Labour leader Chris Hipkins speaking during his closing address at the Labour Party Annual Conference in Christchurch on Sunday. Photo: RNZ / Lillian Hanly
Analysis - Labour has all but confirmed it will campaign on a capital gains tax (CGT) next election and could announce the details as early as mid-next year.
Tax has long been a vexed issue for the Labour Party - most recently when Chris Hipkins, as prime minister, ruled out progressing a wealth tax at the 2023 election, and before that Jacinda Ardern pledged to never implement a CGT as long as she was leader.
Those at the Labour conference in Christchurch at the weekend told RNZ a fairer tax system was a top issue for them, and several remits along those lines were put to the floor at the two-day meeting.
Where it landed was with a promise to continue working on both a capital gains and a wealth tax ahead of the next election, with the party policy council and the caucus making a final decision.
Remits to force the issue to be brought back to the party for sign-off, progressing just a wealth tax, and progressing a capital gains tax alone, all failed.
As did a remit to make the leader, caucus and policy council consult before making any changes to policies in the party's election-year manifesto.
In reality that already happens and Hipkins' decision to rule out a wealth tax in 2023 was a captain's call not to add it to the manifesto, rather than one to change or remove a policy already in it.
What the weekend's decision did achieve was an endorsement for Hipkins with both the captain's call and wealth tax remits both failing.
Hipkins has always talked more positively about a CGT and as the person who put the nail in the wealth tax coffin, a decision to progress that alone would have been a difficult sell for the leader.
RNZ understands the wealth tax remit was vehemently voted down, and the group of members behind it was the same group given a resounding no by the rest of the party over the captain's call remit.
They're an anti-Hipkins brigade for the most part.
Now the work begins on how to implement a CGT, what to include, and how to convince a majority of voters it's needed.
Labour knows all too well how difficult that can be after the policy blew up in its face in both 2011 and 2014.
The way it's been framed so far is that it encourages productive rather than speculative investment, it fills a tax revenue hole needed for future infrastructure, and it rebalances the tax system away from salary and wage earners.
But what to tax and how - to include a holiday home or not, for example - is going to require a lot of work and the policy council has only just been given the greenlight to go away and do that work.
The other issue is whether to also announce a tax-free zone at the same time. It's a policy Australia has long had and Hipkins is keen to replicate it.
But too many changes to the tax system in one go can overwhelm the public, and involves making sound cases for multiple things all at once.
Hipkins won't want to announce either until a rational argument has been mounted, and every question or potential hole has been filled with a comprehensive justification or solution.
Big policy announcements have usually been reserved for not only election year, but broadly for the two-month election campaign period.
National took a different approach to that last year and rolled out almost all of its policy announcements ahead of the campaign and then spent that intense six to eight weeks reinforcing it.
Labour stuck to the tried and true of saving the bulk of the announcements for the campaign period, and as a result it turned into policy saturation and no particular policy was ever well articulated.
Expect to see Labour take the lesson from 2023 National and roll out its policy much earlier - as early as 2025 that is.
RNZ understands some big policy ideas will be ready to go by mid-next year and the rest will likely be finished rolling out by the end of 2025.
A CGT could be one of the first cabs off the rank if the policy council and caucus get all their ducks in a row.
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