Chris Hipkins (Labour) and Chris Bishop (National). Photo: RNZ / Marika Khabazi / Reece Baker
National says Labour's reshuffle and leader Chris Hipkins' state of the nation speech is all platitudes, no policy.
Labour's leader Chris Hipkins unveiled changes to the party's portfolios on Friday, including a new economic team he said would get to work on policy immediately.
It came alongside a speech to the Auckland Business Chamber, in which he promised to take a bipartisan approach to things like infrastructure if Labour won power in 2026, committing to not scrapping projects just because they were started by the previous government.
Responding to the speech, senior National minister Chris Bishop said Labour had an atrocious track record on the three things Hipkins said the party would focus on - jobs, health and housing.
"That was a fizzer of a speech from Chris Hipkins," he said. "They have no plans for the future and in fact are making a point of saying that they are only starting their policy development now.
"One has to wonder what on earth the Labour Party has been doing for the last 16 months that this government has been in office, cracking on with the job of cleaning up the mess that the Labour Party left the government to deal with."
He said when it came to health, Labour had abolished health targets and left "an appalling situation in health New Zealand that Simeon Brown and Shane Reti are now doing a good job cleaning up".
On housing, house prices and rents had "increased massively under the last Labour government".
And on jobs, Bishop acknowledged unemployment had risen the past few months, but said it was a "direct result of Labour's reckless fiscal mismanagement over their time in government that saw government spending increase by 80 percent, debt rise to huge levels, and of course, a cost of living crisis that we are only now just emerging from".
As an MP in attack mode, he had misspoken at the beginning of his spiel - perhaps forgetting which side of the House his party was now on.
"After 16 months in government, the Labour Party has literally no solutions, no plans, no policies for the future," Bishop said, later saying people should not read too much into that.
He argued the "most important issue facing the country right now" was the cost of living, which was why the government was focused on economic management.
"The public have had enough of nice-sounding phrases and cliches. What they want is action, and that's why this government is focused on rebuilding the economy and fixing the fundamentals."
Working together
Asked about his commitment to bipartisanship, Hipkins had earlier said it was up to the government to accept Labour's offers to work together, but "when we form the government we won't stop everything just because the other side started it".
"We will be reaching across the aisle to try and make sure that the new commitments we make are enduring," Hipkins said.
Bishop, also Infrastructure Minister, said he had been trying to work "in a creative way with the opposition".
"So you'll see that Barbara Edmonds and some other spokespeople are coming to our Investment Summit next week. Barbara Edmonds wrote a foreword to our [public-private partnership] policy framework, for example. So we welcome that, but let's wait and see where that goes."
He said it was important to have a stable planning system, and he was "making approaches to the Labour Party" to work together on Resource Management Act reform.
Very soon however, he was talking up the fact "this government has been charging on repealing stupid things that the Labour Party put in place".
It was Bishop's former leader Simon Bridges - now chief executive at Auckland Business Chamber - who was hosting Hipkins' speech.
Bridges led National during Jacinda Ardern's government, and said her approach - as well as that of the current government - had shown how difficult it could be to continue the work of a previous administration.
"I think it will be music to business' ears to hear from an opposition leader that actually he doesn't want to see that stop-and-start, and the kind of breaking of the chain or the pipeline of infrastructure."
He said it was a positive thing for Hipkins to say he wanted that.
Former Labour Prime Minister Helen Clark was also at Hipkins' speech, and said two things stood out to her: the intention to "work collaboratively with society, and not against it", and the commitment not to automatically repeal the predecessor's work.
Like Bridges, she also thought the past two governments' tendency to do that had been "actually quite damaging".
"With respect to infrastructure, it's left New Zealand in quite a perilous position because we end up with nothing, rather than moving ahead."
Tangi Utikere. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
Reshuffle
Asked about the reshuffle, Bishop was withering.
"When you turn up to an audience as sophisticated as the Auckland Business Chamber, you actually have to have things to say. You can't just reshuffle the deck chairs and announce a bunch of nice-sounding words."
He was also dismissive about some of his Labour counterparts' track records.
"When it comes to education, Jan Tinetti had no answers... Willow-Jean Prime well, [laughs], I don't think we need to take her particularly
seriously."
And on his transport portfolio opposite, Tangi Utikere - promoted seven places from 19th to 12th, Bishop said: "Sorry, who? ... he hasn't had anything to say about transport ... I don't want to have a swing too hard, I just don't think he's done anything.
"Really, what they do is over to them."
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