YouSaid · the spoken record

Chris Hipkins

lines on the record: 47
first: 2023-09-24
most recent: 2023-09-24
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“And it just gave everybody something to laugh about. And it sort of broke the tension, I think, in a way. I got messages from people saying, this is really tough, but we really needed that. You know, we really needed something just to have a good laugh about. And so I was willing to just own that. It wasn't intentional, but it still haunts me where I go. You know, when I go into schools now, campaigning as prime minister, I still get kids yelling out from me across the playground, spread your legs. And I don't think that's ever going to leave me.”
2023-09-24 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 37. Chris Hipkins, New Zealand PM: Working with Xi Jinping, fighting to stay in power, and zero covid's double-edged sword · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“With a photograph of me and spread your legs, not the virus, I think was the phrase that she put on it. And so I went down to one of those one o'clock briefings a week later and I took the mug with me and I drunk water from it in the middle of the press conference. And this meme about spreading your legs, not the virus just continued for the next few months. But I think it actually came at one of those really difficult points in the response where everyone was kind of getting to the point where they were a bit over it. We were asking them to stay home because we were in a lockdown period.”
2023-09-24 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 37. Chris Hipkins, New Zealand PM: Working with Xi Jinping, fighting to stay in power, and zero covid's double-edged sword · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's right. I was looking for the phrase stretch your legs, but I said spread your legs instead. And instantly, I didn't really realize what I'd said right at the moment, but I saw there was sniggering amongst the journalists, and I could feel my phone in my pocket vibrating furiously. And I thought, what on earth, what has happened? And it took me a few minutes to figure out what had happened. And then I just decided through the COVID-19 period, you know, when you're making these huge decisions, inevitably you're going to make a mistake. And sometimes that can be humorous and sometimes it can be more serious. But I made the decision that part of preserving public confidence was to own whatever mistakes you made. If something didn't go well, you should just stand up and you should say, I've made a mistake or this hasn't gone according to plan. So I decided to embrace that. I got back to my office to find that there was memes just circulating wildly. And a woman made some coffee mugs.”
2023-09-24 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 37. Chris Hipkins, New Zealand PM: Working with Xi Jinping, fighting to stay in power, and zero covid's double-edged sword · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was one of those moments we were doing a one o'clock briefing every afternoon that was broadcast live on television. And it was the most watched show in New Zealand for a period of time. It was being live streamed. It was on TV. Literally the country would stop at one o'clock to watch the COVID-19 briefing. And I was trying to, there was a question about social distancing and when you had to do it and so on. And I was trying to sort of say that, you know, if you lived in a built-up area when you went outside, you know, it could be difficult to distance from other people.”
2023-09-24 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 37. Chris Hipkins, New Zealand PM: Working with Xi Jinping, fighting to stay in power, and zero covid's double-edged sword · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think one of the major threats to democracy internationally is the rise of expectation caused by unrealistic campaigning that then ultimately disappoints and therefore leads to a growing disillusionment in the institutions of democracy and the institutions of government. And so I've tried to be realistic in the commitments that I've put forward to people. And maybe I've actually gone too far to that extent. And maybe we do need to do a bit more of the inspirational part of it as well. But I think that there is a real risk that if you elevate expectations and then fail to meet them, that actually you don't just undermine confidence in yourself, but you actually undermine confidence in the institutions as a whole.”
2023-09-24 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 37. Chris Hipkins, New Zealand PM: Working with Xi Jinping, fighting to stay in power, and zero covid's double-edged sword · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I do have my extended family. I'm very fortunate that my parents continue to help a lot with the raising of my own children given the prolonged absences that I have. And I've got some extended family, my brother and sister-in-law and their kids are great. So I've got a small group, a small core group of friends who, again, keep largely out of the public limelight. But when I feel the need to just be me and to just completely disconnect from politics, I've got a small group of very trusted people who I can do that with. And that is, I guess, a bit of a substitute for having a person at home who I can go and vent off about the day to.”
2023-09-24 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 37. Chris Hipkins, New Zealand PM: Working with Xi Jinping, fighting to stay in power, and zero covid's double-edged sword · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, by keeping them out of the public domain, you actually shelter them from that, and then that actually is one less thing that you have to worry about. Whereas if your family's being picked apart, I think that would be incredibly distracting because you would find yourself immersed in that. And so by not having my family in the public limelight, I've been able to protect them from that.”
