Grant Robertson makes way for Barbara Edmonds in key finance spokesperson role. But what next for Labour?

Labour got its first new finance spokesperson in nearly a decade yesterday, when Grant Robertson announced his retirement from Parliament, handing the job to Barbara Edmonds.

Edmonds wasted no time getting her feet under the desk. About two hours after inheriting the role, she interrupted a line of patsy questions to Finance Minister Nicola Willis in Question Time, defending Robertson and Labour’s fiscal management during the Covid-19 pandemic.

While Willis was attacking some of the largesse of the Covid response, Edmonds asked what National would have done differently.

“Is it the minister’s assessment that the wage subsidy, the Small Business Cashflow (Loan) Scheme, and other policies to support businesses during the Covid pandemic are redundant and that she wouldn’t have supported businesses to hold on to their employees during the pandemic?” Edmonds asked Willis.

Edmonds will be one of the most important voices in the party’s internal debate on whether to campaign on a wealth or capital gains tax at the 2026 election. She gave little away on Tuesday, except to suggest that she believed people should pay the appropriate amount of tax, regardless of where they earned their income, remarks that could suggest she favours a capital gains tax over a wealth tax.

“It comes down to fairness. I want to ensure that if I’ve been taxed a dollar then someone who derives income from other means is taxed that same dollar as well. At the same time, we need to go to the 2026 election with a really clear plan that aligns with our Labour values. I’m not going to go into it today, we need to go into it as a caucus and a party,” Edmonds said.

Robertson had long been tipped to retire before the end of the term, so Tuesday’s announcement came as little surprise. He will leave Parliament in March, and take up a new role as Otago University’s Vice-Chancellor.

Robertson said he had given the job everything.

“I gave every single inch of myself ... arguably maybe a little bit more than that,” he said.

“The chance to make a positive difference in the lives of New Zealanders in this way is not afforded to many people. I have given absolutely everything I have had to these roles, but now is the right time for me to move on to a new set of opportunities and challenges.”

Robertson departs Labour as it adjusts to opposition. A 1 News-Verian poll this week saw the party poll at just 28 per cent, and leader Chris Hipkins fall 10 points to 15 per cent in the preferred prime minister poll.

Labour leader Chris Hipkins took a big hit in the preferred prime minister stakes in the latest political poll. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Hipkins said on Tuesday he was not contemplating leaving the job and the poll was fairly positive for Labour, largely because it did not show a massive swing to the Government, which can happen after a change of government.

“Certainly not now,” Hipkins said, when asked if he would resign.

“We’ve got a big job to rebuild the party after the election result last year, and that’s what I’ll be focused on,” he said.

Hipkins’ MPs put on a brave face despite the rough poll, with Deborah Russell, Camilla Belich and Willie Jackson all throwing their full support behind Hipkins.

“We’ve got a strategy for Chippy and with Chippy,” Jackson said.

“We’re three years away from an election,” he said.

All eyes now turn to Edmonds, who will be a key player in that rebuild. Robertson held Labour’s finance spokesman role since November 2014, contesting three elections in the role.

It’s now Edmonds’ to make her own.

A former tax lawyer, Edmonds is a familiar face around Parliament, despite only becoming an MP in 2020. In 2016, she was seconded from Inland Revenue to work as the private secretary to National Revenue Ministers Michael Woodhouse and Judith Collins. In 2017, following the change of Government, she went into the office of Labour’s Revenue Minister Stuart Nash. She took the revenue portfolio herself last year, and held it at the election.

Collins has always spoken highly of Edmonds’ professionalism when she worked in her office.

“She was a professional working well and diligently,” Collins once said of Edmonds.

A mother of eight, Edmonds holds the Wellington seat of Mana with a 7300-vote majority. She is known by some in the tax world as a believer in the broad base, low rate orthodoxy that underpins New Zealand’s tax system.

That may have taken a dent at the last election when she was forced to defend Labour’s plan to take GST off fresh and frozen fruit and vegetables, a policy abhorred by many tax professionals for its cost and unworkability.

Thomas Coughlan is Deputy Political Editor and covers politics from Parliament. He has worked for the Herald since 2021 and has worked in the press gallery since 2018.