Minor parties face big battle
The smaller parties in Parliament are skirting with political oblivion as they face being squeezed out by the surging Labour Party and the shift to a focus on the Covid-19 economy. NZ First has fallen well below 5 per cent and the Green Party is barely above water. However, the Act Party has had a boost in support. Claire Trevett looks at the state of the small parties.
Act Party
The Act Party is the only one of the smaller parties whose support has grown over the term — and through Covid-19.
Since April 2019 it has inched up from 0.7 per cent to 2.2 per cent last month in the Colmar Brunton poll.
That would be enough to secure it three MPs. It is more than enough to guarantee National will leave Epsom to Seymour again to ensure he returns to Parliament.
Seymour said he was not complacent about winning that seat, but he remained confident he could retain it, with or without the ‘deal’ with National.
It is likely to have benefited from National’s difficulties in the polls. However, Seymour never lets a chance to have a dig at NZ First go to waste. “[Some] people that are coming to Act are also former NZ First voters who have just lost trust in Winston Peters.”
Of all the parties, Act is taking the hardest line against simply using the Government books to spend the way out of the crisis. “Act will offer a very clear choice, to get out of debt and deficits, to have a private sector-led recovery, rather than what seems to be an increasingly inward-looking, Beehive-led economy.”
The party has had to delay much of its campaign by two months, including the annual conference which was to be held in May but would now be in July.
Asked about the chances of a National-Act coalition, Seymour said he believed there was a possibility of a centre-right Government. “Todd [Muller] has to win the centre, and Act will put the right into centre-right.”
He was disappointed National appeared to be reconsidering its decision to rule out NZ First, but said he would be “very surprised” if they went ahead with that.
Green Party
The Green Party will be hoping for a slightly less dramatic lead-in to the campaign than in 2017. It fought that 2017 campaign on one leg, after the dramatic resignation of co-leader Metiria Turei.
The rise of Jacinda Ardern saw the Green Party support slump to 6.3 per cent on election night.
That election left the remaining coleader, James Shaw, fairly certain that the party’s core support base was around the 6 per cent mark. The party has now also consolidated again, with new co-leader Marama Davidson settled in.
Shaw has made it no secret that the Green Party will be campaigning for a Labour-Green Government — without NZ First.
He said operating outside the Labour and NZ First coalition was “not a comfortable position” but the parties had shown it could work.
He would not rule out a similar arrangement if that was how the chips fell.
“We would make the best of that we can, but our clear preference is for, shall we say, a simpler governing arrangement than last time.”
The Green Party list has already been released. Of the Green Party candidates, so far only Marama Davidson has been given the goahead to campaign for the candidate vote in the Tamaki Makaurau electorate. Its rules require candidates to push solely for the party vote, unless an exemption is approved.
Chloe Swarbrick’s request to chase the candidate vote in Auckland Central is yet to be decided.
NZ First
NZ First “respectfully declined” to put up leader Winston Peters or another party member for this article.
The party faces the fight of its life to return after the election. The last set of polls showed it was at just 2.5 to 3 per cent in the public polls.
Peters is a long-standing poll denier and responded by saying he would “defy gravity”.
NZ First’s goal is not just to try to snare unhappy National voters, but to knock Labour down into the 40s in the polls to ensure it is again needed to form a Government.
As a result, the early stages of its campaign have resulted in disrupting their governing partner — albeit not so far as to endanger stability.
NZ First’s website provides a hint as to what it will campaign on. It has taken to undertaking ‘surveys’ on various issues.
The subject matter of those surveys include Northport and the population policy (trying to slow down population growth), as well as Covid-related surveys on the transtasman bubble, the rules that applied at each stage of lockdown, and the move to level 1.
Covid-19 has also given it the opportunity to push its nationalistic lines, such as buying New Zealandmade.
Shane Jones has been put up in Northland — the seat National won back by a slim margin from Peters in 2017.
Jones has spent the week after that announcement tipping money from the Provincial Growth Fund into the region.
But there is potential good news and bad news ahead for the party.
The party has the ongoing Serious Fraud Office investigation into the NZ First Foundation — an entity set up to handle donations.
The SFO has said it expects to make some decisions ahead of the election.
The good news is that new National Party leader Todd Muller has left it open to reconsidering former leader Simon Bridges’ decision to rule out governing with NZ First post-2020. National’s low polling could also benefit NZ First if National voters decide a Labour Government is inevitable, so move to ensure NZ First is part of that mix: the so-called ‘handbrake’ argument.
That will see it campaign as much on what it has stymied, as what it has achieved in Government.