Labour kicks off party congress to showcase Hipkins ahead of election

Hundreds of Labour’s faithful are descending on Wellington this weekend for the party’s congress.

Held in election years, the Labour congress will have about 400 delegates meeting in the lead-up to the election.

Labour will be looking to lay out the choice for New Zealanders in October – and they’ll be wanting to do it quickly after National received a post-Budget boost in the latest political poll, pulling in enough support for a National and ACT government.

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It’ll also try to differentiate between the leaders – trying to sell Chippy to the public by laying out who he is and his motivations.

Hipkins will make his address on Sunday. The song that leaders walk out to is significant as it is meant to raise the energy of the audience and set the mood for the speech.

Former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was a fan of walking out to Shapeshifter entrances, while Hipkins previously told RNZ he was a “kind of a Dave Dobbyn, Finn brothers, Goldenhorse type of Kiwi”.

The party is rolling out the senior MPs on Saturday, with Deputy Prime Minister Carmel Sepuloni and Finance Minister Grant Robertson among those painting the picture of Labour’s election campaign and what another term could look like.

Sepuloni is also expected to attack the National-ACT bloc’s superannuation policies in her speech, drawing contrast with Labour’s policy to keep it the same.

It will follow rough calculations of what Labour claims Kiwis could lose under its opponent’s policies: Almost $100,000 in Government superannuation contributions by retirement, for a 30-year-old earning $78,527 a year, and accounting for compound interest.

The figure assumes National would agree to ACT’s policy to trim Government contributions, and that National would hike the retirement age to 67-years-old. It also doesn’t account for wage inflation, or for National and ACT’s other policies, such as tax cuts.

National’s policy in 2020 was also to progressively raise the age of superannuation eligibility to 67 from 2037.

National leader Christopher Luxon told RNZ in November the policy “was the right thing to do, economically”.

“We have a rising cost of that system and every decade people live one and a bit years longer, and many other countries have already moved to 67”.

Labour would also be showcasing new candidates such as Mr Whippy co-owner and United Nations climate leader George Hampton.