Many criticisms are being made of the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill, including by this writer. But as with everything in politics, every story has two sides, and both deserve attention. It’s important to understand what the Government is trying to achieve and its arguments for such a bold reform. As part of a new series providing scrutiny of the fast-track legislation (#FastTrackWatch), this first column rounds up the commentary and arguments in favour of what the Government is proposing.

Chris Bishop puts the case for getting things done

The architect of the overturn of RMA is Infrastructure and Housing Minister Chris Bishop. He has developed the new regime, with the central purpose of enabling the country to “get things done” – i.e. for development to occur. This goal comes in the context of widespread awareness and consensus that things have been moving too slowly in New Zealand, and major and important infrastructure and housing have been held back by structural and governmental regulation.

Much of this relates to the Resource Management Act 1991, which most politicians want replaced. Bishop’s answer is to essentially deregulate the sector and turbo-charge the ability of developers to get their projects off the ground. And in finding a way to do this, he’s picked up what the last Labour Government had already done with their own Covid-era fast-track processes and expanded that into a more permanent and extensive escalated process.

The new processes mean that three cabinet ministers (those responsible for transport, regional development, and infrastructure) can select a select number of development proposals to essentially get exemptions from normal resource consenting processes. An expert panel is also involved in advising the ministers and suggesting conditions to be placed on developers, but the three ministers have the ultimate say.

Bishop explained all of this in his column in the Herald yesterday, in which he paints a dark picture of the status quo, which justifies a new approach: “It’s too hard to get things done in New Zealand. Too hard to build new renewable energy, too hard to build roads and public transport, too hard to build houses and too hard to develop the sort of sensible economic development projects that provide jobs and growth” – see: Fast Track Approvals Bill – New Zealand has become an obstruction economy (paywalled)

To illustrate how the status quo needs radical change, Bishop is good at using anecdotes about the frustrations of a dysfunctional and bureaupathetic consents system: “I recently met a housing developer who had finally received consent after a three-year process only to have an official turn up on the very day earthworks were to begin and demand a Wildlife Act permit. That process took more than a year to complete. Such ineptitude would be funny if kids weren’t living in cars and a generation were not locked out of home ownership.”

Bishop has cleverly turned the tables on critics who has sought to tar the fast-track process as being about helping construction and mining companies to get their way. Instead, he sells his solution as being about improving housing availability, making roads safer, and decarbonising the economy to fight climate change.

He also puts forward a very clear explanation of how the new fast-track process will work as a streamlined “one-stop-shop” process for developers: “it doesn’t just deal with resource consents, it also deals with all the other things often needed for development, like conservation permits, heritage and so on. It makes sense to do all of that at the same time, rather than strung out over many years and with multiple different government agencies.”

Shane Jones’ populist approach

New Zealand First’s Shane Jones is the second biggest voice selling the fast-track proposal to the public. And although Bishop is the main architect of it, it’s been said that Jones, as Resources Minister, is the schemes’ “godfather”. Crucially, he was responsible for getting the scheme included in the coalition agreement between National and New Zealand First.

Jones’ sales pitch for the fast-track is less subtle than that of Bishop, and more populist, saying it’s about driving a metaphorical bulldozer through all the red- and green-tape to get things done for “the people”, especially in the neglected regions. He promises more jobs and economic growth as a result. It’s all very much in line with his “Make New Zealand Great Again” mode in which leaders need to break rules to get things done.

Jones takes delight in promising more consents for the extractive sector, including mining on conservation land, and appeals to New Zealanders, who he says are sick of environmental protections slowing down progress too much. In debating the new legislation in Parliament, Jones explained the new approach: “Gone are the days of the multicoloured skink, the kiwi, many other species that have been weaponised to deny regional New Zealand communities their right to a livelihood, their entitlement to live peacefully with their environment but derive an income to meet the costs of raising families in regional New Zealand.”

More famously, Jones has also referred to allowing land that is currently protected against mining to protect the Archey’s frog: “In those areas called the Department of Conservation estate, where it’s stewardship land, stewardship land is not DOC land, and if there is a mineral, if there is a mining opportunity and it’s impeded by a blind frog, goodbye, Freddy.”

