Chris Hipkins will take Labour back to its old sleeves rolled up, practical Kiwi image

Chris Hipkins /Getty Images)

In engineering Chris Hipkins’ uncontested ascent to succeed her, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is again proven to be the master of political management.

Within minutes of her resignation on Thursday, Ardern’s proxies were making clear Hipkins should lead Labour into the election, with the safe pair of hands Carmel Sepuloni as his deputy.

Ardern can celebrate this morning, with both new leaders both in place.

Carmel Sepuloni is Chris Hipkins’ new deputy. Picture: AAP.

Hipkins is not Ardern’s ideological or personal preference. On both grounds, Finance Minister Grant Robertson would have won Ardern’s tick.

But both Ardern and Robertson are primarily political not ideological animals. If they have any deep political beliefs it is simply that New Zealand should be run by Labour rather than National, which rammed through tough economic and fiscal reforms from 1990, when Ardern was 10 and Robertson a prominent student activist.

Compared with them, Hipkins, 44, is from the Labour right – insofar as such terms still mean anything in New Zealand.

Under New Zealand’s purist proportional representation system, designed to stop further radical reform of any kind, few important policy differences remain even between Labour and National, let alone within the two main parties. Both focus almost exclusively on the median voter, with new ideas the preserve of the classical-liberal Act and far-left Green parties.

Labour’s left-right divide is thus mainly presentational and cultural.

Since early last year, Labour strategists have talked about needing to transition away from the old St Jacinda of Covid brand towards a good-old, sleeves-rolled-up, practical Kiwi image. This reflected market-research findings by both sides that voters were becoming sceptical of slick PR, grand visions, far-sighted promises and bold plans and just wanted politicians to get on with things.

Jacinda Ardern with then Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins in parliament, 2020. Picture: AFP.

Ardern tried but wasn’t true to the new label.

While himself middle class, a former student activist and then a staffer in Helen Clark’s Government, Hipkins, from Wellington’s mainly working-class Hutt Valley, is more able to pull off what Labour strategists have had in mind.

After quickly dropping plans to centralise school administration in the face of opposition from conservative principals, Hipkins was a mainstream Education Minister. After Health Minister David Clark was forced to resign after breaking lockdown rules, Hipkins was brought in to run health and the Covid response.

This was serendipitous for Ardern, given her increasing private concerns about the competence of the Ministry of Health. Hipkins finally got on top of delayed vaccination program and let it be known he was less enthusiastic about the zero-Covid and closed-border strategy than his boss.

Chris Hipkins in Wellington on Friday. Picture: Supplied.

Similarly, as law and order became a major political problem last winter, Ardern sacked her kind but ineffective Police Minister, Poto Williams, replacing her with Hipkins with the mission of making Labour at least look tough on crime. He met the brief.

Right through Ardern’s reign, Hipkins has also had oversight of the Wellington bureaucracy, as Minister for the Public Service, and of her legislative agenda, as Leader of the House. He knows how to pull bureaucratic levers to make things happen and get the numbers for parliamentary votes.

Hipkins easily meets the standards of 1990s or early 2000s political correctness, but not those of woke culture in the 2020s.

Until ordered to, he refused to apologise for bullying a pregnant New Zealand citizen prevented from returning home by the tough Covid border controls Ardern insisted upon but about which he was trying to have lifted ahead of Christmas 2021.

Chris Hipkins took ownership of a slip he made during a press conference.

When he urged New Zealanders to “spread your legs” during lockdown – he meant “stretch” – he embraced the joke, having the lewd instruction inscribed onto his coffee cup for press conferences.

He likes his beers, sausage rolls and a long lunch – although remains relatively fit and boyish. His nickname, Chippy, is a play on his first initial and surname, but more so his usually effervescent demeanour. He’s what Labour activists often dismiss as a stale, pale, male – and also heterosexual, with a wife who resents his work hours and two young kids.

Sepuloni, a highly competent Minister of Social Development for the last five years, balances him. She is of Tongan and Samoan descent and hails from working class West Auckland.

Ardern, the former Prime Minister, may be a bit irritated when Hipkins drops some of the more unpopular policies her government was pursuing, and moves Labour even closer to the median voter. But Ardern, the political communications expert, knows her new Prime Minister is the best candidate in Labour’s ranks to meet the specifications of its new election-year brand.

Matthew Hooton is a political and public affairs strategist based in Auckland and completing his PhD thesis on “Conservatism & Change” at the University of Auckland. His political clients have included the NZ National Party, NZ Act Party and, currently, the Mayor of Auckland. These views are his own.