Chris Hipkins Is Right

Remember all that hopey-changey stuff?

I can still remember where I was when I heard Obama’s Democratic nomination speech in 2008. Take 5 minutes of your day and bathe in heady political optimism:

In 2017 Ardern led a fresh, optimistic, feminine politics and later formed an entire career promoting this new way of doing things. I was proud to be at that campaign launch.

But that was a long 9 years ago.

In 2023 when Chris Hipkins became Prime Minister, he jettisoned otherwise difficult, too late, and politically expensive policies: the TVNZ-RNZ media merger, the biofuels mandate to help suppress fuel price increases, the social insurance scheme that was to be a massive expansion of ACC, any talk of tax reform, the hate speech legislation, lowering the voting age, the entire Three Waters programme, alcohol pricing and advertising reform, the clean car discount, into what many called a pre-election policy bonfire. It didn’t stem the support collapse that Ardern’s leadership had precipitated.

Hipkins also jettisoned all of the aspirational language that Labour and social democrats the world over have come to expect.

By 2026, what is still visible from the Ardern-Hipkins government is smaller items: a significantly upgraded and expanded public housing portfolio, new state subsidies like Winter Fuel Allowance and School Lunches, Matariki as a public holiday, an integrated but starving health system, and some other items of that scale. 

It’s not nothing but it’s not transformational or hopey-changey. 

There is still a strong cohort of support for large-scale state intervention that presumes the same scale of agency and inspiration of President Obama or Prime Minister Ardern, and we can see it in the rise of the Green Party over four months in 2026.

It is the right of all voters to be unrealistic.

But it leads nowhere if you are trying to get a second or third term, which is where gradual change turns into measurable shifts to the whole of New Zealand. Kiwisaver started very small and now manages $140 billion of our savings. NZSuper started small and will by the end of 2027 manage $100 billion.

From the little things, big things grow.

There is no longer any chance of large scale change in New Zealand no matter what party you vote for. When the fuel-driven inflation pressure on the economy is so strong and will be for years to come, and the scale of public sector austerity is so strong that there is far less capacity to achieve public change for years to come, and there is little private sector will to invest in the economy and hire people by business, then hope, change, transformation, aspiration, expansion, growing wings, or rhetorical capes are not going to happen. It would be great if it were possible, but it ain’t. 

Workers believe things are consistently worse. 

NZ business has not surged in investment to fill the void of the retreating state and there is now a growing reality gap between their mood and their investment delivery.

Treasury economic growth forecasts have been consistently inaccurate and optimistic.

The IMF hasn’t been able to do any sensible forecast about economic growth or shrinkage across developed economies over the past three years either. So it’s not just us getting forced into small-c conservative imagination.

In 2026 compared to 2017 we are a smaller, weaker country on multiple measures and the entire public sector doesn’t have the ability to change it. That’s not fun but it’s real. In 2017-2020 the government threw tens of billions at the public service and hired left right and centre and got hundreds and hundreds of workstreams going. 

Fate wasn’t fair to the results.

Hipkins’ small-bore approach to social democrat politics follows closely to Australia’s Labor government. The result is that the right are eating each other for breakfast. 

Chris Hipkins is not Jacinda Ardern. His small bore policies may not even reward Labour in 2026 vote share. 

But 2026 is the right time for the Chris Hipkins school of politics.