Labour has unveiled its 2026 campaign slogan: ‘Better starts now’.

Leader Chris Hipkins made the announcement at a suburban home in Christchurch after taking a tumble in the latest poll.

The party has been repeating ad nauseum its focus on “jobs, health, homes and the cost of living” for the coming election campaign.

The announcement follows the latest RNZ-Reid Research poll showing Opportunity in a kingmaker position, and Labour down 1.8 points to its lowest result since the election.

Hipkins’ preferred prime minister ratings also fell 2.6 points to 21.3 — leaving the opposition leader in the lead over National’s Christopher Luxon but the gap narrowing with Luxon falling just 0.1 points to 19.9 percent.

“Labour’s campaign obviously kicks up a gear today,” Hipkins told Midday Report. “We’ll have signs going up all over the country over the next two weeks and we’ve got more policy announcements to come.

“My message to Kiwis is pretty clear — better is possible, and better starts as soon as we change the government.”

National campaign manager Simeon Brown said the slog was “the closest thing to a confession we will ever get from Chris Hipkins, because with 10 weeks until the election, he had better start now”.

He added that Kiwis “do not need to imagine Labour’s version of better, because they have already lived it. Six years, $120 billion more debt, new taxes, a cost-of-living crisis, and mortgage rates through the roof.”

He claimed Labour was planning nine new taxes, which Hipkins dismissed as “lies”, saying the only new tax they would campaign on was a targeted capital gains tax.

“We’ve ruled out all of the other taxes that the National Party are putting in all of their advertising materials. And I think the fact that they now are into this post-truth era where they just make things up shows how increasingly desperate they’re looking.”

Labour on Sunday set out its fiscal strategy, promising a surplus in 2029/30 under the OBEGAL measure — the same timeframe as set out by the coalition’s debt track when using that measure.

“That is the measure that Bill English, Stephen Joyce, Grant Robertson, Michael Cullen, all of them used — what’s called the OBEGAL measure to track whether the government’s in surplus or in deficit,” Hipkins told Midday Report.

“We’re going back to that. Nicola Willis couldn’t achieve a surplus using that measure, so made-up her own. We’re not going to do that.”

Also on Sunday, National sought to differentiate itself from the left bloc by ruling out any new taxes as part of its election campaign.

However, that disappointed mayors and councils in Auckland and Queenstown Lakes, both of whom had signed regional deals with the government that included a commitment to investigate a bed tax — also called a bed-night levy or accommodation levy.

Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown has said the move has rendered the Auckland deal meaningless, while Destination Queenstown chief executive Mat Woods said calling it a “massive blow” would be an understatement.

The government had been set to sign the deal with Queenstown Lakes on the day of the caucus meeting where Luxon survived a second confidence vote, and it remains unsigned by the government.

Opportunities for Opportunity

Elsewhere in the interview on Midday Report, Hipkins would not rule out having Opportunity MPs, should they be elected, in a Labour-led government Cabinet.

“We’re leaving all of those options on the table in terms of what the makeup of a future government could look like. It doesn’t need to look as chaotic as the current government.”

But he said having Te Pāti Māori MPs in Cabinet was “unlikely”, citing the party’s recent internal struggles.

“They need to make sure that they’re focused on what they should be focused on rather than bickering amongst each other. And of course, we’re competing against them at this point. We want to win all seven of those Māori seats.”