As Christopher Luxon and Chris Hipkins clashed in the final leaders' debate of the 2023 election campaign, Newsroom confirms both made provably false claims.
Chris Hipkins and Christopher Luxon went head-to-head in their final television debate on Thursday evening. They sparred on law and order, health, climate change and more.
Though plenty of time was spent on attacks and ripostes, needles and retorts, the pair also made a series of factual claims. Newsroom reporters jotted down the ones that piqued our interest and went to work on checking whether they were true.
READ MORE: * Mark Jennings: Leaders’ debate one last scrappy, indecisive contest * Good day/bad day: The end of the beginning * Fact check: Did leaders say anything false in the Newshub debate?
This isn't an exhaustive list of every claim made during the debate, but a sample of the key issues discussed.
Our rating scale is:
True – Entirely true.
Mostly True – There might be a number wrong or a slight overstatement, but the gist is correct.
Needs Context – The situation is more complex than a soundbite allows, and the statement could be misleading if taken at face value.
Mostly False – There might be a kernel of truth here, but the overall impression is misleading or incorrect.
False – Entirely false.
We've linked to primary sources where we can, so you can click through and judge the claims for yourself as well.
Hipkins: "The independent analyses show that your campaign has been 95 percent negative." Mostly True. The New Zealand Social Media Study, run by Victoria University, analysed 1554 Facebook posts by political parties and their leaders in the period from 11 to 24 September. It rated about 63 percent of Labour’s Facebook posts as positive, after subtracting its negative posts. In comparison, when it did the same for National, it had a net positivity score of just 5.5 percent. It only looked at Facebook posts and the timeframe is limited. Source: NZ Social Media Study
Hipkins: "Your own campaign manager, Chris Bishop, said ruling out Winston Peters was an example of leadership." Needs Context. Chris Bishop did say this, but it was in early 2020 when Simon Bridges ruled out working with Winston Peters. Bishop tweeted: “Simon Bridges has ruled out Winston Peters because he doesn’t trust him and NZ First. Leadership.” Source: Twitter
Hipkins: "The most recent growth statistics show that we’ve actually, in the last quarter, had the second-highest growth rate in the OECD, second only to Japan." False. The latest data shows New Zealand’s quarter two growth rate of 0.9 percent ranks eighth in the OECD, behind Slovenia, Japan, Greece, Costa Rica, Iceland, Lithuania and Türkiye. Source: OECD
Luxon: "The reality for us is that we have the second largest current account deficit in the world." Mostly True. In absolute numbers, New Zealand's account deficit of US$4.1 billion in the second quarter of 2023 was smaller than those posted by Canada, Greece and the United States. However, as a percentage of GDP, Luxon is correct that New Zealand's deficit was second only to Greece in that quarter. Source: OECD
Luxon: "The reality is, at the moment, our economy is not growing." False. The most recent Stats NZ figures show that GDP grew by 3.2 percent from June 2022 to June 2023 year and that quarterly growth was 0.9 percent in June 2023. Source: Stats NZ
Luxon: "We are not cutting benefits. We are increasing benefits each and every year." Needs Context. National’s fiscal plan does cut just over $2b from welfare over the next five years. This is because it plans to index benefits to inflation rather than wage growth, reversing a change Labour made in 2020. While benefits won’t fall in absolute terms, they will be lower than they otherwise would be without this change – which is how National gets $2 billion in savings. Sources: National Party, NZ Herald
Hipkins: "We’ve built 13,000 new public homes and we’re going to double that in the next four years." True. On top of a net increase of 13,874 to the public housing stock since 2017, Labour also allocated funding for 3000 new public homes by June 2025 in this year’s budget. Last month, Labour’s Housing spokesperson Megan Woods promised a total increase of 27,000 by 2027 if the party is reelected. Sources: HUD, Labour Party
