Former Wellington mayor Andy Foster returns to NZ First | Sep 5 2023

The Labour leader said he’s happy for his party’s campaign to criticise and scrutinise the National Party, but would not endorse “personal” attacks.

An advert by the Council of Trade Unions targeting Christopher Luxon was plastered across the front page of the Herald yesterday morning, labelling him “out of touch”.

Chris Hipkins told reporters yesterday that he’s been the subject of attack ads across his time as prime minister and this ad was no different.

And today on RNZ, he said he was happy for Labour to continue scrutinising and at times criticising National’s vision for New Zealand. “If the National Party wants to be the government after the election you get scrutinised and you get criticised everyday… It’s not unhealthy,” Hipkins said. “Governments and those who seek to be government should be scrutinised, that’s democracy.”

As for the claims that this could be a negative election campaign, Hipkins said Luxon had called low income New Zealanders “bottom feeders” and went around the world calling New Zealand a “wet, whiny and negative country… I think New Zealanders can make their own judgements about who’s being negative”.

The National Party’s accused Labour of ditching the “be kind” mantra for “be nasty” with this particular ad, while Stuff’s Bridie Witton argued this morning that we could be in for the most negative election campaign ever. Hipkins told Newshub’s AM that Labour would be running a “clean” campaign. But, he added, “it’ll be a robust campaign”.

He wouldn’t endorse “personal attacks” such as those targeting an individual’s family, but was happy for the campaign to scrutinise promises by the opposition.

Meanwhile, a new Roy Morgan survey out this morning has support for Labour dropping even further – down to 24%. National was only in the early 30s, but with surging support for Act could comfortably form a government. Hipkins said Roy Morgan polls always fluctuated wildly and today only marked day two of the election campaign. “I think the numbers are going to shift around in the next six weeks”.