Chris Hipkins

In the first Labour government, most families didn't have cars.

telecommunications as we know them certainly didn't exist then.

So the world's changed.

So the needs that we have have changed.

But one of the things that motivates me in politics is that we spend far too much time treating the symptoms, not the cause.

And so you go to the health system and you see all those people in hospital and the current government's all focused on how can we pump people through hospital faster.

How about asking the fundamental question of why they're in the hospital in the first place?

I was at a youth health service on the Kapiti Coast yesterday, and I spoke to one of the counsellors there, and he said, you know, there's all this demand for more counsellors for mental health support for young people.

And he supports that.

We do need more clinicians and mental health for young people.

But you're never going to have enough clinicians unless you start dealing with the reasons young people are experiencing so much mental distress in the first place.

If these young people don't have stable accommodation, if they're in homes where there's family violence, if they're dealing with bad working environments, if they're under so much pressure, no amount of counselling is going to solve all of that.

You've actually got to help deal with the cause.

Well, we certainly shouldn't be sending any New Zealand troops or contingents over there at the moment.

The war itself is just wrong.

I had no support, none, for the Iranian government regime.

It's a brutal regime.

But what Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu have done

is just create huge instability.

They haven't affected regime change like they said they were going to.