Chris Hipkins speaks to the Labour Party conference on 1 December, 2024. Photo: RNZ / Lillian Hanly
Labour Party leader Chris Hipkins has pledged at the party's annual conference in Christchurch if elected in 2026 his government would resume SmokeFree Aotearoa, complete Dunedin Hospital's rebuild and said NZ would not join AUKUS.
Beginning his closing address to the party's annual conference in Christchurch, Hipkins said: "We are going to make this the first one-term National government in New Zealand's history."
Labour would bring together government, businesses, unions, researchers, innovators and the social sector to tackle the problems of today and tomorrow, he said.
"We need a vision and a plan and this government has neither," he said.
"We can change the government in 2026 if we work for it, that's why we've already started planning," he said.
Kieran McAnulty has been elected to chair Labour's next general election campaign, he said.
Rewatch Hipkins' speech here:
Labour will have a much bigger focus on keeping people healthy rather than rationing care for illnesses that could have been avoided in the first place, he said.
"We will reinstate Smokefree Aotearoa to keep reducing smoking and improving people's health."
Labour would also cancel the tax breaks the government had given to tobacco companies, he said.
Hipkins also promised Labour would invest in rebuilding hospitals.
"And yes, today I'm going to announce that we will complete the full rebuild of Dunedin Hospital as we promised."
Hipkins said that under a Labour government, New Zealand would not join AUKUS, the security alliance with Australia, the US and the UK.
Labour would also invest in a publicly owned interisland ferry service between the North and South islands, he said.
"We'll invest in public transport, sensible roading projects and a robust, reliable, national rail network."
Hipkins promised if elected Labour would continue to support on-the-job training and focus on rebuilding and expanding schools.
"We'll have an unrelenting focus on lifting children out of poverty and we won't just change the targets when that gets hard."
Labour would focus on getting Kiwis back to work and focus on delivering a fairer deal for working people "with the reinstatement of fair pay agreements, pay equity, and better protection for workers at the top of the list", he said.
National responds
National Party Finance Spokesperson Nicola Willis said that Hipkins and Labour were offering nothing new.
"Labour is like a bad boyfriend that says they'll change but keeps doing the same old stuff," Willis said in a statement.
"Mr Hipkins was clear that his party would trudge on with a swathe of failed ideas that got our economy into a mess.
"After increasing spending by 80 per cent and somehow delivering worse outcomes across the board, it was astounding to see Chris Hipkins asking Kiwis to trust Labour again."
Willis said Labour would pay for its plans through higher taxes.
"It used to be that Labour was for working people. Now it wants to tax everything working people have worked for."
In his opening comments on Friday to this weekend's conference which is taking place a year after Labour's election defeat, Hipkins called on his party to change, in order to win the next election.
Hipkins said he understood "Kiwis did vote for change last year" and that the party now needed "to change as well".
In order to win the party needed to reconnect with a broader range of New Zealanders by talking about the issues that mattered to them and the issues that Labour believed should matter to them, he said.
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