‘Winning in one’ monumental for National
Labour now faces the key question: Who are they aiming to represent?
Forming a durable threeway coalition would be a visible sign that this administration is different in a meaningful way from its antecedents.
The battles have been waged and the votes cast. While we don’t yet have the final election result and wait ever so patiently for the careful procedures of the Electoral Commission, some things have become very clear.
The Labour Party has been comprehensively rejected by the electorate, and that was recognised promptly and correctly by Chris Hipkins’ decision to concede on the night. Not only did Labour lose votes to the centre-right, they lost them to both the nationalist New Zealand First Party and their left-wing compatriots in the Greens and Te Pāti Māori. In short, the centre-left did not hold. The party imploded, scattering votes in all directions.
After two elections of hope (one clearly boosted by the Covid effect), Labour is now back in the doldrums of the 2011 and 2014 elections, where it scored 27 per cent and 25 per cent respectively.
National, on the other hand, has bounced back after just the one bad result in 2020. It is true that it has not returned to a party vote in the 40s, as tantalisingly close as that looked early on election night. But the success of the 2023 campaign should not be underplayed. It ultimately took us two elections to fully recover from the 2002 drubbing back when I first became involved. This time, just one.
Back then, a rookie leader and the lack of experience across the front bench proved impossible to overcome in three years. Labour were publicly hopeful that would also prove to be true this time, given the short pedigree that Nicola Willis, Chris Bishop and particularly Christopher Luxon have as MPs.
“Winning in one” is a monumental achievement in that context, and reflects both the work done by the team and a distinct lack of support for the alternative.
Some things were very recognisable from previous elections.
In my experience, the path to an election victory runs through Christchurch and West Auckland, and so it proved again. National had to win well in its traditionally strong areas of the North Shore, East Auckland, the rural seats, and the provincial seats it tends to lose when the tide is out — and so it did. But West Auckland and Christchurch are the true barometers. Split the party vote there and you are odds-on for victory.
Quite a bit has been made of Labour losing the electorate contests in Mt Roskill, Te Atatu¯, New Lynn and (nearly) Mt Albert, and rightly so. That is a big shift. However, I suspect it says more about the individuals standing in those seats in contrast to their predecessors, who were able to hang on even when the party vote tide went out. The travails of Mr Twyford and Mr Wood have been well documented. Deborah Russell less so, but she was memorably unsympathetic to the plight of small businesses during the Covid pandemic, and small business battlers are a big chunk of her former electorate.
Labour will be tempted to write their loss off to those Covid lockdowns, particularly the second one in Auckland, combined with the backing away from the wealth and capital taxes vigorously championed by Messrs Parker and Robertson, and so strongly supported by a sizeable chunk of the commentariat and the media. There is no doubt the second Auckland lockdown left a long shadow. There is also little doubt that floating a tax proposal so aggressively only to ultimately shoot it down again is a display of almost unequalled political ineptitude.
But there is a bigger issue for Labour, which suggests a more fundamental problem with their tax and other policies. Who do they seek to represent, and how do those people differ from the Greens and Te Pāti Māori supporters, who do, after all, add up to only 15 per cent of the electorate on a good day.
In the last decade, dating back to Phil Goff, Labour have regularly sought to introduce a more radical identity-based left-wing policy prescription which would be completely at home in those two smaller parties, only to have it rejected by the broader electorate either up front (2011, 2014, 2017) or once it has been tasted (2023).
There are many people in cities like Christchurch and West Auckland who identify with the Labour brand, but ultimately not the policies of the last 12 years, let alone their inability to do the things voters do value. These are hard workers, and often those small business battlers whose chance to get ahead comes with obtaining a capital gain from their house or business. They see little in the Labour Party of David Parker, Grant Robertson and Willie Jackson that suggests they really are “in it for you”.
On the other side of politics, there is a great opportunity, and some significant risks over the next three years. I suspect that in part, voters chose Luxon, Willis, Seymour, Bishop and Stanford et al almost despite their collective Cabinet inexperience, because Labour was so toxic. They will have to move quickly to assure their new voters they know what needs to be done, how to do it, and in a sensible and compassionate way.
That is not an argument to shy away from tough decisions, but to take them thoughtfully and carefully. It involves a clear recognition that whatever needs to be done involves change for real people with real families and real bills to pay.
And the results need to be demonstrably better, not another rearrangement of the public sector deckchairs.
There is every likelihood New Zealand First will need to be involved in the governing arrangements and on balance that will be okay. This is a different negotiation than ones we have become used to, and I think Winston will ultimately be careful not to overplay his hand.
There are many things the three parties have in common, and some things that need the edges rubbed off them. It will be for the good of the country, for example, if David Seymour accepts his Treaty referendum doesn’t fly, in return for some demonstrable rollback of the bicultural state Labour was determined to create.
There will also need to be recognition from New Zealand First that many New Zealanders want tax relief in preference to government spending, and recognition from National that New Zealand First will want some additional regional investment. The latter won’t be too hard, given National’s electoral position in regional New Zealand and the joint interest in city and regional deals.
There is also an opportunity in the negotiations for Christopher Luxon to fully step out of the shadow of his predecessor and mentor. For all John Key’s strengths, we weren’t able to do a deal with Peters on his watch. Forming a durable three-way coalition would be a visible sign that this administration is different in a meaningful way from its antecedents, and that is as it should be.