2023-09-24 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 37. Chris Hipkins, New Zealand PM: Working with Xi Jinping, fighting to stay in power, and zero covid's double-edged sword · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's very challenging, but I started off in politics as a single young backbench EMP and I looked at the scrutiny that members families were getting, MP's families were getting where they were in the public spotlight. Then I made the decision at that point that if I was fortunate enough to acquire a relationship and have a family, that I would not subject my family to that. And so that's been a rule that I've tried to adhere to the whole way through. Because once you put your family into the public domain, you can't take them back out again when it's no longer convenient. And so if you hold to that rule, then actually it's helpful because having your family in the public domain where your family is being scrutinized, I imagine is also incredibly stressful.”
2023-09-24 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 37. Chris Hipkins, New Zealand PM: Working with Xi Jinping, fighting to stay in power, and zero covid's double-edged sword · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To know that we've also got a plan for climate change and that we're committed to lifting children out of poverty. We've done that every year that we've been in government. But I think we're just kind of at a point in the cycle where I think people's bandwidth for some of the bigger picture issues. In the current economic cycle is perhaps more limited. They want to know that we're focused on getting the basics right as well.”
2023-09-24 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 37. Chris Hipkins, New Zealand PM: Working with Xi Jinping, fighting to stay in power, and zero covid's double-edged sword · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think debates on these things do tend to go in cycles. I mean, we've had a focus over the last six years where climate, child poverty, some of those big decisions have very much been front and center of political dialogue in New Zealand. If I look at what we've been able to achieve over the last six years, for example, we've actually reduced our carbon emissions for three years running now. And in the last quarter of last year, we had the largest reduction on record. So we've made a lot of progress. And I think one of the reasons you'll find the debate in New Zealand sort of returning to some of those traditional things around health, around education, around public services, around taxation is because we haven't actually been talking about those things as much in the last few years. And so there's a certain cycle to it where people actually want to know that we're still focused on sort of the back to basics, if you like. That's not to say, though, that they don't want...”
2023-09-24 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 37. Chris Hipkins, New Zealand PM: Working with Xi Jinping, fighting to stay in power, and zero covid's double-edged sword · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Kind of sort of apathetic Republican Malays, where I think everybody would say, Yeah, in time, we'd like to see New Zealand being more independent, but no one's really in a rush to do it.”
2023-09-24 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 37. Chris Hipkins, New Zealand PM: Working with Xi Jinping, fighting to stay in power, and zero covid's double-edged sword · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'd probably describe myself these days as an apathetic Republican. We actually have a system of government that works quite well for New Zealand. And the king or the queen previously is the figure head of state for New Zealand. In reality, the day-to-day business of the head of state in New Zealand is conducted by the Governor-General. And it's a very, very simple system. We only have one House of Parliament, so we don't have an upper house. And therefore the process of government's actually very simple. Whereas I think where Republicanism kind of becomes challenging for New Zealanders is when you start to talk about, well, if not the monarch is the head of state, then what? And do you have an elected president? Do you have, you know, what kind of constitutional change would need to sit underneath that? And no one can really agree on what that should look like. And so we end up with this.”
2023-09-24 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 37. Chris Hipkins, New Zealand PM: Working with Xi Jinping, fighting to stay in power, and zero covid's double-edged sword · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Ironically, as Prime Minister, actually, you get a little bit more space to do that sometimes because as a minister, you're involved in a lot of day-to-day decision making, you're processing submissions or briefings from departments and so on. Whereas as Prime Minister, you do get the opportunity to elevate yourself a little bit higher above some of that. But I guess there's new distractions that emerge on a day-to-day basis. I talked about the ceremonial nature of the job, and that actually does consume a lot of your time, but you can create more space for yourself to have that thinking time. And that's something that I've been very conscious of the need to do. I like to read things. I like to talk to people, and then I like to wherever I can, have a bit of time for reflection. And so, you know, doing the reading and the conversations and then going for a nice long walk with the dog on the beach, for example, just by myself where I can.”
2023-09-24 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 37. Chris Hipkins, New Zealand PM: Working with Xi Jinping, fighting to stay in power, and zero covid's double-edged sword · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Valad as yours, even if it's entirely different to your own. And I think that's actually really important in politics, and that's a value that I got from my parents. The other, I think, value that I got from them was a generosity. My mother used to quote her own father. He had a saying when it came to money that it's made round to go round. And again, I think it comes back to that notion that if you're doing well, you actually have a responsibility to share the benefits of that. And so I try and do the same.”
