It wasn’t quite as dramatic as Xi Jinping having his predecessor Hu Jintao publicly removed from the stage of the Chinese Communist Party’s congress, but Prime Minister Chris Hipkin’s “policy bonfire” on Wednesday was no less clear a repudiation of what remains of his predecessor Jacinda Ardern’s agenda.
Hipkins had a busy week. On Monday, he led the commemorations of New Zealand’s national day, at historic Waitangi in the far north and in West Auckland – New Zealand’s electoral equivalent of Sydney’s western suburbs. Tuesday was his day-trip in Canberra to meet Anthony Albanese. Wednesday saw him announce the bonfire from Ardern’s old “podium of truth”.
At Waitangi and Canberra, Hipkins was perfectly competent or even humdrum. After 15 years of largely meaningless razzle-dazzle from for prime minister John Key and Ardern, “perfectly competent” is the new black. The Australian’s Jenna Clarke put it astutely: Hipkins is more LinkedIn than Ardern’s Instagram.
Hipkins promised always to attend Waitangi Day events as Prime Minister, but upset the northern Māori establishment by saying that didn’t necessarily mean Waitangi itself – the same stance towards the sometimes chaotic events at Waitangi as National party prime minister Jim Bolger in the 1990s.
In Canberra, Hipkins kept to the “getting to know you” script, dodging most substantial questions, including around defence spending and China. Those issues will wait until formal bilateral talks in New Zealand this winter.
Hipkins faced criticism for calling China an “important partner for New Zealand” with which there will be disagreements – but this bland formulation is broadly the same as Albanese’s.
Both countries are too dependent on China as an export market to speak as frankly as they would like, and New Zealand is the more economically vulnerable.
For reasons of both domestic and international politics, it’s unlikely Hipkins will persist with Ardern’s planned trade mission to China later this year. The last thing New Zealand needs is China taking even more of its exports.
The new defence policy Hipkins promises later in the year will be strongly influenced by the New Zealand Ministry of Defence’s 2021 Defence Assessment, its first for seven years.
It agreed with Australia’s 2020 Defence Strategic Update that the prospect of major armed conflict in the Indo-Pacific is less remote than previously, even though it judged that New Zealand’s sovereign territory isn’t threatened “yet”.
Top of the list of the “most threatening potential developments” New Zealand could face was “the establishment of a military base or dual-use facility in the Pacific by a state that does not share New Zealand’s values and security interests” – code for China. That’s now happening.
There is now material public support in New Zealand for greater defence spending, which means equipment and capability that differs from and thereby adds to Australia’s.
Polling last year by Labour’s pollsters, Talbot Mills, and National’s Curia, showed New Zealanders have nearly as much affection for Australia as their own country. Attitudes towards China are profoundly negative. Hipkins knows where the median voter stands.
That’s the context for Wednesday’s bonfire. Ardern’s hate-speech legislation, promised after the 2019 terrorist attack, has been kicked into touch. Plans to merge the state-owned TV and radio networks to create a mega state broadcaster – think the ABC, but worse – have been abandoned entirely.
So too Ardern’s biofuels mandate, a key part of her “nuclear-free moment” climate-change policy. As recently as November, Labour savaged National for expressing doubts about its efficacy. Now Labour seems to agree it would raise petrol prices by 10c a litre, do nothing to reduce New Zealand’s greenhouse emissions, increase global ones, and reduce food production.
A compulsory unemployment insurance scheme costing households NZ$3.5 billion (AUD3.17bn) annually is also dead, a particular humiliation for its champion, Finance Minister Grant Robertson.
That at least demonstrated Robertson is following his orders to other ministers, to “murder their darlings”.
More darlings are heading for immolation. Ardern’s plan to nationalise New Zealand’s freshwater, wastewater and stormwater infrastructure – currently owned by local councils – and give Māori half the seats on board-appointments committees is set to be first into the second bonfire, expected in weeks.
Ardern’s personal passion of a tram from Auckland’s CBD to the airport is also doomed.
Meant to be half finished by now but still un-started, its cost ballooned to NZ$30 billion (AUD$27bn). Even the public-transport advocates who convinced Ardern to champion it are now opposed.
Major reforms to New Zealand’s resource management regime, particularly the degree of Māori influence over planning and consents, are being questioned.
For Labour supporters, this is quite depressing, with Hipkins removing all the policy differences between his party and National. Already more popular than National’s Christopher Luxon, Hipkins bets he can win an election about nothing more than who will mind the shop.
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