{"id":547841,"date":"2026-07-28T12:40:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-28T12:40:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/547841\/"},"modified":"2026-07-28T12:40:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-28T12:40:12","slug":"hipkins-no-way-labour-will-support-opportunitys-tax-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/547841\/","title":{"rendered":"Hipkins: ‘No way’ Labour will support Opportunity’s tax policy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Labour Party leader Chris Hipkins says there is “no way” the party will support Opportunity’s tax policy, but will make a call on who he would be willing to work with closer to the election. <\/p>\n

Yesterday, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon appeared to rule out<\/a> working with Opportunity, and said National didn’t want to “do business” with anyone seeking to impose new taxes.<\/p>\n

Opportunity leader Qiulae Wong responded to Luxon\u2019s comments and said the party remained \u201cwilling to work with parties across the political spectrum\u201d.<\/p>\n

Speaking to Breakfast this morning, Hipkins said he \u201cwasn\u2019t sure\u201d Luxon intended to rule out working with Opportunity yesterday.<\/p>\n

\"Chris<\/p>\n

Chris Hipkins (Source: 1News)<\/p>\n

\u201cHe subsequently sort of dialled it back and then ultimately his office made the decision for him in confirming they wouldn\u2019t work with the Opportunity Party.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve said we\u2019re going to set that out after Parliament finishes before the election, who we can [work] with, who we can\u2019t work with. But I will be very clear, we don\u2019t support the Opportunity Party\u2019s tax proposal, there\u2019s no way we would support that.\u201d<\/p>\n

When asked if Hipkins would support Opportunity\u2019s policy<\/a> on universal basic income Hipkins said: \u201cThe two things are linked and we clearly don\u2019t support that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Opportunity’s tax policy includes a universal basic income of up to $370 per week, a land value tax of 1.75% on urban land and 0.5% on rural land, and compulsory KiwiSaver which would gradually rise to 6% both for employers and employees.<\/p>\n

Hipkins was then asked if Luxon was correct in suggesting Opportunity was more aligned with left leaning political parties rather than working with those on the right.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think they have a bit of an identity crisis, I\u2019m not sure they really know whether they\u2019re on the left or on the right. <\/p>\n

\u201cBut ultimately campaigns are getting underway parties are rolling out their policies, we\u2019re going to take a principled position around where we\u2019ve got common ground with other parties, we\u2019ll be really clear about that, but we\u2019ll also be really clear on where we don\u2019t have common ground, the things we won\u2019t support.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe won\u2019t support the tax policy put forward by Opportunity, we also won\u2019t support the wealth taxes, land taxes and other things put forward by the Greens either. We\u2019ve got one simple tax policy which is a simple targeted capital gains tax, that\u2019s as far as we\u2019re going to go.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hipkins added Labour would share more information about who it can and cannot work with before Parliament is dissolved on October 1. <\/p>\n

The morning’s headlines in 90 seconds, including a man\u2019s arrested for allegedly spying for New Zealand, and when to expect a fresh cold snap. (Source: 1News)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Labour Party leader Chris Hipkins says there is “no way” the party will support Opportunity’s tax policy, but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":547842,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,8028,43,135,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-547841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-labour-party","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547841","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=547841"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547841\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/547842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}