2023-09-24 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 37. Chris Hipkins, New Zealand PM: Working with Xi Jinping, fighting to stay in power, and zero covid's double-edged sword · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I talked about, we were talking earlier on about the need for inner resilience. And actually, one of the things that my parents equipped both my brother and I with, which I'm forever grateful for, is the notion that it's easy to see people who have more than you. It's much, much harder to see people who have less than you. And if you can find ways in your life to recognize the advantages that you have and in the case of politicians, the privileges that you have, and actually understand them and recognize them, it gives you a greater degree of perspective when you are challenged on things. And I got that from my parents, that real value of understanding that just because you have a lived experience of whatever it is that you've had a lived experience of, that doesn't mean that everybody else has. And that they'll approach things from an entirely different viewpoint, an entirely different perspective. And their perspective is just as”
2023-09-24 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 37. Chris Hipkins, New Zealand PM: Working with Xi Jinping, fighting to stay in power, and zero covid's double-edged sword · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of occupiers took over the front lawn of Parliament to protest a bunch of decisions that I was making as the minister responsible for the COVID-19 response because we had all these anti-vaxes basically setting up camp on the forecourt of parliament and the police were reluctant to do anything because of the case law that was established by the protests that I had been involved with some decades earlier than that. So I found myself on the other side of history and I don't think anyone envisaged the idea that you should be able to live on the forecourt of parliament as those occupiers were going to do. But you should certainly be able to vocally express yourself and if you can't do that on the forecourt of the people's house then where on earth could you?”
2023-09-24 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 37. Chris Hipkins, New Zealand PM: Working with Xi Jinping, fighting to stay in power, and zero covid's double-edged sword · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And although I was young and new to protest and new to politics, I was actually quite outraged about the idea that by doing nothing more than standing on the grounds of parliament and making a little bit of noise and exercising your right to free speech, I was outraged at the idea that the speaker could issue a trespartis notice and have you all carted away by the police. And so the police said, well, you can leave now or we're going to arrest you. And I was one of the, I was sufficiently outraged that I was willing to allow myself to be arrested. And we then went through a sort of 10, 12 year period of fighting that through the courts. And we actually got a ruling out of the courts in the end that the grounds of parliament are the place where citizens should be able to come and exercise their right to free speech. And they should not be trespassed in the process of doing that. Now, that created an interesting dynamic at the beginning of last year when a bunch of...”
2023-09-24 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 37. Chris Hipkins, New Zealand PM: Working with Xi Jinping, fighting to stay in power, and zero covid's double-edged sword · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Actually, Alistair, I could blame you and Tony Blair, at least in part for that, because I watched a new dawn has arrived, has it not? And felt so sufficiently inspired by that that I felt the need to get more politically involved. Right. But it was a student protest and it was a degree of self-interest, actually. It was about a student protest about the increase in student fees and I was sufficiently outraged about the fact that our fees were going up so exponentially that I took part in the student protest. And it was from the university to the grounds of parliament. And we were on the grounds of parliament when the speaker of the house decided that he'd had enough and issued a trespass notice against us.”
2023-09-24 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 37. Chris Hipkins, New Zealand PM: Working with Xi Jinping, fighting to stay in power, and zero covid's double-edged sword · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is a challenge for the rest of the world, and New Zealand has been a party to calling out poor behaviour when it comes to coercion, when it comes to espionage, and will continue to do that. I think it is a challenge where there's a significant amount at stake. And I think one of the things that many countries around the world, New Zealand included, will be very mindful of is the potential for a great decoupling and a great polarisation of the international geopolitical environment. I think I don't think it would be in the world's best interests for countries to end up dividing effectively into two groupings. The sort of the liberal democracies on one side and all of the others on the other side. So I think that navigating our way through what is a complex web of relationships is going to continue to be a challenge in the coming decade or two, because I don't think the...”
2023-09-24 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 37. Chris Hipkins, New Zealand PM: Working with Xi Jinping, fighting to stay in power, and zero covid's double-edged sword · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the whole dynamic in New Zealand has changed a lot. And I'm really proud of the work that we have done to sort of write some of those historic wrongs, but that doesn't mean that there aren't still big challenges ahead of us. We've got huge challenges in the health and education space, for example. Our Maori population don't get the same health outcomes as the rest of New Zealand. They don't live as long. They're more subject to a whole variety of poor health outcomes. And their education, the levels of educational achievement amongst our M ⁇ ori population aren't what they are for the rest of the population. So we've still got a lot of work to do, but I think that we're making progress.”
