New Zealand Labour Party
Better starts now
Chris Hipkins wants cheaper health care, a $20 weekly bus-and-train cap, and a tax on investment property profits. Most people would not pay that tax.
Centre-left. Official opposition. Keep public services, cheaper doctors and buses, and a tax only on the profit from selling a rental. Not the family home. Most households will never pay it. Surplus by 2028/29, the same year as National. Day-to-day spending still ends a little higher.
What they want
- Three free doctor visits a year. Free prescriptions. Free cervical screening from October 2027, and cheaper maternity scans. The government has now said screening will be free from March 2027.
- $20 a week cap on buses and trains in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. $10 a week everywhere else. That is the most you pay. The fiscal plan takes that from about 1 percent of the road fund.
- Do not raise the fuel tax at the pump for a full term. The fiscal plan says that freeze is paid for. He would still scale new roads to fit.
- Make big airlines show the full fare, every fee included, before you book. An automatic refund if they cancel or change the flight a lot. Smaller airlines get fair access to gates and ground services.
- 28% tax on the profit when you sell a rental or commercial building. Not the family home, the farm, KiwiSaver, shares, a small business, or an inheritance. Most people will never pay it. Money goes to health.
- Will not add a levy on streaming, or bring back the high-emissions vehicle fee. They pulled a leftover member's bill from the ballot. Sepuloni says the only tax is the rental CGT. Keep MMP as it is. No new public vote on the voting system.
- Restore Treaty duties on school boards. Put climate change back in the Year 0-10 science and social science curriculums.
- Pause unfinished curriculum changes for a year. Let experts, not ministers, set the detail. Keep English and maths rolling.
- Give teachers the say on how a set daily block of reading, writing and maths fits the day. Those subjects stay.
- From Term 1 2028, bring lunches back to school kitchens, iwi and hapū, or local caterers. $5 a meal, and $6.50 for years 9 to 13. Same 1,014 schools and 244,400 students. Not an expansion.
- Restore the 43 rural school bus routes National cancelled, where a route can still come back. If it cannot, work with that community and the council on another way.
- Limit how many branded uniform items a school can require, allow plain clothes that still meet the rules, and publish what a uniform costs. That starts in Term 1 2028. They have not named a cap.
- Will not make Waitangi Tribunal recommendations binding.
- Help with solar, apprenticeships and small-business paperwork. Big firms must pay small invoices in 15 days. Drop the 20% instant write-off any firm can claim on new gear. Keep a $10,000 write-off for small firms. A target of 15% of government contracts for New Zealand small firms.
- Bring back Māori-led trades training. About $21 million a year after Budget 2027. Marae, iwi trusts and Māori providers design it. Jackson says up to 3000 people a year.
- Guarantee every graduate nurse a public job when they qualify. Double the hiring top-up for graduates who start in primary care.
- Surplus by 2028/29 on the old OBEGAL measure, not Willis's OBEGALx. Keep new day-to-day spending inside the $2.4 billion a year already set. Core spending falls to 30.4% of GDP by 2030/31, and stays under 33% once the rental tax is fully in. Net debt below 20% of GDP over time.
- Put the old equal-pay rules back in the first 100 days. From January 2027, an interim $4 an hour for about 65,000 care and support workers, about $2.5 billion over four years. Hipkins called it a stopgap. The plan does not price the other claims.
- Scrap the Ministry for Regulation. Reverse half of the extra public-service cuts planned for the next Budget, and all of the cuts planned after that. Cuts already made stay made.
- Let independent mechanics get the manuals and tools to fix a modern car. Make the watchdog report fuel prices every week, and give independent stations a fairer shot at supply.
- An independent Parliamentary Budget Office to cost every party's promises.
- Weigh the harm to public services before any more job cuts. Hipkins backed that check with the public service union. They are not committed to the Budget 2026 cuts.
- Give the Reserve Bank its dual job back: stable prices, and as many people in work as the economy can sustain. Put wellbeing reporting back in the Public Finance Act.
- Work with the Greens if they win. Will not take on a wealth tax or a land tax. Door is open to Opportunity after the vote. Senior Cabinet jobs for Te Pāti Māori are unlikely.
- Review the emissions trading scheme. They say the carbon price is too low. They have not named a new price.
- A new office to write AI rules, plus an online-safety regulator. Pay creators when AI uses their work. Big computer warehouses must pay their own way on power and water.
- Plan immigration around what housing, work and infrastructure can support. Make people wait longer before they can settle as residents.
