Chris Hipkins was confirmed on Sunday as New Zealand’s next prime minister and he chose Carmel Sepuloni as his deputy, marking the first time a person with Pacific Island heritage has risen to that rank.
Mr Hipkins got the unanimous support of politicians from the Labour Party after he was the only candidate to enter the contest to replace Jacinda Ardern, who shocked the nation on Thursday when she announced she was resigning after more than five years as leader.
Mr Hipkins will be officially sworn in to his new role on Wednesday. He will have less than nine months before contesting a tough general election, with opinion polls indicating his party is trailing its conservative opposition.
The lack of other candidates for leader indicated that the party had rallied behind Mr Hipkins to avoid a drawn-out contest and any sign of disunity following Ms Ardern’s departure.
In setting out his priorities, Mr Hipkins said he knew many families were struggling due to the “pandemic of inflation” and that the economy would be central to his government’s thinking.
When asked if he would take on the same transformational approach to government that Ms Ardern had promised after first winning the top job, Mr Hipkins indicated he wanted to get back to basics.
“We will deliver a very solid government that is focused on the bread-and-butter issues that matter to New Zealanders, and that are relevant to the times that we are in now,” Mr Hipkins said, adding that “2017 was five-and-a-half years ago, and quite a lot has happened since then.”
Like Mr Hipkins, Ms Sepuloni first became a politician 15 years ago and has most recently taken on the social development and employment portfolios as one of the government’s top ministers.
She said it was “very hard to fathom that a working-class girl” from a small New Zealand town could end up as deputy prime minister.
“I want to acknowledge the significance of this for our Pacific community,” Ms Sepuloni said. “I am proudly Samoan, Tongan, and New Zealand European, and represent generations of New Zealanders with mixed heritage.”
Ms Sepuloni said she had already been receiving lots of humbling messages about another glass ceiling being smashed.
Opposition leader Christopher Luxon told reporters he had congratulated Mr Hipkins by text. But Mr Luxon said Mr Hipkins and Ms Sepuloni had been part of a government that had “failed spectacularly” to get things done and that after the leadership change, it would be more of the same.