2023-09-24 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 37. Chris Hipkins, New Zealand PM: Working with Xi Jinping, fighting to stay in power, and zero covid's double-edged sword · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't really know what's happened in Australia. I guess speaking from again from the New Zealand viewpoint, the Maori population in New Zealand's rapidly growing. So having been through a period where the Maori population relative to every other population growth was declining. In fact, now it's growing quite rapidly. It's one of the fastest growing segments of our population. The other thing I guess that's changed a lot in the last 30 or 40 years through what we call the treaty settlements process. So the correction of historic wrongdoings, there was some recompense for historic wrongdoings, only ultimately a fraction of what was taken in modern terms. But it's created quite an indigenous economy now. So Maori, a quite big, big traders, you know, some of our big exporters are Maori businesses. And so I think that's just changed the dynamic. It's changed the nature of the relationship.”
2023-09-24 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 37. Chris Hipkins, New Zealand PM: Working with Xi Jinping, fighting to stay in power, and zero covid's double-edged sword · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Some of the things that they're grappling with at the moment were conversations we were having 40 or 50 years ago around how do you actually give Maori greater recognition within the system of government. Those are things that I think we've already done.”
2023-09-24 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 37. Chris Hipkins, New Zealand PM: Working with Xi Jinping, fighting to stay in power, and zero covid's double-edged sword · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The camel is my deputy prime minister, is a mix of Samoan and Togen. And the Labor Party deputy leader Kelvin Davis is Maori from Napui, which is a northern Iwi indigenous in New Zealand. We've been on a long journey, I think, as a country in terms of reconciling some of the past rogs in the relationship between the Crown and Maori, which has included the suppression of M ⁇ ori culture and identity for quite a significant period of time, the confiscation of land, and even to the point where children were subject to corporal punishment if they spoke their native language in school, for example. So we've been on a journey for the last 30, 40 years through my lifetime of recognizing some of those historic wrongs and attempting to put those right. That puts us in a different position to Australia, I think, where”
2023-09-24 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 37. Chris Hipkins, New Zealand PM: Working with Xi Jinping, fighting to stay in power, and zero covid's double-edged sword · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, clearly our neighbours across the Tasman are probably our most important relationship. Australia is our only ally in these post-Anzas era that we live in. Australia is incredibly important to New Zealand and our relationships in the Pacific are incredibly important to New Zealand. There's a huge Pacific population living in New Zealand. And we've got a responsibility to support countries in our own region and our own backyard, so to speak. But other relationships, the US, the UK and Europe are actually incredibly important to New Zealand as well. China's economically very important relationship to New Zealand, but there is also, I think, an awareness amongst New Zealand exporters of the importance of market diversification. And I think we're going to have to see more emphasis on that in coming years.”
2023-09-24 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 37. Chris Hipkins, New Zealand PM: Working with Xi Jinping, fighting to stay in power, and zero covid's double-edged sword · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Our traditional security arrangements put us at odds with China on a fairly regular basis. And so what we found is a country. And so where we disagree, we say we disagree, and we're consistent in that. I think where it gets more difficult is if we change position on things. I think the Chinese government understands where New Zealand stands. And as long as we're consistent in that, we found that we've been able to have a good constructive relationship.”
2023-09-24 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 37. Chris Hipkins, New Zealand PM: Working with Xi Jinping, fighting to stay in power, and zero covid's double-edged sword · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“New Zealand relationship with China is incredibly important from a trade perspective as a small trading nation. China's our biggest export market now. And so that's incredibly important to us economically. And the travel to China was quite fascinating in the sense that when you look at what businesses are doing on the ground and how different it is to trade in China versus other countries that we are more familiar with clearly New Zealand businesses have had to adapt to the different Chinese approach and that was certainly a real eye-opener for me to be able to see that up close. I think it's one of our most complex relationships. We navigate a path very carefully there in the sense that there are many areas where we can work with China particularly economically as a big export market for New Zealand. But there are always going to be areas where we disagree.”
