Chris Hipkins knows he’s putting himself at a political disadvantage keeping his family off-limits but hopes voters will respect him for it. He speaks to political editor Jo Moir about what keeps him awake at night and why he’ll be in the Hutt on election night.
The Prime Minister is on his phone intensely focusing through his new-ish spectacles, busily tapping away.
When Newsroom bowls into his ninth-floor office and asks if he’s doing his shopping list, Hipkins is so in the zone he doesn’t even look up, let alone reply.
Unlike National MP Sam Uffindell, who said in a speech in the House that he likes to look “the everyday man” and once in a blue moon go and do the shopping to “give his wife a break”, Hipkins does his own online ordering.
He’s been snapped adding kombucha to his list during Question Time, and Newsroom has it on good authority he has delayed meetings with staff more than once while he completes his order.
It’s a practical exercise of ensuring there’s food in the fridge for him and his kids, but it also acts as a mechanism for keeping tabs on what basic food items cost from week to week.
He used to get asked at random for the price of milk, butter, or bread but he’s got so accurate journalists have stopped asking him.
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Having just returned from visits to a health centre and pharmacy, where his plans to extend free dental care were discussed, Newsroom notes he’s drinking a can of fizz.
“It’s Coke Zero – there’s no sugar – it’s allowed,” he fires back. It's one of two cans he allows himself each day.
It’s been just over seven months since he took over the prime ministership from Jacinda Ardern and the 'spread your legs' gaffe guy who is comfortable being called 'Chippy' by everyone found himself in charge of the country with an election looming.
In March, just two months into the job, Hipkins told Newsroom the tough calls he made as Covid-19 Response Minister were much harder than anything he’d had to do in the first eight weeks of the top job.
He didn’t sleep much at all during the various lockdowns, and described the weight of the decisions as “phenomenal”.
Five months on and he still sighs heavily and pauses to choose his words carefully as he recalls how that time felt during the thick of the pandemic.
“They were enormous decisions. Businesses would shut down, people would go home, daily life would cease for many people as it was known.
“Not many of the decisions I take as Prime Minister have that kind of sudden, immediate, and significant consequence … in terms of the scale of the decision-making, it was unprecedented then and is likely to not be outdone for quite some time.”
He says the nights of lost sleep in the past seven months have come when he's “grappled” with more personal issues.
“Not my personal issues, other people’s personal issues, issues with colleagues and families and stuff. They can weigh quite heavily.”
He’s reluctant to put the hardest part of the job to date on the record because it involves former minister Kiri Allan, who resigned from her ministerial portfolios and politics altogether when she crashed her car while over the alcohol limit and was arrested.
“That was by quite far some of the hardest stuff I dealt with. And I don’t want to go and open all of that up for her because she’s moving on, but at a personal level, for me, that was probably the hardest.”
Allan was one of four ministers who threw Hipkins a curveball this year.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing and if he’d known what he knows now Hipkins says of course he would have made different decisions about his Cabinet team, but “you can’t keep looking over your shoulder”.
“I didn’t know then what I know now. If I’d known about [Michael Wood’s] shares, what was going to happen with Kiri, if I’d known about Stuart [Nash], I’d have made different decisions in all those cases, but I didn’t have that information at the time.”
‘I like to hope that the fact I’m not willing to use my family as political props, despite the fact it would probably be politically advantageous to do so, I’d hope people would look at that and at least respect me for that decision’ - Chris Hipkins
Former Prime Minister Sir Bill English perfectly described the job to Hipkins not long after he became Prime Minister, and it’s stuck in his mind.
“I had an interesting chat with him a month or two after I took on the job. He said, it’s fifty percent ceremonial and fifty percent making all the decisions that no one else is willing to make.
“That might be a bit overly simplistic but it kind of resonated with me at the time, as you can tell because I’ve remembered it, but there was something in that.”
As a minister, Hipkins had always viewed the top job as a sort of “more senior minister”.
He now accepts that assessment was completely wrong and it’s actually “an entirely different job”.
In reality, he says the role has very little to do with officials and the day-to-day mechanics of government compared with a minister, who is constantly interacting with their departments and implementing government decisions.
As Prime Minister you’re interacting with ministers and stakeholders and doing all the other things, and that’s surprised Hipkins more than anything.
Part of the engagement with stakeholders means working with people who don’t always like you that much.
In March, Hipkins told Newsroom he was making a point of spending time in Auckland and with the business community, because he saw the importance of getting in front of people who don’t agree with him.
Another group he’s added to that list is the rural community, who he says he’s had a lot to do with through the He Waka Eke Noa process and the debate about agricultural emissions.
“I know some of them will never vote for us, but you have to have an ability to sit down and have a conversation with them.
“I’m not easily offended and that’s really important, because you have to be able to recognise that some of the critique you get is just a legitimate part of democracy.”
Asked if the rural community had a habit of offending him, he replied grinning from ear-to-ear, “never to my face”.
Leaving family out of it
All voters will get to know Hipkins, and his biggest competition, National leader Christopher Luxon, a lot more over the course of the next five weeks.
At the campaign launches at the weekend Luxon was introduced by his adult children, Olivia and William, and his wife, Amanda, also joined him on stage.
Hipkins says he doesn’t know Luxon very well and when pushed to describe him he says the limited interactions he’s had with him have been “collegial”.
Luxon is comfortable having his family as part of his political campaigning and they’re increasingly making appearances on social and mainstream media, but it’s not for Hipkins now or ever.
“There’s a reason why politicians parade their families in public. I’ve never felt comfortable with it, and I don’t intend to ever do it,” Hipkins says.
“I understand why they do it but I’m never going to use my family as a political prop.”
He accepts that may make it harder to get his personal side across to voters, but it won’t make him change his mind.
“I like to hope that the fact I’m not willing to use my family as political props, despite the fact it would probably be politically advantageous to do so, I’d hope people would look at that and at least respect me for that decision.”
One political family he has no time for this election is Brian Tamaki and Hannah Tamaki’s Freedom NZ crowd that protested outside the Labour campaign launch in Auckland, and infiltrated the building to continuously disrupt his speech.
“Frankly, I wouldn’t be giving Brian Tamaki and his mob the airtime they’re currently getting. That’s what they’re looking for – I intend to largely ignore them.
“I’m not going to stop doing public meetings because they come and yell at me. I think in time if they get ignored, they will give up, but if they get what they’re looking for, which is notoriety and a lot of airtime, they’ll keep doing it,” he says.
Political commentators have been drawing comparisons between this election campaign and 2005 based on the divisiveness already at play and the prominence of attack ads. Some have pondered if Labour has some big scandal ready to drop.
“If we do, I don’t know about it. I’m certainly not banking on that,” Hipkins says.
There is only one similarity he wishes to draw attention to.
“I was here in the 2005 campaign, and we went in with everyone saying that we were about to have a change of government, and we didn’t.”
He describes this campaign as a “perfect storm” with Covid coming to an end and high inflation.
Whatever happens in the next five weeks he plans to campaign through it and celebrate in Lower Hutt on election night rather than at some big glitzy affair in Auckland.
The Hutt is not only his home but the heart of his Remutaka electorate.
“I genuinely believe in the notion that on election night that you celebrate with your local people. It’s always been a bit of a tradition and it’s one I intend to continue to uphold as long as I’m in politics.”
He draws on a former National Party Prime Minister to make his point.
“Jim Bolger used to do his in bloody Te Kuiti.”
