greg O’Connor attempt a high place on the list? Who will take Duncan Webb’s seat of Christchurch Central - an open race, unlike Megan Wood’s Wigram. And how far up in Cabinet will people like Renney rocket if Labour does win Government?

Former minister Michael Wood’s selection in what used to be the safe Auckland seat of Mt Roskill has caused some stir. Some within caucus are still bitter about the decision-making that led to his messy resignation as a minister in an election year, and suggest he has a tough battle in the redrawn electorate against National MP Carlos Cheung, who has been relentlessly electorate-focused.

But Wood has many fans within the party - Hipkins’ decision to tell The Post that Wood still had to win back the trust of his colleagues was harshly criticised by one member, who said it was silly to suggest that someone set to be a Labour candidate could not be trusted.

Extreme caution

Member grumbling was fairly low considering the brutal tax battle of the last year. Perhaps it was because this battle is so clearly over. The small-c conservatives who wanted to make the capital gains tax as narrow as possible won that fight long before this conference, meaning members approaching Barbara Edmonds to try to get her to add new tax ideas are far too late.

Policy “remit” sessions - closed to media - provided relatively little drama. The Post understands a proposal to resurrect Labour’s 2014 policy of using compulsory KiwiSaver savings to control inflation, rather than interest rates, was defeated. Another aimed at getting the New Zealand Defence Force to commit itself to nuclear-free independent policy was adopted.

But the wider public-facing focus of the conference was a presentation of Labour as a very sensible-sounding Government-in-waiting, with small targeted changes to allow for more health spending, but nothing big enough for National to really attack.

Edmonds on Saturday gave a high level commitment to balanced budgets, fiscal responsibility and spending every taxpayer dollar wisely - telling the audience Labour “can’t say yes to everything”.

She also leaned into the cost of living, which has roared back as a political concern and looks set to dominate a second election in a row.

“A strong economy is not measured by numbers on a chart, but by whether people are getting ahead,” she said, at the end of the passage in her speech noting the thousands of jobs that small businesses create.

The language was calibrated to justify the change for those in the hall - many of whom regard business with inherent suspicion, but was really speaking to middle New Zealand voters who might change their votes to Labour.

The audience was easy to keep onside with three simple words “one-term Government,” uttered to huge applause by Labour President Jill Day on Saturday, and again by Hipkins on Sunday.

Indeed, the real chance of victory has seemingly kept a lid on much grumbling.

“Now I know the only poll that matters is the one on election day, but doesn't it feel good to see those numbers rise?” Day asked, to huge cheers.

Labour’s last leader of a first-term opposition - Phil Goff - was strolling the halls in a leather jacket on Saturday. Goff was happy to tell The Post that things felt far better for Labour this time, in part because it was not facing a politician as popular as John Key.

“There is a real chance - I wouldn't yet put it as a probability - but there's a real chance that this could be a one term National government,” Goff said.

Hipkins told media Labour would need to do more than just critique National to win. Yet despite borrowing the design style of New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani for the posters the party faithful were waving at Hipkins, the new policy he had to offer on Sunday was far less ambitious than anything Mamdani would put his name too - a new low-interest loan scheme to let 50 GPs a year set up their own practices. It’s hard to see this being a policy that defines much of the campaign.

A small easily-achievable promise is exactly what Labour is eager to put out currently. The party will tell anyone who asks that it was making too many promises that hurt them last time they were in Government.

But lacking big promises meant the main thrust of the whole conference was attack. Cries of “shame” were common in the audience, especially as any of the speakers mentioned people being “sorted” or moving to Australia.

This gave the press conference Hipkins gave at the end of the weekend a wandering quality, as the party weren’t promising anything chunky enough to really talk about. Hipkins was instead forced to chat about everything from prisons policy to the state of Te Pāti Māori to the relationship with NZ First to the exact way Labour was going to afford the billions it would take to undo the Government’s reform of pay equity laws - real questions that Hipkins has largely managed to skate past of late. Finally he was asked what would happen if Labour lost for a second time under his leadership.

“I don’t have a Plan B” he said.

There’s no music festival up the road for Hipkins - at least not yet. Yet if the economy across the country started to feel a bit more like the streets surrounding the conference did, he could well need one.