Labour leader Chris Hipkins admits his party’s Auckland light rail and KiwiBuild policies were “undeliverable” when proposed ahead of the 2017 election.

Hipkins, speaking to Newstalk ZB this morning, made the concession amid his reflections on the 2023 election campaign in which he believed Labour struggled to resonate with voters who had “decided it was time for a change”.

The Remutaka MP joined ZB host Kerre Woodham for an hour of discussion and talkback.

Woodham pressed Hipkins on Labour’s woeful result in the last election, receiving less than 27 per cent of the vote.

Hipkins accepted now was the time to rebuild and assess whether the policies Labour took to the election needed to be revised.

Woodham questioned whether Labour’s inability to implement some of its policies during its six years in government was a primary contributor to the party’s demise.

Hipkins then admitted not all of Labour policies as proposed ahead of the 2017 election were deliverable.

“You can’t always come in with delivery-ready policies in the way that I think we thought you could,” he said.

“Auckland light rail and KiwiBuild were massive commitments, and the reality is they were too ambitious to do from Opposition. We shouldn’t have gone into the campaign promising those two things.”

Labour leader Chris Hipkins told Newstalk ZB host Kerre Woodham his party needed to rebuild. Photo / Michael Craig

In 2017 under then-leader Jacinda Ardern, Labour promised to build light rail from the Auckland CBD to the airport within a decade. However, progress stalled and any recent work on developing light rail in Auckland had been scrapped by the current Coalition Government.

KiwiBuild promised 100,000 affordable homes across the country within 10 years, but that target had to be dropped as it was deemed overly ambitious.

“Light rail is not undeliverable, but the way it was proposed in 2017 was undeliverable and KiwiBuild, the 100,000 [homes] in the timeframes that they were talking about was also undeliverable.”

On the most recent election campaign, Hipkins argued it “didn’t really matter” what Labour campaigned on as people wanted change.

“That was a very difficult mood to shift.”

At the party’s recent caucus retreat, Hipkins said MPs would be discussing what tax policy platform Labour would run on in the 2026 election campaign after Hipkins’ proposal to strip GST off fresh fruit and vegetables failed to impress voters.

MPs David Parker and Grant Robertson, who last night gave his valedictory speech, had worked up a wealth tax proposal ahead of the election but this was shot down by Hipkins.

Just this week, Hipkins conceded the Labour Government should have done more to address public concerns about unruly state housing tenants as the current Government seeks to use the threat of eviction to improve behaviour.

He referenced the matter this morning, saying he thought Kāinga Ora was “too slow” to relocate people as an alternative option to eviction.

Adam Pearse is a political reporter in the NZ Herald Press Gallery team, based at Parliament. He has worked for NZME since 2018, covering sport and health for the Northern Advocate in Whangārei before moving to the NZ Herald in Auckland, covering Covid-19 and crime.