MEDIAWATCH: Labour’s drip in need of a wipe: Hipkins on Q+A

Christ what a drop kick Chris Hipkins is and always has been – a mediocre minister and a limp leader, a gormless Wellingtonian careerist with a talent only for scheming and survival. Another cringey gosh-shucks performance of blithe self-satisfaction from the ginger whinger on yesterday’s TVNZ Q+A programme concluded with his trademark smug wincing smirk.

Zero. Zero press releases said Jack Tame: Hipkins has put out no press releases as opposition leader this year. None. Hipkins didn’t care, didn’t even have the shame to flinch.  He acted like he didn’t care at all – and I believe him, he doesn’t. Some of his interview reactions were cautious underplaying, as politicians do, but his nonchalance over having not put out even a single media statement this year while the National-Act-NZ First coalition government romper stomped through their 100 day blitzkrieg (starting parliament early to abort the few things his painfully lackadaisical government had hoped to deliver) was genuine. He really didn’t give a fuck. So what? – was his response. Contempt. If he has something to say about National he’ll just say it in a presser, he explained, making it fairly clear Labour has had and continues to have nothing constructive to say about itself or anything at all – just reactive curses, pro forma, against their eternal foe. The man is a zero. Zero.

As the embodiment, the epitome, of Labour’s dysfunction and decimation, and as not so much the poster boy as the poster man-child of misgovernance, Hipkins exhibits a complete absence of self-awareness at a Helen White level of psychopathy. As the reflexively punchable face of Labour’s parliamentary leadership he personifies the atrophy of a political party which is the equivalent of a floating garbage island drifting in an ocean of bourgie-ocracy rotating very slowly around the centre of least apparent action. Hipkins is that man of inaction, not as he holds himself with that phoney grin as the illustrious captain steering a ship on a crucial mission, but as a student sent for a semester to count choked penguins (count not help) on the isle of rubbish where he can role play as the great leader with the only ones noticing being the suffocating sea birds.

It’s not that they’ve given up caring – they just never cared in the first place, Labour. The press release situation demonstrates that party’s reliance on officials to provide everything, relying on themselves they provide nothing. I noted at the time that David Parker’s call for a Gaza ceasefire in January wasn’t put up on Labour’s website, I surmised because the Labour Party staff are every bit as indolent as the rest of Wellington and take their holidays religiously. It will take way more than 20,000 dead Palestinians for the average Wellingtonian office bunny to ever open their work email, obviously, now we know. Would a nuclear strike be enough? All those resources, all those staff members and no one can post something to their website. All that parliamentary funding and union support and they can’t push out a media release and put it on their website. The Gaza situation becomes ‘plausibly genocidal’ according to the International Court of Justice, the Kingitanga hosts the biggest Maori political gathering since the Foreshore and Seabed hikoi hit the capital in 2004, the Ratana anniversary dialogue, Waitangi Day – all these events and the Leader of the Opposition hasn’t been troubled to issue a single press release. Holidays are serious business, nothing else matters. And the holidays go into March too by the looks of it. I guess they reckon no-one cares what they think or say now they aren’t in government, so fuck it, right? Wellington’s ethos is complacency and though they may call it by other more flattering names they are most certain that nothing can or should ever be done about their chief characteristic.

At the end of the interview Tame, as usual, feels obliged to dole out a pity patsy: about a petition Labour started. A petition to keep the status quo on sex education. Sign something to not change something – inspirational! To think all the Labour MP’s will dutifully sign it, but none could sign the party leadership nomination to displace Hipkins. Bereft not just of leadership but of everything: people, policy, principles, purpose.

All of Hipkins answers were astoundingly weak.

Hipkins was asked to reflect on the doomed election campaign. It was mostly “beyond my control” he said, he “would have done a few things differently” and confidently asserted in three years “the personalities will be different” so he reasoned there was no point answering what a campaign in 2026 will look like. He evidently had no clue and no emotion towards the catostrophic loss. He’s still on a leader’s salary matching a cabinet minister so why should he care, right? His answer, finally, was a vague, blurry sketch: “different events… sorts of things,” he might have done differently, things “that would have reflected a bit more who I am.” Who was he then? To our collective laughter he told us his what if dropped ball moment: “home insulation…and rooftop solar.” Not wealth tax then, rooftop solar (!) and he tried to throw in Covid for a free pass and Tame chucked it right back in his smarmy face, it gave Labour an unprecedented MMP majority to do whatever you wanted and you did…? Zero or next to it.

Hipkins on co-governance was just as bad as Willie Jackson’s verbal sprinting around the mulberry bush. He couldn’t answer the straight question: what other public services (apart from 3 waters) should be delivered with a 50-50 co-governance model? On what basis? He faffed about devolution, “well it would depend on the context” and “on a case by case basis” and “resolve those issues by talking” with Maori. None of which came close to an answer. Talk about what? “Maori have a legally established interest in water” and then refused to say how that related to anything else. Three years to sell co-governance and they still cannot articulate what the hell they are thinking. Is it any wonder they cannot be believed – or trusted? Is it any wonder National, Act and NZ First have gained traction on Treaty principles when Labour cannot even come close to describing what their principles of co-governance are? Even Shane Jones’ enigmatic, elliptical, meandering monologues make more sense than the rolling maul of evasions that Hipkins spat out.

GST off food? Rawiri Waititi’s members’ bill had been drawn. Support it? Hipkins mode changed instantly like an animal suddenly alert to being trapped: “I think it’s a challenging bill, look I love the idea of you know reducing the cost of food but it also comes at a huge cost and the real question is what fills that hole?” It was “the government coffers” he intoned with eyebrows furrowed in concern at anything except people’s cost of living. In principle a good idea though? Hipkins: “it would be challenging to find that money” and besides caucus hasn’t determined the position yet. Oh, so much concern with GST off fruit and veg four months ago in the election campaign – it was his go to, remember – now, oh now not so much. If only there was a way to pay for it – but unfortunately Tame doesn’t bring up the wealth tax Hipkins personally vetoed. Let him off easy as he wanted to ease into that cutomary concluding pity patsy.

At the end Tame asks whether he will be PM again? Sure he says, chirping up and that awful grin starts again and loses another thousand votes. We laugh at his audacity and cringe at his expression. Yeah, nah.  Like a runny nose, everyone can see it even if the one with the cold fancies they can’t. So who will wipe this annoying little drip?