- Let migrant workers leave a bad boss after three months. Keep a path to citizenship for children born here.
- Let people from Pacific Islands Forum countries visit on the same electronic travel pass other visitors use, for a short stay. Distinct from a two-year overstayer amnesty.
- Make employer KiwiSaver payments compulsory even if a worker pauses. Lift that employer rate over time. Workers can put in less when money is tight. Keep payments for parents on leave and for people still working after 65. No baby kick-start.
- Make it illegal for big firms with real market power to charge excessive prices on essentials, or to pay suppliers unfairly low. They would have to hand back extra profit.
- Force the two big grocery groups to run their warehouses separately from their shops. Smaller grocers could buy from either on fair terms. They would act now, not order another review. They still have not locked a shop-brand breakup.
- Get Kāinga Ora building social houses again. At least 6000 extra places over four years. Also repair more than 2000 schools and clear the hospital repair backlog, so tradies get hours.
- Write off 10% of leftover study debt if you stay here and finish. Balances of $2,000 or less go. People who already got a first year without fees miss out.
- A fair go law. Show every mandatory fee in the upfront price. Ban junk car insurance. Make subscriptions and gym memberships easy to cancel. Ban unfair exit fees on phone and internet plans. Announced 1 October 2026.
- A public register of paid lobbyists, and a stand-down so ministers cannot walk straight into those jobs.
- Limit urgent law-making to emergencies, fixing errors, budgets, and a signposted 100-day plan. Laws passed that way go back to a committee within six months. Publish ministers' diaries.
- Restore enrolment at the voting place. Let 16 and 17-year-olds vote in local elections. One person, one vote in those elections.
- Let payment firms start without becoming a full bank, and step in if the big banks block them. Keep the state-owned bank fully in public hands. Payments should work all day, every day, by 2030.
Things to watch
- Unions sit inside the party. Dairy Workers gave $100,000 and the Amalgamated Workers Union gave $50,000. Dairy Workers secretary Chris Flatt is Labour's Taupō candidate.
- McAnulty called random drug tests for people on a job benefit offensive. Labour still will not campaign on reversing the parental test for 18 and 19-year-olds.
- Hipkins says Labour will keep the state-owned bank fully in public hands, and step in if the big banks block smaller payment firms. Willis has said she would look again at local private investors.
- Labour says dropping the instant deduction on new gear saves $7.7 billion. Willis says keeping it costs $5.5 billion. Experts have not seen either set of workings.
- They would split grocery warehouses from shops now. They still have not locked a shop-brand breakup. Distinct from National's review-then-split, NZ First's split-now of the shop brands, and the Greens' public supermarket.
- They would limit branded school uniform items, allow plain clothes, and publish what a uniform costs, from Term 1 2028. They have not named a cap. ACT would cap state schools at three branded items.
What they promised, and what happened
They left office in 2023. These are the big 2017-23 misses, plus the tax line Hipkins drew then rewrote.
- KiwiBuild promised 100,000 affordable homes in 10 years. Kāinga Ora counted 2,335 completed. Hipkins later said the 2017 version was undeliverable.
- Auckland light rail was promised from the CBD toward the airport. No track was laid. This government cancelled it.
- Hipkins in 2023 said no wealth or capital gains tax under a government he leads. Labour's 2026 policy is 28% on the profit from selling a rental. The family home is still out.
- They signed two big Interislander ships. National cancelled iReX. The scrapped project still cost $671 million. New ships are due 2029.
- Hipkins ruled out a streaming levy. A leftover member's bill had to be pulled the next morning.
- Hipkins confirmed they would put climate change back in the Year 0-10 curriculums, after a day of mixed messages.
- On 21 September Hipkins locked today's landlord interest deductions. He had called those settings tax cuts for landlords. He said he would not give landlords an extra excuse to lift rents.
- In 2023 they went to the vote promising the next fuel-tax rise. On 27 August Hipkins pledged no rise for a full term. The 4 October fiscal plan says that freeze is paid for.
- Hipkins and Jackson confirmed they will not rebuild the Māori Health Authority, even after the Waitangi Tribunal on 25 September recommended revisiting a stand-alone one. They want to fund Māori providers directly instead.
Who pays
Raised $2.4 million in 2025. Unions gave about $335,000 in the 2023 election year. Named 2026 gifts over $20,000 add up to about $890,000. That is not a full-year total. An estate $219,000. Richard Hubbard $100,000. Dairy Workers Union $100,000. Amalgamated Workers Union $50,000. Phillip Mills $100,000.