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Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has unloaded on his opposite number Labour leader Chris Hipkins for having no substantive policy to support people struggling with the cost of living. 

“They put us in this mess - I’m not taking any lectures from frickin’ Chris Hipkins and the Labour Party on not supporting low and middle income New Zealanders because that is what this Government is doing,” Luxon said today on his way to his weekly caucus meeting. 

It comes as Finance Minister Nicola Willis rounded on Labour’s finance spokeswoman Barbara Edmonds for not being able to name a single policy Labour had to help with the cost of living, despite convening a media stand-up to attack the Government for continued high inflation. 

Stats NZ figures on Monday showed inflation, measured by CPI was 2.7% in the year to June. 

The uptick is expected to be temporary enough that the Reserve Bank is set to continue cutting the Official Cash Rate next month. 

But that has not stopped inflation becoming a political problem, with Hipkins and Edmonds rounding on the Government for high prices this week. 

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon attacked Labour leader Chris Hipkins on Tuesday. Photo / Mark Mitchell 

Luxon said the Government cared about people on low and middle incomes and helped those people through tax relief using fiscal policy to help the Reserve Bank fight inflation. 

Annual inflation in the past full quarter before the change of government was 5.6%. 

Luxon said Labour’s outrage over high prices was “crocodile tears”. 

“This is the party that didn’t support tax relief - moving tax thresholds. That’s not deeply ideological, it helps low and middle income New Zealanders.” 

Luxon listed his Government’s cost of living measures. 

“They didn’t support FamilyBoost, they didn’t support Working for Families credits, they don’t talk about helping construction workers by getting on board and u-turning on Fast Track [which Labour opposed, although not for supermarkets], they’ve got a gazillion positions on PPPs [Public-Private Partnerships], they’re all over the place. 

“They have no idea what to do - they put us in this mess, we are cleaning up the mess,” Luxon said. 

Labour leader Chris Hipkins hit back. Photo / Mark Mitchell 

While Labour opposed these changes in Parliament, it took to the election its own early childhood education policy, extending 20 hours free care to children under 2 years old. It also proposed a more generous Working for Families policy. 

National copied that policy on the campaign trial, but watered it down during coalition negotiations, costing some families $38 a week. 

Changes made in the 2025 Budget reduced some of this loss. 

Hipkins hit back at Luxon, noting that figures obtained by Labour and published on Tuesday showed the full $75 FamilyBoost tax credit was only claimed by a tiny number of households. 

This means few, if any, households are getting the $252 a fortnight National promised some would get from its tax plan. The Government subsequently changed settings of the policy, meaning more people will start getting more money from it. Willis said about 16,000 more families will get the tax credit. 

Hipkins defends lack of policy 

Hipkins defended Labour’s light policy slate saying “we’re not even close to an election at the moment”. 

“Unlike [Luxon], when we go into an election next year, I will make sure the policies that we have add up and we can actually deliver on them. They didn’t actually do that and now they are suffering - and New Zealanders are suffering as a result,” Hipkins said. 

He said one of the reasons Labour was waiting to unveil policy is the Government has one more budget to deliver. That budget will detail how much money Labour would have to spend if it took over in 2026. 

“Before we come out with significant policies that are going to cost money for example, we want to see what the shape of the Government’s books are,” Hipkins said. 

“I want to know we can afford what we promise,” he said. 

Hipkins would not say whether the party would have any policy before the Tāmaki Makaurau by-election in September. 

He has promised a tax policy before the end of the year. 

Willis also attacked Labour’s “crocodile tears” on the cost of living. 

Finance Minister Nicola Willis attacked Labour for its lack of policy. Photo / Mark Mitchell 

Willis took to social media on Monday to note Edmonds was unable to list any cost of living policies. 

“I thought it was the most telling thing ever when Barbara Edmonds came down here to do a stand-up lashing us for a 2.7% inflation rate... when asked what specific policy she had to address the cost of living she said ‘none’ - none, none, none. 

“Now that is to me, the boy crying wolf,” Willis said. 

In the stand-up, Edmonds gave no policy suggestions, she did not literally answer “none”. 

Willis said Labour was gripped by “shallow attack politics which doesn’t put bread on anyone’s table”. 

She alleged Labour was “bereft of ideas” and “internally divided on what the way forward for New Zealanders is. 

How much policy is normal 

In December 2022, the Leader of the Opposition was asked about his own lack of policy and gave a very similar answer to the one Hipkins gave on Tuesday. 

“Look, we are one year out from an election ... rest assured, we will have policy,” the leader said. 

The leader of the opposition back then was Luxon himself. 

As political campaigning shifts to embrace “small target” strategies, releasing lots of policy before an election campaign has become less and less common. 

Assuming the current Parliament runs a roughly full term and there is an election at the end of next year, we are about halfway through the term. 

At this point in the last Parliament, National had released a tax policy - however, it was careful not to promise that this would be the policy it would take to the election. 

That policy, published just prior to the 2022 Budget - the middle-Budget in Labour’s second term - called on the Government to increase tax thresholds to deliver tax cuts to people to compensate for the higher taxes they were paying because of inflation. 

Later that year, National confirmed that this particular policy was only a suggestion for the 2022 Budget, but the party committed that its final tax policy would deliver at least the same level of tax cuts as the earlier plan. 

The final tax package was not announced until the end of August 2023 - less than two months before the October election. 

National had a handful of policy promises by this stage in the last cycle, including lifting the super age and reintroducing boot camps. 

Labour has also made some promises, including repealing the Three Strikes law, the future Regulatory Standards Act and reinstating the old Pay Equity Scheme in some form. 

That last commitment will come with a roughly $13 billion price tag, which will need to be paid for with some kind of tax increase, spending cut, or borrowing. National is keen to pin Labour down on just what combination of those three things Labour is planning. 

The Simon Bridges-led National Party took a different approach. 

In its middle year, it released several “discussion documents” to members and the public testing potential policy ideas and giving a sense of where the party was headed. 

These discussion documents were meant to form the basis of National’s 2020 election policy platform, however, that changed when the party imploded. 

Hipkins said the party was working on policy internally, but he would not say anything more. 

“We haven’t released discussion documents but that is the work we have been doing,” Hipkins said. 

“We’ve got to make sure all the pieces of our policy fit together,” he said.