Chris Hipkins loves to cycle.
New Zealand’s newish prime minister, who stepped into the job after Jacinda Ardern’s shock resignation earlier this year, has been pedalling the 30km from his home in Upper Hutt to parliament for years. It’s not a particularly safe route, with many sections where Hipkins would be riding right alongside 100kmh traffic. It’s this kind of danger that stops cycle commuting from being particularly mainstream – just 2% commuted by bike at the last census – but this is far from a political priority for Hipkins. He loves to cycle, but the main thing he wants to do is win.
This intense drive towards victory is crucial to understanding why Hipkins has spent the last month ditching many sections of his government’s climate change policy, all in the aftermath of two major storms which were likely worse because of climate change. It explains why a government that happily tells other nations to stop subsidising fossil fuels is once again extending a tax cut on petrol and diesel. It’s why Hipkins on Monday ditched not just expensive climate policies like the “cash for clunkers” scrappage scheme, but also the drive to lower speed limits in many parts of the country to increase road safety.
It’s not that the government couldn’t lower speeds and fix storm-damaged roads at the same time – our transport agency has around 2,400 staff – it’s that Hipkins doesn’t want to talk about lowering the speed limit. He doesn’t want to talk about spending a small amount of money on bike lanes or a media merger or votes for 16-year-olds, and he doesn’t want the media talking about it either. The money is immaterial; the conversation is not. This message discipline is ruthless enough that Hipkins is willing to ditch policies his colleagues have spent months or years on, all for emptier column inches. He’s betting that the flurry of headlines about the government getting rid of any policies that don’t have to do with what he calls “bread and butter issues” will win him votes.
And it seems to be working. Hipkins has climbed in the preferred prime ministerial stakes in recent polls, and Labour is now solidly back in contention for this year’s election. Hipkins would argue that the climate is far better served by Labour winning the election than a National-Act coalition. After all, the Act party has flirted with outright denialism within living memory, while National gutted the Emissions Trading Scheme while last in government, and remains committed to reopening offshore drilling for oil and gas.
But Labour cannot simply delete policies until it is in government for ever. Presumably at the election this year it will have to have some actual policies to address the fact that New Zealand’s reliance on cars and cows mean we have quite high per-capita emissions and no easy path to bringing those down, given the easier job of decarbonising our electricity generation is largely already finished. If Labour doesn’t have those policies to talk about then the Green party, which it will need to form a government, will happily fill the void. Green party co-leader James Shaw, who is also the climate change minister, told this columnist Hipkins’ repeated backdowns on climate policy were “disappointing and making things harder”.
“Individually none of these policies actually add up to much – but the cumulative effect is starting to add up. We’re running out of easy options. It’s getting very difficult to find options that we haven’t already exhausted,” Shaw said.
Shaw rebuffs those who want the government to simply ditch various climate policies and focus exclusively on pricing carbon through the Emissions Trading Scheme, saying the necessary price would be politically impossible. He notes that the recent surge in electric vehicle sales brought on by the government’s feebate scheme would have required an emissions price of about $500 a tonne – a price that “would result in the closure of all our heavy industry and eye-watering fuel prices for those who aren’t able to get an electric car.”
Hipkins’ desertion of the field will probably benefit Shaw in the short term. The Greens can soak up climate conscious votes while Hipkins takes more of the centre-ground. But really big bold policy changes in New Zealand generally require one of the main two parties. That’s why Ardern’s “nuclear-free” line had such staying power – because it recalled a time when Labour was willing to take a big bold stance and fight with the rest of the world over it. Now the party just wants to backpedal.
Henry Cooke is a freelance journalist covering New Zealand politics