Mike Hosking: The Most important thing the Govt is doing

The one person outside of government and industry circles who is almost a lone voice in championing the fast-track regime is Newstalk broadcaster Mike Hosking. He put forward his best defence of it this week, saying the proposal “might well be the most important thing this Government does” given that New Zealand’s has an infrastructure crisis and needs to get on with building and fixing things, which is what this bill is about – see: This Government was elected on change — embrace it

Hosking reminds us that the current Resource Management Act isn’t working, and so it’s important that we innovate to try new ways of getting on with creating economic growth and rebuilding the country. It’s a message that will resonate with a public that is impatient for change and transformation, especially given that this is a widespread feeling that “the country is broken” or in decline.

Hosking’s other key argument is to attack those that are questioning the fast-track proposal – he describes them as “incessant moaners” and “handwringers” who are holding back progress. Here’s his key point: “Submissions on the legislation closed last week and you can imagine who turned up. It’s the same people who believe not doing things is the preferred option. The same people who have held this country to ransom over their individual myopic view of what’s important to save, or treasure, or talk more about.”

The New Zealand Initiative: In favour of centralising power in Wellington

The pro-business lobby group and think tank the New Zealand Initiative has come out firmly in favour of the Fast Track Approvals Bill, saying that it’s “a necessary step to streamline decision-making for projects with significant economic benefits, and it should proceed.”

This group is normally an advocate for “localism”, devolution, and against the ethos of “Wellington knows best” – which means they might have been expected to rail against this concentration of power in the Beehive. But in this case, they support the Government taking back control so that they can push through development without cause for local participation and impediments in the decisions.

The Initiative’s main spokesperson on the issue, Nick Clark, has written a column for the Herald this month about how the bill might not be perfect, but it should be supported because it “represents an improvement on the status quo” – see: Fast-tracking for infrastructure fix is needed now (paywalled)

In talking about the concerning imperfections in the fast-tracking proposal, such as the increased likelihood of corruption, the Initiative concludes that these aren’t important enough to prevent the Bill from being implemented in its current form, especially given the urgency of New Zealand’s infrastructure deficit.

The Initiative therefore takes a highly pragmatic argument in favour of fast-tracking, pointing to, like Bishop, the many economic problems facing the country, which now means that a centralisation of powers is desirable in order to push through developments, even if they are opposed by locals.

Infrastructure Commission

Some fast-track supporters have used material produced by the Government’s Infrastructure Commission to show the need for the new reforms. Although the Commission doesn’t appear to have taken a stance on this major infrastructure issue, it has published a report on the problems with the existing resource management rules.

The report was prepared for the Commission by the Sapere consultancy company, and it shows that the current consenting process costs the economy about $1.3 billion per year. It also pointed out that over the last five years, the average time taken to get consent has doubled.

The Commission is also under pressure to come up with ways to speed up developments. A poll last year showed that 61 per cent of New Zealanders believe that not enough is being done to meet the country’s infrastructure needs. Priorities, according to survey respondents, were flood defences and new housing supply. For more on this, see Andrea Vance’s recent column, Why Nimbyism is the biggest risk to the Government’s fast-track regime (paywalled)

Business interests welcome fast-tracking

“Manna from heaven” is how the fast-track bill is being described by the chief executive of the mining lobby group Straterra, Josie Vidal. She says that “the country is in trouble. We need to get on and do some things”, and suggests that politicians have become too ponderous in their decision-making – see Brent Edwards’ NBR article, Opponents and supporters of fast-track bill want changes (paywalled)

As to the criticisms of the bill, Vidal writes this off: “There is a lot of fearmongering from environmental groups.”

Similarly, Newsroom’s editor Tim Murphy has said: “This Govt is certainly making some people happy. The mining, marine aquaculture, roading, energy and land developer industries must be wondering whether they’ve died and gone to heaven with the new fast-tracking law.”

Certainly, businesses and other lobby groups have reacted very positively to the fast-track bill. Press statements have been put out in its support by Infrastructure New Zealand, Transporting New Zealand, Energy Resources Aotearoa, and Civil Contractors NZ.

Some iwi are also supportive of the fast-track, as many have economic interests in aquaculture and energy industry. For example, Ngāi Tahu has been reported as hoping to use the new fast-track to finally get the greenlight for its previously-blocked proposal for a massive salmon farm off Stewart Island.

The public’s appeal for “getting things done”

The fast-track regime is likely to be very popular with the public. There’s a widespread frustration with how little government gets achieved, and how society is held back by regulations. This is especially the case in terms of building and resource management consents.

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Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has surprised everyone with his ruthlessness in sacking two of his ministers from their crucial portfolios. Removing ministers for poor performance after only five months in the job just doesn’t normally happen in politics.

That’s refreshing and will be extremely well received. The public will perceive this unprecedented move as a sign that Luxon has very high standards for his government and is determined that his ministers actually deliver results.

