Jacinda Ardern’s ministers started this term keen to build a lasting legacy. They were wielding the party’s first full majority since 1987, so looked to have the tools to do this, with no pesky coalition partners getting in the way of major legislative nation-building.
These projects addressed long-term issues Labour had with the way New Zealand works, rather than urgent crises. These included our strange hodgepodge of public media entities, which features a fully commercialised TV network (that can get away with not always making a profit) and an entirely non-commercial radio station, our inequitable system of payments for the recently unemployed, and hate speech laws that protected some groups but not others.
Today these ministers serve under Chris Hipkins rather than Jacinda Ardern, who resigned last month. And their solutions to all those problems have been thrown into the long grass, either ditched entirely or taken off the table for a rethink that will take them beyond the next election.
The massive media merger to create an ABC or BBC style monolith? Gone forever. The new unemployment insurance scheme that would pay those who lost their job due to economic conditions as much as those who lost it because of a car accident? Delayed indefinitely. Hate speech reforms? Referred to the Law Commission until after the election, at least.
Hipkins indicated this might be just the start, with a major rethink of the government’s reform of water infrastructure on the cards too.
This strategic retreat is a serious one, and an indicator of just how much the government has lost control of the narrative in recent years. These policies might have been unpopular in some quarters, but they were well progressed and pushed by some of Labour’s most senior MPs. Already a lot of political capital and actual capital has been spent on them, and now they are either history or doomed to the too-hard basket.
Hipkins decided to pair the retreat of these policies with the announcement of a policy that will impact a lot of people far faster than any of the ditched reforms would: a 7% lift in the minimum wage to keep it in line with inflation. This was the kind of “bread and butter” cost of living policy he would much rather be talking about in the media than complex arrangements over who governs stormwater pipes.
“What the media is talking about” is the main driver for much of this retreat. Contrary to popular belief, governments generally can walk and chew gum at the same time, with some ministers advancing “nice to have” policies while others focus on immediate economic issues. The broadcasting minister, Willie Jackson, no longer spending time on the media merger is not going to suddenly give him enough time to solve inflation. The public servants working on hate speech reform are not going to down tools and start building state homes.
But if the only things you’re ever on TV talking about are issues that have little relevance to most Kiwis, then they are going to assume that is what you are busy with all day.
Hipkins has already managed to pull Labour back into serious contention for the election this year by making a lot of noises about these “bread and butter” issues. If he manages to make sure public discourse for the rest of the year focuses on Labour’s traditional comfort area of wages and service delivery then he could reap serious rewards.
This will not be easy. The opposition can now happily point out just how much money was wasted on schemes that are no longer progressing with any rapidity, and while the quantum itself is small on the scale of a government budget it will seem like a lot to the public.
There are also potential coalition partners to worry about. Labour are extremely unlikely to be able to govern alone again, and their possible coalition partners of the Greens and the Māori party will be keen to shout about their own policy priorities, right into the empty space Labour has now vacated.
The way to fix this would be for Labour to have its own big policy idea, something that can dominate the election while still being broadly popular.
Achieving both is difficult – popular ideas are generally not controversial, so do not generate as many news stories.
Hipkins might need something slightly more spicy than all that bread and butter.
