The LABOUR Party conference this weekend confirmed that the Labour leadership has no intention of abandoning the neoliberal orthodoxy. Instead, Labour will campaign next year merely as the party better able to manage the market economy. That is not an inspiring vision of transformation, but a lacklustre promise of technocratic stewardship. Hipkins offered nothing in his conference speech but a promise to 'build a stronger economy'. It is the politics of managerialism dressed up as pragmatism, and it leaves untouched the structures of inequality that have hollowed out New Zealand’s social fabric.
The most telling moment came in response to a trade union call for nationalising the energy industry. Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds dismissed the proposal with the line that a Labour government “could not say yes to everything.” This was not a serious engagement with the demand for public ownership, nor an acknowledgement of the crisis in energy affordability and climate responsibility. It was a reflexive defence of the status quo. By framing nationalisation as an unrealistic wish-list item, Labour signalled once again that it sees its role as managing neoliberalism, not challenging it.
This posture is unlikely to inspire the more than 800,000 people who no longer vote. These disengaged folk (including this writer) are not waiting for another party to promise smoother administration of market economics. They are waiting for a politics that speaks to our lived reality: the skyrocketing cost of living, stagnant wages, rising rents, privatised services, and the erosion of collective power. Labour’s refusal to break with neoliberalism means it cannot credibly claim to represent those who have been abandoned by the system. Instead, it will be the party of the already comfortable, offering incremental tweaks while inequality deepens.
Chris Hipkins’ centrism is out of step with the mood for real change. Across the world, movements are demanding public ownership of essential services, climate justice, and redistribution of wealth. In New Zealand, the appetite for transformation is clear in the growing frustration with housing unaffordability, the collapse of health services, and the profiteering of energy companies. Yet, Labour’s leadership insists on presenting itself as the safe pair of hands for the market economy. This is not safety—it is surrender. It is a refusal to confront the economic order that has produced crisis after crisis.
The irony is that Labour’s own history is rooted in the struggle for public ownership and collective provision. The party was born out of trade union militancy and the demand for a society organised around human need rather than profit. To hear its finance spokesperson dismiss nationalisation as a fantasy is to witness how far Labour has drifted from its founding principles. The party that once built state housing and nationalised key industries now recoils at the very idea of challenging private capital. It is a betrayal not only of its base but of its own legacy.
What Labour offers instead is a politics of reassurance: the promise that the market economy will continue, but with a kinder face. Chris Hipkins is Jacinda Ardern Mk2. Hipkins and his team present themselves as competent managers who can soften the edges of neoliberalism without ever questioning its foundations. But competence without courage is not enough. A politics that merely promises to manage inequality more efficiently is not a politics of hope. It is a politics of resignation and defeat, and it's a politics that will not mobilise the disillusioned or inspire the disengaged.
The conference should have been an opportunity to chart a bold course, to reconnect with the working class, and to offer a vision of economic democracy. Instead, it confirmed Labour’s retreat into continued centrism. The leadership’s refusal to embrace public ownership, redistribution, or structural change leaves the field open for cynicism and apathy. It tells voters that the only choice is between different managers of the same failing system. That is not democracy—it is technocracy, and it is precisely what has driven so many away from the ballot box.
If Labour continues down this path, it will not build the coalition needed to win transformative change. It may scrape together enough votes to govern, but it will govern without mandate, without enthusiasm, and without legitimacy among those who most need change. The 800,000 disengaged will remain disengaged, and the cycle of disillusionment will deepen. Labour’s centrism is not a bridge to the future—it is a cul-de-sac, a dead end that leads only to further alienation.
The lesson of this weekend’s conference is stark: Labour has chosen to campaign as the party of neoliberal continuity. It has decided to defend the market economy rather than challenge it. It has chosen centrism over courage, managerialism over transformation. In doing so, it has placed itself out of step with the mood for real change. The Labour Party conference told us that Labour will remain a party of the status quo, and the status quo is precisely what New Zealand cannot afford.
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