POLITICS/OPINION
Are we headed for a snap election? With the economic skies growing darker by the day, it must have crossed Hipkins’ mind that going to the polls sooner, rather than later, would leave Luxon and the National Party at an even bigger disadvantage
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For real? Certainly, there has been precious little indication of mercy in Hipkins’ ruthless, and ongoing, slaughter of Labour’s policy darlings. Indeed, the insouciance with which our new prime minister has dispatched these embarrassments is remarkable. It’s as if Jacinda Ardern’s entire premiership took place while Chippy was on holiday and that he returned just in time to see her car disappearing down the street and find the note she left sellotaped to the front door: “Fix the mess.” This he has done, setting Labour’s house in order with an endearing earnestness and absolutely no acknowledgment that he had actually played a major part in creating the chaos. In this respect, Hipkins reminds me of Nikita Khrushchev – the loyal servant of Joseph Stalin who participated either actively or passively in all his excesses only to present himself as the Soviet Union’s saviour by repudiating Stalin and all his excesses. But only after the tyrant was dead. The question many New Zealanders are asking themselves, “Is this guy for real?”, is intriguing. Hipkins, in his role as this country’s Education Minister, must surely rank as one of Labour’s most woke activists. The policies he set in place between 2017 and 2022 have struck many educationalists as little short of
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The sort of politics that equips a person for successfully navigating the perils of life in a political party, and then Parliament, is not the sort of politics in which Luxon is schooled
Photo: Hagen Hopkins / Stringer / Getty Images
“Chippy’s a killer.” The politico who vouchsafed this opinion of New Zealand’s new prime minister did not, of course, mean that Chris Hipkins was guilty of homicide – merely that he has an instinct for the political jugular. Labour’s second prime minister, Peter Fraser, had it. So much so that his great enemy, John A Lee, memorably likened Fraser’s smile to “moonlight flitting across a tombstone”. Sir Robert Muldoon had it – in spades. He called it “counter-punching”, but for many of his victims, like the hapless former cabinet minister Colin Moyle, it was more like a sucker-punch. Even Helen Clark had it. Press Gallery journalists lived in fear of her prime-ministerial “death stare”. My own first encounter with Hipkins certainly didn’t leave me with the impression I was dealing with a political milksop. It was November 2012, the Ellerslie Convention Centre in Auckland and Labour’s annual conference. I was loitering outside the auditorium when Hipkins sidled up to me and whispered conspiratorially: “Our problems aren’t external – they’re internal.” As I described it for The Dominion Post a few days later: “Chris Hipkins has one of those eternally youthful countenances which argue strongly against such ominous utterances. It’s as if such old words couldn’t possibly slither between such young teeth. And yet there he was before me, speaking darkly about the enemy within.” The 2012 conference is best remembered for David Cunliffe’s refusal to rule out a run at the Labour leadership, then held by the luckless David Shearer. But it was also the conference at which the rules governing the election of Labour leaders were finalised. When this process failed to take the
shape desired by the “Clarkist” faction (led by Grant Robertson, Jacinda Ardern and Chris Hipkins), all hell broke loose on the conference floor. The image of a furious Hipkins at the microphone, spitting out his fury at the errant delegates, is one I shall never forget. So, killer instinct? Yep, I reckon.
Chris Hipkins
Photo: Phil Walter /Staff / Getty Images
Chris Trotter
Christopher Luxon