Comment: Chris Hipkins painting himself as the underdog explains the motivation behind his speech on Sunday where he finally laid out his personal and political values and started fighting back.
Campaigns are three-fold – talking face-to-face with voters out on the street, head-to-head political debates televised live, and set piece speeches targeted at both the party base and swing voters.
If Hipkins was forced to campaign entirely out on the street this election, with no debates or rousing speeches, he’d have already resigned himself to opposition benches.
Much as he can’t conduct small talk in foreign countries with his overseas counterparts, he’s just as awkward and tongue-tied talking to random voters on the street.
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Despite being sociable and mostly an extrovert with a good sense of humour, those things only work for the Labour leader with people he knows and feels comfortable around.
Put him in the middle of a fruit and vegetable market in south Auckland or central Wellington and Hipkins is no good – he will have to rely totally on having people around him who thrive on banter with strangers to survive that part of the campaign.
Without a seat to worry about this election, Grant Robertson – one of the most relaxed and approachable MPs around, who has no qualms with bowling up to anyone – will be important for Hipkins to help buffer the inevitable awkwardness he attracts.
Robertson will be doing the heavy lifting, as will others with the same skillset, such as Carmel Sepuloni, Barbara Edmonds, Willow-Jean Prime and Shanan Halbert.
Where Hipkins comes into his own is fighting his opponents in the House or in any kind of debate-like setting, and through speeches where he can point out everything he won’t do as Prime Minister.
Hipkins has single-handedly created a new version of prime ministership in just eight months that points out everything that makes him different to leaders from within his own party in years gone by.
Never would Jacinda Ardern have delivered a speech referring to parties dealing with toilet issues, pointing to intimidating and threatening behaviour by Opposition MPs, or reminding voters of the time a former National minister was photographed with a toilet seat that had the face of a former Labour minister attached to it.
This is stuff Ardern would have run a mile from, while Hipkins ran full steam into it on Sunday.
It’s also rhetoric the Greens won’t go anywhere near, to the point they say they don’t need to bother themselves with it, knowing full well Hipkins is happy to carry that can.
Hipkins is now set on targeting the social conservatism of the National Party in the form of Luxon, O’Connor, and a raft of current MPs who have previously voted against women’s rights, gay rights, and targeted policy like Māori wards in local government.
Hipkins was always going to be a scrapper, it’s simply his nature and he’s good at it, and in a political environment like the current one that is running on culture wars and divisiveness he feels comfortable holding his own.
He knows the biggest punch he can throw at Christopher Luxon is reminding voters as often as possible that he once claimed as leader that abortion is tantamount to murder.
On Sunday he drew on one National MP, Simon O’Connor, celebrating the Roe v Wade decision in the United States that would undo women’s rights around abortion.
He harked back to when Michael Woodhouse was photographed with a toilet seat that had the face of his Dunedin opponent, then Labour MP Clare Curran, on it.
Hipkins jumped on New Zealand First’s fascination with talking about toilets and stigmatising the trans community.
He pointed to the race-based rhetoric thrown at the Pacific community in the past week by Act leader David Seymour when he implied blowing up the Ministry of Pacific Peoples would be a good thing.
Hipkins framed the whole speech as giving New Zealanders certainty, by ruling out New Zealand First, as well as National and Act, and ruling in the Greens and Te Pāti Māori.
None of those things is shocking but that wasn’t the point of his speech.
His objective was to point to the differences between National and Labour and what their respective left and right governments would stand for, at a time when the two major parties are consistently putting out policy the other side agrees with.
A grand coalition obviously isn’t on the cards and Hipkins has pounced on the fact the centre might be where he’s fighting with Luxon, but what he and his likely coalition partners stand for is what could swing a win in their favour, or not.
Hipkins is now set on targeting the social conservatism of the National Party in the form of Luxon, O’Connor, and a raft of current MPs who have previously voted against women’s rights, gay rights, and targeted policy like Māori wards in local government.
That’s where Labour is looking to sweep up some votes, particularly the sizeable female swing vote, which traditionally takes greater notice of those types of issues.
Luxon knows women fled National at the 2020 election to vote for Ardern and he needs to try lure them back.
His deputy Nicola Willis is doing the grunt work there as Luxon’s personal and well-established position on abortion rights acts as a roadblock.
Luxon can say he won’t make any changes in that legislative department until he’s blue in the face, as he did on Sunday afternoon, but Hipkins has identified it as a weak spot to keep hammering.
Asked whether National would rule New Zealand First in or out, Luxon refused to go there, saying it was a hypothetical given they aren’t in Parliament or consistently polling above the five percent threshold.
With Winston Peters’ party starting to nudge into winnable territory in more recent polls, Luxon is running out of time with that excuse.
Hipkins has made it clear what he believes a centre-right government (with or without New Zealand First) would mean for the country.
“It would not be good for a large segment of New Zealand society, that includes our rainbow community, it includes our Māori and Pacific people and includes those on low incomes, those who are relying on investment in our public services – our health, our housing, our education.
“I think a change of government would be bad for all of those people,” Hipkins said.
Those sorts of accusations require policy to back-up the rhetoric and when asked what he had for the trans community, for example, he demurred saying that would be for later in the campaign.
The shape of Labour’s campaign, and ruling out NZ First, is clearly a Hipkins view of the world, with the party’s caucus only consulted on Sunday morning just ahead of his speech.
With 20 or more MPs currently staring down the barrel of being turfed out of Parliament they’re relying on Hipkins steadying the ship and saving some of them after a disastrous 1News-Verian poll last week.
If this doesn’t work, the divisiveness he blames other parties for inflaming might start seeping into his own caucus.