2023-09-24 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 37. Chris Hipkins, New Zealand PM: Working with Xi Jinping, fighting to stay in power, and zero covid's double-edged sword · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's really hard to form a judgment. I just haven't spent enough time in the UK in recent times to really be able to form a judgment on the UK. I've always found the UK a pretty vibrant and resilient place. I am still somewhat skeptical about whether Brexit's going to deliver anything near the benefits that were promised by those who campaigned for it. And my gut feeling is it's still going to prove to be a costly exercise for the British people. But I'm not close enough to sort of domestic politics at the moment to kind of understand the dynamic.”
2023-09-24 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 37. Chris Hipkins, New Zealand PM: Working with Xi Jinping, fighting to stay in power, and zero covid's double-edged sword · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think in New Zealand we have two extremes. We have a very centralised system of central government and then a very fragmented local government that is probably far too fragmented for a country of only 5 million people. And so our experience of localization is a pretty patchy one. I think we probably need to find something if we wanted to devolve more responsibility. We'd probably need to find something that had a little more scale because some of our local authorities are so small that if you gave them additional responsibilities, I think they would really struggle to be able to fulfill them because they just wouldn't have the size and the scale to be able to do that.”
2023-09-24 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 37. Chris Hipkins, New Zealand PM: Working with Xi Jinping, fighting to stay in power, and zero covid's double-edged sword · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, no party commands a majority. You have to work with other parties to form government. And that probably slows things down a bit, which is why I think the three-year term is absolutely crazy. I think you get bad governance decisions from a three-year term. I think four years would be about right. I look at the UK's experience of five years and I think about where the current term of the UK parliament started and where it is now and I still can't quite believe the fact that you've still got a year to go before the British people will actually get a chance to have a say on that.”
2023-09-24 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 37. Chris Hipkins, New Zealand PM: Working with Xi Jinping, fighting to stay in power, and zero covid's double-edged sword · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Different to proportional representation. And it does give a greater range of voices in Parliament. But what it also does is it means that other than this very unusual circumstance that we have been in for the last three years post during the pandemic period, you don't have majority governments.”
2023-09-24 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 37. Chris Hipkins, New Zealand PM: Working with Xi Jinping, fighting to stay in power, and zero covid's double-edged sword · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. I mean, I think proportional representation has worked very well for New Zealand. If we look back over history, Labour governments often didn't actually get to be governments because of the way the old electoral system worked. So Labour would get more votes than the Conservatives, the National Party in this case in New Zealand, but wouldn't get enough seats in order to be able to form government. And so the National Party would govern despite the fact that they had effectively lost the popular vote under proportional representation, that doesn't tend to happen. You actually have to get out there and you've got to win the country rather than sort of stack electorates, which is what happened under the old system. So I think proportional representation has worked well for New Zealand. My first vote, the first election that I voted in, was in 1996, which was our first proportional representation election. So in terms of as a voter, I don't know any...”
2023-09-24 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 37. Chris Hipkins, New Zealand PM: Working with Xi Jinping, fighting to stay in power, and zero covid's double-edged sword · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I wouldn't necessarily say that maybe that's just an outsider's perspective because when I travel to the UK and I look at the civility of the way members of parliament approach each other outside of the parliamentary debating chamber, I often think the same way about UK politics and I sort of lament the fact that we don't have more of that in New Zealand. I think there are isolated patches of that. There are a few people on the other side of the chamber in New Zealand who I would happily sit down and have a meal with and talk about issues of the day or more to the point, not talk about issues of the day with and thoroughly enjoy that. But there aren't as many of those as I thought there might have been.”
2023-09-24 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 37. Chris Hipkins, New Zealand PM: Working with Xi Jinping, fighting to stay in power, and zero covid's double-edged sword · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And you have to be able to walk away from that and regather yourself. And if you can't find the inner wisdom to be able to do that, then actually I think politics is going to be a real struggle.”
2023-09-24 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 37. Chris Hipkins, New Zealand PM: Working with Xi Jinping, fighting to stay in power, and zero covid's double-edged sword · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I guess, you know, you have to have a strong inner resilience to survive in politics, I think. I didn't even know at that point that politics was really a thing. I mean, I kind of got interested in politics when I started at university. It wasn't something that I really wanted to do as a secondary school student. It was something that I discovered not long after finishing secondary school, actually. But I do think that that idea that, I mean, there was, I think the second thing in there that you mentioned, I'd remember that quote now, but I must go look it up. I'm quite proud of it, actually. But the second thing in there about being able to switch off is actually really important. As a passionate redhead who in my youth would have moments of losing my temper, I've learned to control that. And actually, that's really important in politics. You have to know your own limits and you have to know when something, whatever it is, is actually getting on top of you.”
