Cunliffe defends leadership, pledges 'digital bill of rights'

Labour Leader David Cunliffe rejected suggestions on TVNZ’s Q+A programme that other Labour MPs were overshadowing their leader.

“I’m very proud of both Shane Jones and Grant Robertson. They are both excellent MPs and they’ve both been scoring hits.”

“I do not believe it is all about the leader.  I think it’s about the team too.  So we have one mission, we have one team, we are working to victory.

Mr Cunliffe admitted he could have handled the "trust" issue better:

“I made a decision that balanced the right of donors to confidentiality and the fact that we’d met all the rules – both of the party and of Parliament - with the fact that New Zealanders have a high expectation to know.  What I regret chiefly, is that I didn’t make that call much earlier.”

Change to monetary policy
Mr Cunliffe said he believed in an independent central bank but Labour would make changes to the Reserve Bank Act that would lead to lower interest rates.

“On average, over time, it is our very clear view that interest rates would be lower. On average house mortgages would be lower under our monetary policy.”

“There would be additional tools that the Reserve Bank could use – macro-prudential and other tools - that would help stabilise high interest rates.

New Labour policy: Digital Bill of Rights
Mr Cunliffe also announced that Labour wanted to introduce a Digital Bill of Rights.

“Labour thinks New Zealanders should have the right to access the internet, secondly that we should have the right to be free from blanket surveillance from the GCSB for example. We want to write some of those into law so that we can ensure New Zealanders move towards a world where their online world is protected.”

“It means there would be a free point of access. It would build on things like the people’s network of computer terminals in public libraries. We’d see how perhaps we could expand that. We’re not guaranteeing to put a laptop in every home.”

A Digital Bill of Rights was one of the policies in an ICT policy mistakenly emailed by a Cunliffe staff member to ICT Minister Amy Adams. Read the file, and analysis, here.

Mr Cunliffe said a lot of the ideas in the document were "blue sky thinking" rather than policy.

Watch highlights of David Cunliffe's Q+A interview here.