Andrew Little not in London to 'fan-girl' the royal baby

Labour leader Andrew Little says he “wasn’t there to fan-girl the impending new royal arrival” while in the UK during the past week.

Interviewed on TV One's Q+A today, he acknowledged “Prince William has acquitted himself pretty well as a distant heir to the throne, and they cut a good figure as a couple,” and the royal birth should be enjoyed “for what it is.”

But Mr Little also stated his “firm view that our head of state should come from New Zealand.”

“We’re an independent sovereign state, and we should be proud of who we are and express ourselves in that sort of way.”

Meanwhile, the Duchess of Cambridge gave birth to a baby girl overnight.

Mr Little has just returned from abroad where he met Labour Party members in the UK to discuss “tactics” ahead of their general election.

In Paris, he also met economist Thomas Piketty, whose writing Mr Little described as “the defining piece of work at this end of the 21st century on inequality.”

But the Labour leader wouldn’t be drawn on whether he agreed with Mr Piketty’s call for a global tax on wealth.

“No. I don’t know enough to say, you know, the sort of tax that he’s talking about – land taxes, wealth taxes, inheritance taxes, all those sorts of things – are necessarily the answer right now.”

RAW DATA: Q+A transcript: Interview with Andrew Little

Watch the interview here

HEATHER All right. Andrew Little, you must be bummed you missed the baby by a matter of hours.

ANDREW It all happened when I was in the air. I had a week in London, and the air was thick with anticipation, but I wasn’t there to fan-girl the impending new royal arrival.

HEATHER Did you just say ‘fangirl’?

ANDREW Yeah.

HEATHER It’s ‘fanboy’ if you’re a boy.

ANDREW Oh, is it? Okay.

HEATHER Yeah. Are you a republican, though? Do you really care?

ANDREW Oh, I think that our head of state should be a New Zealander, yes.

HEATHER Oh, you do?

ANDREW Yes.

HEATHER So you’re not going to get that excited about this baby.

ANDREW Oh, we should all be respectful about it. You know, the Queen’s the head of state at the moment. She’s got her family. You know, Prince William has acquitted himself pretty well as a distant heir to the throne, and they cut a good figure as a couple, so, yeah, let’s enjoy that for what it is, but when it comes to our constitutional arrangements in New Zealand, I have a firm view that our head of state should come from New Zealand. We’re an independent sovereign state, and we should be proud of who we are and express ourselves in that sort of way.

HEATHER Okay. Now, obviously, that is not why you went to the UK, thankfully. You went there to go and catch up with Ed Miliband, the leader of the Labour Party in the UK, who looks likely to actually, you know, surprisingly possibly, actually take out this election next week. And then you also met with the economist of the moment, Thomas Piketty in France. Did you bring back any ideas from either of them that can help the Labour Party here?

ANDREW Well, the meeting with the Labour Party, it was quite good. I met with the officials in the party, the secretary and McNichol and some other people around him, just to look at the organisation that they embarked on for the general election.

HEATHER Did you not meet with Ed Miliband himself?

ANDREW I met with Ed after that, and he was accompanied by Alastair Campbell and David Axelrod, who was head of Obama’s campaign for his two presidential elections. So I didn’t have a lot of conversation with them about tactics – I met with Ed for about 10 minutes, very busy at the moment, obviously. He was certainly very relaxed, very confident, and, you know, following the commentary for the week I was there, it’s looking pretty good for him. The day I left, the Friday, a poll had come out that showed the conservatives had moved maybe a point, a point and a half ahead in the polls, but, I mean, it’s first past the post there, and they talk about the polls, where they are, in particular, I guess, for Scotland, which has been a Labour stronghold. There’s now the Scottish Nationalist Party, which seems to be taking off. But the commentary they had about it all doesn’t seem to suggest or respect the fact that actually, electorate by electorate, the result may be different from one to the other. So they give the aggregates of the poll results and extrapolate across the entire electorate. And I just don’t think, talking to people and where they’re at, it’s necessarily going to be the way people talk about.

HEATHER What do you saying, that you don’t think Labour’s going to win it?

ANDREW Oh, no, no. There’s talk about a clean sweep in Scotland, for example - of the 59 seats, that the SNP is going to get all of them. The polls, I mean, they show SNP doing very well, but that doesn’t necessarily lead to the conclusion that they will take every seat. Having said that, I mean, overall, the sense I get is that Ed Miliband will have a good chance of forming a government after Thursday.

HEATHER This is a surprise. I mean, six months ago, the guy was polling at 18% popularity. What is he doing right?

ANDREW Well, Labour has been polling ahead of the conservatives for some time. I think the real story in it is why David Cameron has been doing so badly. I mean, he is not popular. Talking to people, including, you know, the Sunday evening I was there with a lot of conservative supporters, he is not popular amongst a lot of people, including his own. Ed Miliband has got a lot better. He’s performed a lot better, and for the campaign, he’s performed very well in terms of the campaign.

HEATHER Is this not about Ed Miliband winning, but about the Tories losing?

ANDREW No, I think Ed Miliband has picked up his game and he’s giving more confidence. But, you know, you have to say that there is a lot of anxiety about just the way David Cameron and George Osborne have run the government and the austerity cuts, and that’s now being felt with things like the national health service and things like that.

