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Labour Would Not Support Te Tiriti Commissioner With Veto Right - Hipkins
The Labour Party will not support Te Pāti Māori's call for the establishment of a parliamentary commissioner for Te Tiriti with the ability to veto parliamentary decisions, Chris Hipkins told RNZ.
Hipkins will be among politicians welcomed onto the Treaty Grounds later on Wednesday, although the prime minister will be absent, opting to commemorate Waitangi Day with Ngāi Tahu in Akaroa tomorrow instead.
Chris Hipkins told Morning Report that while tensions are part of Waitangi Day commemorations, celebrating common ground is too.
"I'm expecting a reasonably positive day .... I suspect there'll be some robust discussion at the pōwhiri, as there is year after year. But I don't think that's going to define, ultimately, the experience here at Waitangi. Overall I think the vibe here's a positive one, I think people are coming together, they're celebrating the best of Aotearoa.
"My message will be we can all move forward as a country - that doesn't mean we all have to be the same, it doesn't mean we all have to think the same - but we can find common ground. We can move the country forward together when we're focussed on creating greater prosperity for everybody who lives here."
Would Labour support Te Pāti Māori's proposal for a Te Tiriti commissioner?
Hipkins said he does not agree with Te Pāti Māori's call for the creation of a Parliamentary Commissioner for Te Tiriti: "Not in the way they've defined it" - despite Te Pāti Māori indicating it could be crucial for them in forming any future coalition deals.
"The Labour Party wouldn't support a parliamentary commissioner with a veto that would allow them to overturn rules made, or laws made by the parliament," Hipkins said.
"I don't think that we should be creating a body that has a veto right that can overturn laws created by the Parliament. Parliament has stopped short, for example, of allowing the Supreme Court of New Zealand to overturn laws - so no-one else can overturn a law that's passed by the New Zealand parliament - I don't think we should be creating a commissioner that could do that. But we're open to how we can make sure that there are better checks and balances within our constitutional framework.
"I also think the Māori Party need to think carefully about whether creating a parliamentary commissioner for the treaty would actually undermine the Waitangi Tribunal, who are being severely undermined by this government, and actually have a pretty proud track record of upholding the Treaty - so I think there's a lot of things that we actually need to think about there.
"Ultimately we're not going to support a veto over decisions by the democratically elected government, and we're not going to support them in this context - we're not going to support them in David Seymour's Regulatory Standards Bill context - we see those as very similar issues - the regulations, the rules, created by a democratically elected government could be overturned based on private property rights - I don't think that would be a correct path for the parliament to take either."
US tariffs bad news for New Zealand - Hipkins
Hipkins said America's brewing trade war from new tariffs is not likely to be good for New Zealand.
"Tariffs generally disadvantage working people, they basically mean the cost of everything goes up and working people don't get compensated by that, and they don't get any advantage from that," Hipkins said.
"So I think this is potentially quite bad news for New Zealand as an exporting country. It'll hurt working New Zealanders, it'll mean that it potentially compromises the country's livelihood in the form of our exports, but it also means that potentially the price of everything will go up, so I think that's bad news for New Zealand."
Lowering the corporate tax rate would be counterproductive - Hipkins
Hipkins said he does not believe cutting company taxes would effectively drive economic prosperity in New Zealand.
Finance Minister Nicola Willis is looking at changing the 28 percent corporate tax rate, saying the OECD average is closer to 24 percent.
But overseas examples, like Kansas setting a 0 percent corporate tax rate, had proved that did not improve the economy, Hipkins said.
"We should always look at how we can be more competitive as a country - let's look at things like R and D - we spend a fraction of what other comparable countries spend on R and D ... let's look to see how we can grow our exports - trade deals are a really important part of that, some of our biggest trade deals have been signed under Labour governments..."
RNZ
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