Labour leader Chris Hipkins has trashed the government's priorities in the Budget, and said his party will work toward restoring pay equity (file photo). Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
Labour's leader has used his second speech in a series of regional conferences to attack the government's budget as a series of "strange and unnecessary decisions".
Addressing party faithful in Wellington on Saturday afternoon, Chris Hipkins said some of those decisions included scrapping the Dawn Raids reconciliation programme and axing a key part of the pest eradication programme Predator Free 2050.
As well as "spending $33 million on a boot camps policy that not only failed last time but is failing again right now, ending contracted emergency housing, and scrapping the Māori housing programme and stopping some families getting Best Start, which helps mums with new babies".
Hipkins said the coalition government had also cut funding for RNZ, "while funding the local journalism it railed against at the last campaign".
The reversal of 33 pay equity claims - netting the government $12.8 billion - was "unacceptable, and Labour will not stop fighting until pay equity is restored and respected," he said.
On Friday, Labour's finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds told RNZ's Morning Report the party would find the nearly $13 billion needed to reverse the law change.
Hipkins told RNZ after his speech that he could not say exactly what would be needed. A lot could change in two years - which is when Labour would be looking at its first budget, if it won the next election, he said.
"A number of those workforces are in collective bargaining. The government still haven't released the breakdown yet of how that $13 billion figure was even arrived at. So... we will reverse the changes and we'll find the money to do that. But we're not in a position to write a budget that wouldn't take effect for two years from now, today."
Labour's plans included rolling out new policies in the second half of the year, Hipkins said, but he was staying tight-lipped on the details:
"We'll be focused on jobs, health and homes, so there'll be more policies in those areas, and I've also said that we will be releasing our tax policy before the end of this year."
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