Brown intrigued by Hipkins’ stated policy changes

Jonathan Leask

Ashburton Mayor Neil Brown is encouraged to hear the change in prime minister might see some significant policy tweaks.

But he, like most of us, is playing the waiting game to see what those changes will be.

Incoming prime minister Chris Hipkins has signalled there will be significant policy changes in the weeks ahead as he looks at a reprioritisation of the work programme to focus on tackling the “inflation pandemic”.

Hipkins and his new deputy Carmel Sepuloni take the reins tomorrow following Jacinda Ardern’s sudden announcement last week she was standing down after a challenging five years as prime minister.

Hipkins said everything will be up for review as the change in leadership was a time to “run the ruler” over the Government’s work programme.

Brown said Hipkins “seemed the obvious choice” to take the top job and it was “heartening” to hear him signal policy changes.

“There has been a lot of work coming down from central Government, a lot of reforms, and it’s overloading local government.

“If he puts some on hold or delays them it would certainly help and make it a better process going forward.”

Hipkins did state that the Three Waters reforms would still go ahead, but that there may be some changes.

“I’m not going to walk away from that.

“But I will run the ruler over what we’re currently proposing to make sure that we’re focused in on the right issues.”

Brown said it will be good to see what Hipkins means by when it talked about co-governance.

“Sometimes we haven’t necessarily explained enough what we’re doing,” Hip kins said.

“We might need to slow down and better explain what we’re working on.”

His main focus, before the