2023-09-24 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 37. Chris Hipkins, New Zealand PM: Working with Xi Jinping, fighting to stay in power, and zero covid's double-edged sword · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That they're entirely different jobs. As a cabinet minister, you'd look at the Prime Minister and think, I could do that job. It's just like being a cabinet minister but with more responsibility. In reality, it's actually not. It's an entirely different job. The similarities between being a minister and being the prime minister are actually few and far between. I spoke to one of my predecessors in the job not long after taking it up and he said to me Being Prime Minister is 50% ceremonial and 50% making the decisions that no one else is willing to make. And it's actually not a bad characterization of it because there's an awful lot of just being out there and being the figurehead of the government selling the government's message, doing the things that a Prime Minister needs to do. But then almost every decision that lands on your desk, it's got there because no one else could or was willing to make that decision. And so naturally, it's all the tough stuff that ends up on the Prime Minister's desk.”
2023-09-24 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 37. Chris Hipkins, New Zealand PM: Working with Xi Jinping, fighting to stay in power, and zero covid's double-edged sword · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's a tradition in New Zealand very similar to the tradition in the UK where the outgoing Prime Minister goes off to visit the Governor General and tender their resignation and then 10 minutes later another car sweeps up the driveway with the new incumbent to be sworn in. And I was driving up the driveway to Government House, which is where the Governor-General lives in New Zealand. And I got a text message from Jacinda literally as we pulled into the driveway saying, tag you're it as she exited through the side door. The transition, I didn't get a lot of time for the transition actually because I took over on the 25th of January and on the 27th of January we had flooding in Auckland. And then two weeks after that we had a cyclone which devastated quite a large part of the east coast of the North Island. And so I had to go straight into leading through that. If I was to describe the difference between being a minister, being a cabinet minister, a senior cabinet minister and being prime minister, I would say.”
2023-09-24 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 37. Chris Hipkins, New Zealand PM: Working with Xi Jinping, fighting to stay in power, and zero covid's double-edged sword · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Perhaps if I draw on an analogy from the UK going back several generations, Winston Churchill won the war and then was deposed from office within a very short space of time after that. I think generally when populations have gone through a relatively traumatic experience like that, there's a natural inclination to want to move on quite quickly. I guess the campaign that we are running now is very much focused on the future, and it is based on moving on. We're not spending a lot of time talking about what we achieved during the COVID-19 response. But I do think that actually the experience of leading the country through a major event like that actually sets you up pretty well to lead the country through almost anything else that might get thrown our way.”
2023-09-24 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 37. Chris Hipkins, New Zealand PM: Working with Xi Jinping, fighting to stay in power, and zero covid's double-edged sword · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm not aiming to be like any of them, Alistair. I know exactly what you're getting to there. Not since the Second World War have we had a Prime Minister in New Zealand that's taken over Midway through a parliamentary term and gone on to win the next election. In five weeks time, I'm hoping to break that spell and do exactly that. It has been, I guess, a feature of New Zealand politics that prime ministers who take over Midway don't tend to fear very well in the next campaign.”
2023-09-24 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 37. Chris Hipkins, New Zealand PM: Working with Xi Jinping, fighting to stay in power, and zero covid's double-edged sword · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That for the next 18 months or so, we were able to have an elimination strategy in life continued as normal as long as you didn't want to have to cross the border. If you wanted to leave the country or enter the country, it was a lot more challenging. But for everybody else on a day-to-day basis, life felt exactly the same as it did before COVID-19 even existed.”
2023-09-24 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 37. Chris Hipkins, New Zealand PM: Working with Xi Jinping, fighting to stay in power, and zero covid's double-edged sword · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When we started the COVID-19 response, we were looking at countries like Italy in particular who had just been overwhelmed by COVID-19. And we started with a strategy of trying to flatten the curve. So it was all about buying time to allow the health system to catch up and to stop the spread of the virus. And that actually morphed into an elimination strategy because our flattening the curve strategy was so successful that we ended up with no COVID-19 in the community at all. And as a result of that, we then...”
2023-09-24 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 37. Chris Hipkins, New Zealand PM: Working with Xi Jinping, fighting to stay in power, and zero covid's double-edged sword · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Managing a country through something that is as unprecedented and as consequential as that. In politics, a lot of the decisions that you make, you get the verdict on them years down the track. When it comes to COVID-19, we were making decisions and we were getting the verdict to the very next day on whether the decision that we'd taken was going to work or not. And the decisions that we were taking were incredibly consequential.”
