Chris Hipkins was talking tough at the Labour Party’s annual conference in Christchurch yesterday, saying he is determined to make the current Government a one-term government.

And sounding like he reckons he’s the guy to topple them. Saying the party’s internal polling shows it slightly ahead of National and putting him slightly ahead of Christopher Luxon as preferred Prime Minister.

You’ve got to be confident, especially in politics. But, if Hipkins thinks he can be the next Prime Minister, then he’s dreaming.

I reckon there is only one person capable of winning the election for Labour. Which I'll get to.

But you might have heard Hipkins talking on Newstalk ZB this morning. Banging-on about the current government.

And this is where, in my opinion, Hipkins is getting it all completely wrong and it's why I think he’s deluded if he thinks he can lead Labour to victory.

He goes on all the time about people wanting change at the last election. But he only pays lip service to the idea of the Labour Party, itself, changing. Let alone he himself changing his tune in any way.

And he won’t be the next Prime Minister, especially if he keeps this up, without saying anything about how he’s going to change. And he won't be the next Prime Minister if he doesn't show more humility about where things went wrong when he was in government.

Yes, the leader of the Opposition needs to criticise and point out cock ups and all of that.

But an Opposition leader who got a thrashing at the last election and who is despised by so many people because of the whole COVID thing, then that someone who has their work cut out for them.

And, a year down the track since losing the election last year, Chris Hipkins is showing no signs of changing and no signs of taking any personal responsibility for what happened.

Which is why I’m convinced that Labour can forget about making the current government a one-term government and can forget about winning an election in two years time if it keeps Hipkins in the top job.

Which brings me to the only person I think has any hope in hell of turning things around for the party.

It’s the Labour MP who, whenever he turns up on the Mike Hosking Breakfast filling in for Ginny Andersen, you get National voters texting in saying they want him on their side.

No prizes for guessing who it is I’m talking about. It’s Kieran McAnulty. He is everything Christopher Luxon isn’t. He’s also the type of person that commentators around the world say all left-leaning parties need to align themselves closer to if they want to win elections.

He’s not a chardonnay or a champagne socialist. The way he talks, he sounds like your average Joe in the street.

He’s taken on the job of campaign manager for Labour at the next election. But they’ve given him the wrong job, as far as I’m concerned.

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Do you think the last government spoiled things for everyone? There’s a question!

Let me clarify that a little bit. Do you think the last government spoiled things for every politician from here on in, with the way it handled the COVID-19 pandemic?

Because if we believe the COVID report which came out yesterday, then Jacinda Ardern, Grant Robertson, Chris Hipkins etc ruined the party for every other politician - current and future - because of the damage they did when it comes to the public's trust.

It says, if a similar pandemic happened now, the public would have less trust in the Government and there would be less willingness to comply with the rules. And I have no doubt that would be the case.

I think that trust in the government will never be restored to what it might have been before COVID-19. And there are two reasons why I think that. One is connected to how Labour ran things. The other isn’t.

So, yesterday, we knew the report on the first phase of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into New Zealand’s COVID response was being delivered to the Government. What we didn’t know was when it was going to be released to the public.

All the talk ahead of yesterday had been that it was going to be next year before it saw the light of day. But the Government probably assumed that trust was going to feature in the report big time and knew that, if it was going to have a chance of restoring that trust, then sitting on this report for months wasn’t the way to go.

Not that I think that it will do much good on that front. Because there are two reasons why I don’t see trust in government ever getting back to what it used to be.

Let’s start with the one that isn’t related to Labour’s handling of the pandemic. And this is to do with the global political shift we’ve seen in the last few years, where people have said they’ve just had enough of governments telling them how to live their lives. Because they just don’t trust governments and politicians.

The other reason why I think that public trust in the government will never be what it used to be here in New Zealand, is specific to the way Labour handled the pandemic response.

I think most people would agree that, in the early days at least, they trusted Jacinda Ardern’s government to do the right thing in the face of what was significant global uncertainty.

But like most crises, COVID went on and on and on. We had all the different strains of the virus. We had different countries doing things differently. We had people losing patience with all the lockdowns and mask wearing and COVID cards.

So we had all that volatility. But the Labour Government just stuck to the plan it started with in the first place. Delivered with a "we know best” attitude. Which is why people stopped trusting them. And I don’t see public trust in our politicians ever being fully restored.

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Today on Politics Friday, John MacDonald was joined by National’s Matt Doocey and Labour’s Tracey McLellan to wrap this week’s political stories.

They discussed Phase 1 of the Covid Inquiry and Kiwis’ shaken trust in the government, whether Labour will commit to a capital gains tax as they head into their party conference this weekend, and Matt Doocey touched on the recently revealed texts he received from Mike King.

The Mental Health Minister says he didn't reply to the texts after King’s controversial comments around alcohol because he didn't want to.

The I Am Hope founder told Newstalk ZB last month that alcohol is the solution for mental health issues, until a better solution is found.

Minister Matt Doocey was among those to publicly reject the claim.

King, who receives $24 million in government funding for his mental health charity, sent Doocey a 500 word text attempting to justify his claim.

Doocey told John MacDonald he scanned the message, but doesn't reply to every text he gets, and had already stated his position.

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