OPINION: Hipkins cannot survive this deception

If Chris Hipkins misled the Covid inquiry, or simply failed to grasp crucial advice about children’s vaccines, Labour has a leadership crisis right now.

Chris Hipkins is finished. He just does not know it yet.

There are only two explanations here and both are fatal. Either he knew key advice about the myocarditis risk for 12 to 17-year-olds and failed to level with the public and the Royal Commission, or he did not know, which is arguably worse. A Health Minister asleep at the wheel during the biggest public health crisis of our lifetime has no business leading a party, let alone wanting to run the country again.

This is not a grey area. This is not a media beat-up. This is not some insider Wellington game where everyone shrugs and says politics is messy. This goes to the core of the job. When the government is making calls about vaccines, mandates and children, the minister in charge is paid to know the facts, read the papers and front the truth.

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Hipkins now wants us to believe that yes, there was relevant advice, yes, it appeared in a Cabinet paper under his nose, but no, he somehow did not really clock it at the time. Then, after the heat came on, he refreshed his memory. Right. That is the sort of explanation politicians reach for when they think the public is stupid or too tired to care.

New Zealanders should care. Parents should especially care. During Covid, the public was told to trust the system. Trust the experts. Trust the government. We were given one line, one message, one approved version of events. Fine. In a crisis, governments need public confidence. But that bargain only works if the people at the top are straight with us.

You cannot preach transparency and then hide behind bureaucratic fog. You cannot say the Ministry should have done more, the officials should have told ministers, the papers only referenced it, the timeline has been updated. That is politician-speak for: I need a way out of this.

There is no way out.

Because if Hipkins did read the paper and the warning was there, then he sat on information New Zealand parents had every right to know. If he did not read it properly, then he was negligent in office. Pick whichever version you like. Neither leaves him fit to lead Labour. Neither leaves him credible. Neither survives the most basic test of ministerial accountability.

And spare me the idea that this is ancient history and voters have moved on. They have not. Covid is not some dusty policy file in a government archive. It was the defining event of modern New Zealand life. People lost businesses, freedoms, time with dying relatives, years of normal schooling, and the right to make fully informed decisions. Anything involving children and vaccines was always going to remain raw. Of course it has.

What makes this worse for Labour is that Hipkins is not just some backbencher with a bad memory. He is the leader. He is the man asking the country to trust him again. He is asking voters to believe he can scrutinise officials, make hard calls and tell the truth under pressure. This episode shatters that case.

Labour MPs now have a choice to make. They can keep dragging a dead man walking toward the next election and hope the public somehow forgets. Or they can accept the obvious. Hipkins is damaged beyond repair.

Ministers have been pushed out of office for far less than this. If this standard does not apply here, then it applies nowhere.

He should resign. If he will not, Labour should do it for him.

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