Election 2020: Jacinda Ardern gives the last push in Wellington as the elections enter the home stretch

Campaign diary: With less than a week to go by Election Day and more than half a million votes already cast, the election is truly in the final stretch.

Labor leader Jacinda Ardern kicked off what will be a tour of the country this week with a large campaign rally in Wellington.

Speaking to a crowd of about 800 in a crowded Michael Fowler Center, Ardern presented a vision for New Zealand in 2030 in which New Zealand has addressed or solved many of its pressing social problems.

“So imagine we are in 2030,” he said.

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“Now we are a country where the children living in poverty have been reduced by half; where we ended our housing waiting list; where health inequalities based on race, wealth, and geographic location no longer exist; where every child in New Zealand knows their story and the history of our nation; where we’ve bridged the digital divide and Damien O’Connor has finally discovered Zoom, ”he said.

The rally was the largest by Labor in Wellington so far and is reminiscent of the launch of the party’s large-scale campaign in Auckland. Packed with musical guests and hosted by Oscar Kightley, the rally sometimes felt more like a rock concert.

“Talofa,” Kightly said, introducing himself to the crowd, noting that he could say that because he was Samoan himself, a comment on the comment by national leader Judith Collins: “my husband is Samoan, so talofa”, first debate error .

Ardern recounted some of his government’s accomplishments, and even leaned toward some of its failures.

“In our first 100 days, we brought the Families Package. It boosted the income of some 384,000 families.

“It included the Best Start Payment, the first time New Zealand had a universal payment for children since the 1990s.

“We extended paid parental leave to 26 weeks. We raised the minimum wage to $ 18.90, which means an additional $ 126 per week for a full-time worker. We created 5,300 more public housing sites, including 4,100 new homes.

“We have built more than 600 Kiwibuild houses, with 920 more on the way,” he said.

KiwiBuild built 52 new homes in August.

At that rate, it will have around 7,000 households by 2030, 12 years after the policy was launched. Initially it was intended to build 10,000 homes a year.

It ended with an excavation at National, currently embroiled in internal conflict.

“The alternative is a self-centered opposition party that has lost its focus on economic responsibility and produced a plan with an $ 8 billion hole,” Ardern said.

“Errors like that cannot be laughed at, they threaten our economic recovery and put health and education at risk,” he said.