His goal is to seek forgiveness from those peeved off voters to try to achieve a very lofty goal: winning that support back by 2026 and up-ending the National-led coalition after just one term.
It is a lofty goal. No National Government has yet been kicked out after one term (although two Labour ones have). Then again, no party managed a one-party majority under MMP either until Labour did in 2020 (spoiler alert: it didn’t end well).
Hipkins is hopeful about it partly because he has to be: his own job as leader relies on him convincing his own people that he is the best one to deliver a win in 2026.
He is also drawing hope from the current polls, which show little has changed since the election and voters are still struggling to warm to Prime Minister Christopher Luxon.
Taking hope from the polls is a flimsy exercise at any time, let alone this early in a term.
In his efforts to persuade voters that he really is listening, Hipkins has so far made admissions Labour was too slow to respond to rising retail crime, had over-promised and under-delivered on Auckland light rail, Christchurch mass transit and KiwiBuild, didn’t do enough on unruly tenants in Kāinga Ora houses and did not handle its moves on issues around Māori co-governance well.
Even the way he campaigned has prompted regrets – he has said he should have tailored it more to his character rather than pushing repeat on a Jacinda-style campaign.
The latest stop on Hipkins’ Mea Culpa Mission was at Fieldays on Friday.
Speaking to the farming crowd, Hipkins said there were a lot of “strained relationships” between the former Labour Government and the primary sector by 2023. He assured them that would change. He was there to listen.
“What we think doesn’t matter a lot at the moment. What matters is we are listening to people.”
Facing up to the loyal Labour faithful is a different matter to facing the critics. For a start, a fair few may blame him for scotching plans to campaign on the proposal for a wealth tax/income tax cuts tax switch. They do not necessarily want his list of what Labour did wrong. They usually prefer scathing attacks on the Government, although that part of it comes fairly easily to Hipkins.
As the party goes about its policy reset, he has to persuade them that it needs policies that resonate with the so-called “middle New Zealand” – not just the policies that please the more ideological base.
At the regional conference, he told them it needed to win back a vast chunk of those 2020 voters. At the regional conference, he summed up the reasons Labour lost. It was a list of C words: Covid-19, crime, cost of living. He added in the “vibe” and the time-warping effects of Covid-19.
He told his audience there was a “vibe” for change that he couldn’t buck. He told them about one man who told him Labour had had their nine years and it was the other side’s turn. Labour had only had six years.
Hipkins said it possibly felt like nine years because Covid-19 had made it feel longer.
At face value, Hipkins has taken on board the problem Labour had with delivering on its promises. When setting out the need for new policies and ideas, he added that they would have to show “we’ve worked through how we will implement those”.
However, while Hipkins’ list at the regional conference included most the right C words, he left out that critical D word: delivery.
Then there is that final C word: Hipkins’ own captain’s calls saw the proposal for a wealth tax scrapped and the party campaign on GST off food instead. That followed on from his predecessor Dame Jacinda Ardern’s captain’s call, scrapping a capital gains tax as a policy.
It will be the power to make a captain’s call and the tax policy reset that get all the attention come the party’s annual conference.
