2017: Scorecard for the year in politics
On January 1, 2017, Jacinda Ardern was a Labour list MP with a handful of small portfolios and an insistence she didn’t have any leadership ambitions. Now she’s Prime Minister.
Nobody could have predicted the political year New Zealand just had - but we gave it a go anyway, as we have for years.
How did we score? We passed, but not well, with 107 points out of a possible 200. That’s slightly higher than our worst ever result,
104.6 in 2015, and far below our high score: 140 in 2014. That’s what we get for predicting a Labour government led by Andrew Little.
As in years past and in the spirit of full transparency, our marking has been audited by a political journalist not employed by Stuff.
Stick around tomorrow to see our predictions for the year to come.
1. John Key will feature in the Queen’s Birthday honours list, but as befits the man who reinstated knights and dames he will be dubbed ‘‘Sir John’’:
Easy pickings - it’s offered to every PM. 10/10
2. Shane Jones will join NZ First: Worst kept secret in the Beltway, but you have to rack up the easy wins. 10/10
3. Raymond Huo will enter Parliament before election and be given a winnable place:
Another non-shocker - we didn’t predict that a prominent academic would question his links to the Chinese government however.
10/10
4. ACT will fail to increase MP count, will get Epsom lifeline: Completely true, but nobody mention the Epsom deal to David Seymour. 10/10
5. Marama Fox will exit Parliament: 100 per cent correct and then some - turns out the whole party was on the out. 10/10
6. Barack Obama will visit New Zealand in 2017: Nope. What wishful thinking that was. 0/10
7. National will move tax thresholds in the budget but only bring in tax cuts in full if re-elected: Mostly true, they brought in threshold movements and then promised some more relief if re-elected. 8/10
8. Gareth Morgan’s TOP will fail to crack three per cent or enter Parliament: TOP hit 2.4 per cent. 8/10
9. The Greens will do little better - and little worse - than their 2014 result: Wrong. The Green Party’s support dropped four and a half points on their 2014 result, losing them six seats in Parliament. 0/10
10. Judith Collins and Steven Joyce will clash over the party’s economic direction, and Joyce will prevail: If they have, nobody’s told us or anybody else.
0/10
11. Chris Finlayson, Peter Dunne and Annette King will call it a day: Two out of three ain’t bad. 6/10
12.One National and one Labour MP in electorate seats will leave within six months before the general election, under an unspoken deal that will maintain the voting balance in the House: Specific but correct - David Cunliffe and John Key. 10/10
13. The Greens will be given a free run in some electorates, under a deal with Labour, but will still fail to win any constituency seats: No dice - they did run a seat for the first time, however, no deals were struck. 0/10
14. Louise Upston and David Bennett will prove the weakest links in the English ministry: Our apologies chaps, turns out Nick Smith had designs on this one. 0/10
15. Jonathan Coleman will take over the foreign affairs portfolio from May, but only after an internal tussle with at least two other ministers for the plum job: There was an internal tussle, and we’re confident he was in the running. 4/10
16. Winston Peters will not be prime minister, nor be in line to be, under any deal he does to support the next Government: He’s deputy, but only ‘‘in line’’ to be acting prime minister every now and then. If Ardern resigned, the new Labour leader would become PM. 7/10
17. Economic growth will top
4 per cent during 2017: Nope but this Statistics NZ recalculation means it did hit 4 per cent last year. 0/10
18. Auckland house prices will be lower in real terms by Christmas than they were at the start of 2017: Despite all this talk of ‘‘flat to falling’’ prices, the median house price in Auckland has still risen $85,000 from January to November to $890,000, according to REINZ. Inflation is a long way off accounting for that.
0/10
19. There will be one more political bombshell in 2017 that will change the course of the election and install Andrew Little as prime minister: So close but so far. There was a bombshell or five, but any bombshell in relation to Andrew Little carried the opposite effect of what was predicted so points off. 4/10
20. At least two party leaders will be heading for the door by Christmas: Yes - but not by choice. We get points for Metiria Turei, Peter Dunne and Andrew Little. 10/10
TOTAL SCORE: 107/200 Watch out for our predictions for 2018 tomorrow.