HEATHER So what have you learned from Ed Miliband and his party about, you know, ways that you could improve your party here?

ANDREW Well, I guess I was focused on the organisational things for the campaign, which is what I was talking to Iain McNichol about and his people. And so, you know, they have a very strong digital campaign. Their digital engagement is very good in terms of fundraising,

HEATHER No policy ideas?

ANDREW Well, I mean, their priorities there are different at the moment. I mean, one of the biggest issues there is what’s going to happen with their relationship with Europe. David Cameron is promising the referendum – I mean, he sort of seemed to blurt it out in an unplanned sort of way. Labour is very firmly they need to be part of Europe. That’s a big issue there at the moment. And the impact of the austerity cuts is also very big in a way that, I mean, those just aren’t issues here. So the issues are different at the time, so I was more keen to see what they’re doing organisationally, because that is something we need to lift our game on.

HEATHER Is Ed Miliband as much of a geek as he seems?

ANDREW He was very charming and very warm and, as I say, pretty relaxed, very humorous. We had a good little exchange, so, yeah, he’s a nice guy and a pretty formidable team around him, in the form of Alastair Campbell and David Axelrod - you know, pretty impressive people.

HEATHER Okay, so, Thomas Piketty in Paris – have you read his book?

ANDREW To be honest, I’ve read the first three chapters. That’s a pretty big effort to get through, a lot of concentration, yeah. And listen, it was interesting seeing him. He had very many copies and all sorts of translations in different languages. He told me that he sold 1.5 million copies worldwide – for a very dense economic textbook it’s pretty good.

HEATHER Why did you want to catch up with him?

ANDREW Oh, because I think his work will be the defining piece of work, at this end of the 21^st century on inequality. Because his research goes back, in some cases, you know, a couple of hundred years, when it comes to France. And he showed me the database he’s got for New Zealand. He’s got the tax data going back to 1921.

HEATHER And it shows that inequality in this country is growing, doesn’t it?

ANDREW What he’s shown is that how it’s changed, you know, worldwide, depending on different historical events. So after World War II, actually that was when worldwide, you know, in terms of the Western world, was the most equal, because a lot of capital value had been wiped. And incomes were within a reasonably narrow band, or certainly a narrower band than they are at the moment. But now it’s broadened out. So what he’s illustrating is that inequality is a real issue and, you know, we should do something about it.

HEATHER And his solution, Andrew, is a global tax on wealth, rather than what we’ve just had now, which is a tax on what we earn. He says tax what we own.

ANDREW Yeah.

HEATHER Do you agree with him?

ANDREW No. I don’t know enough to say, you know, the sort of tax that he’s talking about – land taxes, wealth taxes, inheritance taxes, all those sorts of things – are necessarily the answer right now. So I wanted to talk to him about the research that he’s done and the sort of solutions that he’s come up with.

HEATHER Can I interrupt you? Why is that? Why are those taxes not the solution here? Cos they were the solution for you guys last election.

ANDREW They were solutions, you know, earlier last century, at least. And, you know, things have changed since then, not just here, but in other parts of the world as well. I want to understand why that change has been made and whether those sorts of things are an answer. I think one thing is pretty clear, and what he was very clear about is that if we don’t get a response to the growing inequality right, we will deprive more people of opportunities. And overcoming the opportunity gap means, you know, we’ve still got to do the right things in education, we still have to do the right things in terms of earned incomes, but when it comes to addressing the, kind of, asset-inequality problem, you know, that is very complex.

HEATHER What’s your solution for addressing inequality in this country?

ANDREW On that issue?

HEATHER Mm.

ANDREW Well, you know, I’m five months into the job of leading the Labour Party – I don’t expect to have answers to it. I asked to do a lot more work about it.

HEATHER I understand that you guys are doing a review, but the problem we have at the moment is we have a number of things that are facing us as a country, and as the leader of the opposition, you are not contributing at all to the debate around it, are you?

ANDREW No, I absolutely disagree with that. Let’s look at the New Zealand problems right now of, you know, runaway house prices in Auckland. I think the real big issue we’ve got at the moment that is falling dairy prices, and the consequences of that are just a symptom. That is the failure of this government to take any steps in the last seven years to start preparing a foundation for new forms of economic activity.

HEATHER You said they haven’t done anything – what are you going to do? Have you got any ideas?

ANDREW Yeah. I mean, we talk about research and development tax credits, so that those who have got the good ideas and want the impetus to invest don’t have to, sort of, fill out an application form and tick a whole bunch of boxes with people in Wellington. But a tax-credit system actually means that if they’ve got the idea, they meet the criteria for a tax credit, they can get it. You know, I think this government will go down in history – once we get through all the cheerleading they’re enjoying at the moment – as one of the most reckless governments we’ve had in terms of preparing New Zealand and New Zealanders for the future. They’ve done nothing in seven years to prepare us for the next generation of wealth generation to sustain our standards of living. And, you know, that will be an urgent issue for us when we are back in government.

HEATHER All right, Andrew. Thank you very much for joining us through the haze of your jetlag. Andrew Little, Labour leader, thank you.