2023-09-24 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 37. Chris Hipkins, New Zealand PM: Working with Xi Jinping, fighting to stay in power, and zero covid's double-edged sword · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it was certainly very brutal for Jacinda in the sense that as a young charismatic, articulate woman. Were a number of people who struggled with that concept, and she was subject to. Far more scrutiny, far more vitriol than I've ever seen a male politician subjected to. And so I wouldn't, you know, I wasn't surprised that that over time wore her down. And I think. That it can be incredibly proud of her legacy as a leader and what she contributed to New Zealand. But in addition to just dealing with that, we also had the pandemic period, and I don't think we should underestimate the toll that that takes on leaders.”
2023-09-24 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 37. Chris Hipkins, New Zealand PM: Working with Xi Jinping, fighting to stay in power, and zero covid's double-edged sword · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The end of the day, when you go home at night time Have to be able to answer, in my view, two key questions. Did I do everything that I could today? Was what I was doing today consistent with my values. And if you can answer yes to both of those questions, then you have to accept it in politics. There's a number of other things that are outside of your control. And events shape things. There's a certain momentum that goes with campaigns that shape things. We try and shape momentum as much as we can. We have to accept that not all of that's within our control”
2023-09-24 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 37. Chris Hipkins, New Zealand PM: Working with Xi Jinping, fighting to stay in power, and zero covid's double-edged sword · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“People got through the pandemic, we got through the pandemic very successfully as a country. Result that we got in 2020, I think, was an endorsement of our approach to managing the pandemic. But we've got through that. And now I think everybody's suffering a little bit from. A post-traumatic stress when it comes to COVID-19. They don't want to talk about it, they don't want to think about it, they don't want to know about it, and they just want to kind of get on with life. But it still casts a bit of a shadow over this campaign. And so it's an interesting period. As I said, I've been involved in campaigns where we just knew we were going to lose. And I think the way that you get through those is you just have to focus, I guess, on why you're in politics. Make sure that what you're doing is true to the values that you believe in.”
2023-09-24 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 37. Chris Hipkins, New Zealand PM: Working with Xi Jinping, fighting to stay in power, and zero covid's double-edged sword · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Feel like momentum is with you, as you've known in the past, and when you feel like people are kind of, you know, talking you down, trying to do you down, and it's feeling like an uphill struggle. How do you cope with those? It's a really interesting campaign that we're involved in at the moment. I've certainly been involved in campaigns where we just knew we were going to lose pretty much from the time the balloon went up. And I've been involved in campaigns where we were pretty confident we were going to win. And 2020 was certainly an election campaign that we were feeling pretty confident about. In terms of this election, it feels like neither of those things. It's a very interesting campaign to be involved in. We're kind of dealing with that post-COVID-19 hangover, which I think a lot of the countries around the world are where.”
2023-09-24 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 37. Chris Hipkins, New Zealand PM: Working with Xi Jinping, fighting to stay in power, and zero covid's double-edged sword · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We're a mutual friend of ours, me and Chris, that is, called Darren Hughes. I think he's one of your closest friends. And he was trying to get Jacinda for a while while she was still Prime Minister. And then after she left, Chris, what's great about you doing this? You're right in the middle of an election campaign. So thank you very, very much for giving us some of your time. It was fantastic to be able to talk to you. We are, we've got five and a half weeks to go until polling day. It's a busy time over here in New Zealand, but it is great to be able to talk to you. Well, it's great to see you. Let's just kick off with the campaign because that's where you are. Now, Labour had an amazing success at the last election. absolute runaway. And now you look at the opinion polls and it's looking very, very tough for you. You've been involved in a lot of campaigns. Just tell us a little bit about the psychology of campaigning. One when you...”
2023-09-24 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 37. Chris Hipkins, New Zealand PM: Working with Xi Jinping, fighting to stay in power, and zero covid's double-edged sword · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Thanks for listening to the rest of his politics. Sign up to the Rest is Politics Plus to enjoy ad free listening, receive a weekly newsletter, join our members chat room again, early access to live show tickets. Just go to the restispolitics.com. That's the restispolitics.com.”
2023-09-24 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 37. Chris Hipkins, New Zealand PM: Working with Xi Jinping, fighting to stay in power, and zero covid's double-edged sword · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source