{"id":243162,"date":"2026-01-20T21:22:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-20T21:22:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/243162\/"},"modified":"2026-01-20T21:22:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-20T21:22:10","slug":"labour-leader-chris-hipkins-makes-first-speech-of-election-year-we-want-to-win-back-the-countrys-biggest-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/243162\/","title":{"rendered":"Labour leader Chris Hipkins makes first speech of election year: \u2018We want to win back the country\u2019s biggest city\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Government requires Labour\u2019s support for its trade deal with India, after coalition partner NZ First said it would vote against it<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Hipkins said the party had \u201ctried hard not to play politics around trade agreements in the past\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s certainly some things we\u2019ve asked for a more detailed briefing on … I think we do want to, as much as we can, try and keep this … a bipartisan issue.\u201d <\/p>\n

But he said he wanted to make sure the party knew what it was signing up for first.<\/p>\n

Instead of policy announcements or reshuffles, Hipkins said the retreat\u2019s agenda would be focused on election-year campaign plans.<\/p>\n

He said his MPs are feeling bullish and upbeat after ending 2025 on a high with some positive polling and the unveiling of several campaign policies. If elected, the party is promising all New Zealanders three free GP visits, funded by a capital gains tax<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe made some pretty big policy announcements at the end of last year, and that really is kicking off our process of setting out how we\u2019ll do things differently to the current Government.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd you\u2019ll see a lot more policies from Labour this year. It\u2019s election year.\u201d<\/p>\n

Labour\u2019s campaign strategy will of course include a focus on Auckland, where several of the party seats flipped to blue in 2023.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to win back to the country\u2019s biggest city,\u201d Hipkins said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re having our first meeting for the year in West Auckland. That\u2019s a clear signal to Auckland that we do recognise that we needed to win back support in Auckland and we\u2019ve been working hard on that over the last two years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although support in Auckland was \u201ccontinuing to increase\u201d, Hipkins said \u201cwe\u2019ve still got more work to do\u201d.<\/p>\n

The selection process for who will contest the Auckland electorates for Labour is underway.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve certainly got more up our sleeves that you\u2019ll hear about more in the coming months but … there will be a dedicated strategy around Auckland.\u201d <\/p>\n

Julia Gabel is a Wellington-based political reporter. She joined the Herald in 2020 and has most recently focused on data journalism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Government requires Labour\u2019s support for its trade deal with India, after coalition partner NZ First said it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":243163,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[17248,74,51,1863,6326,15497,3276,2199,13849,1887,142655,5903,142656,1888,13480,28636,6721,13489,5338,111,43,139,69,1118,4762,12229,312,13109,9345,1361,223,61,25809,4524,14638,3270,6027,379],"class_list":["post-243162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-17248","tag-after","tag-auckland","tag-back","tag-biggest","tag-blue","tag-chris","tag-city","tag-citys","tag-countrys","tag-dismal","tag-election","tag-electorates","tag-first","tag-hipkins","tag-included","tag-labour","tag-leader","tag-makes","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-party","tag-result","tag-says","tag-several","tag-speech","tag-that","tag-the","tag-to","tag-turning","tag-want","tag-wants","tag-we","tag-win","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243162\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}