Brutal sackings will be popular

Appearing on 1News’ 6pm news last night, I described the demotions as “brutal sackings”, adding that although I thought the moves would be popular, few should believe Luxon’s explanation that the need to replace Melissa Lee was because they needed someone more senior: “Melissa Lee is one of the most senior, experienced politicians in National. She’s the third-longest serving National MP, so it doesn’t quite add up that she wasn’t experienced. She’s been in that portfolio since 2017” – see 1News’ ‘Collective sigh of relief’ likely over Lee’s sacking – Jennings

The demotions have been strongly applauded by Newstalk broadcaster Heather du Plessis-Allan who argues that Luxon’s strong style of “performance management” is just what the public wants at the moment – especially after many years in which much worse poor performance has been accepted by prime ministers with a lower threshold of expectations – see: NZ deserves Luxon’s style of performance management

She says that Luxon’s show of strength is a massive contrast with the last government: “What’s happened today will shock a lot of people, because over the last few years we’ve got used to Prime Minsters just putting up with their ministers doing a bad job or behaving badly in public. Kiri Allan, Phil Twyford, Michael Wood, Clare Curran, even Nanaia Mahuta – the Foreign Minister who didn’t like international travel. It took forever for Hipkins or Ardern to demote the under-performers, and they suffered for it – public opinion of them was tainted.”

The “kindness” attribute displayed towards their colleagues by recent prime ministers is now very out of step with an electorate that desperately wants politicians to get things done.

Of course, there’s always been a sense in which prime ministers are expected to be ruthless towards their colleagues – something that former Cabinet Minister Peter Dunne emphasises today in his column, Luxon gets out his butcher’s knife – briefly

In this, he points to the phrase used by William Gladstone, the former PM of Britain: “the first essential for a Prime Minister is to be a good butcher.”

Luxon is sending a strong message

Dunne says that Luxon’s brutal ministerial reshuffle “has sent two clear messages – one to both Ministers that they are on their last warning, and that they will be unceremoniously shown the door if anything else goes wrong. The second warning is to all other Ministers about the Prime Minister’s limited tolerance for poor performance and the fate that might await them in such circumstances.”

He also argues that it would have been detrimental for both the Government and Luxon’s own reputation if the two ministers had been kept in place, and so it was smart to get them out of the way before the Budget.

Herald political editor Claire Trevett also stresses how unusual such demotions are – especially this early in a government’s term, and without any more overt wrong-doing: “Usually ministers are stripped of portfolios for a scandal, a breach of the Cabinet Manual, or telling a porky to the Prime Minister or the public” – see: Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s reshuffle of Melissa Lee, Penny Simmonds should keep all ministers on their toes (paywalled)

She also says that Luxon has read the room well, unlike previous PMs: “Too often, prime ministers let flailing ministers stay in their jobs too long, either to save face or to risk looking as if they are conceding they made the wrong choice.” But she warns that such demotions are a balancing act, because if you do it too much it becomes a negative: “There is a bit of risk to Luxon in this approach: if you end up moving too many ministers around for shonky performances, it starts to look a bit chaotic.”

National Party insider Ben Thomas has also described the demotions as rather brutal, comparing them to some of former PM John Key’s: If Luxon’s mentor, former prime minister John Key, was the so-called ‘smiling assassin’, the current National party leader might be more like a corporate drone strike: affectless, unperturbed, and delivering the bad news in clinical HR speak” – see his column in The Post: Luxon unleashes the corporate drone strike (paywalled)

But Thomas admits that there’s a chance that the sackings, occurring so soon after Luxon appointed these ministers, might reflect poorly on his original decision to appoint them: “To paraphrase The Thick of It’s Malcolm Tucker, it has usually been thought that if the PM sacks you after a year, you’ve effed up; if he sacks you after a week, he’s effed up by appointing you.”

Newsroom’s political editor Laura Walters also points out how soon the demotions have come: “fewer than 150 days into the term was not a good look for the Government – something Newsroom understands Luxon’s staff raised with him” – see: Melissa Lee’s media Hail Mary comes up short

RNZ’s political editor Jo Moir suggests it’s a bad look in terms of diversity in Cabinet for Luxon to be sacking two women and bringing in a man (Climate Change Minister Simon Watts). But she says for Luxon “competence in the job, or lack thereof, had to trump anything else” – see: Aces in their places: Luxon plays coy over ministers’ competence. But Moir points out the positive of having Watts come into Cabinet: “It will also bring to an end the frustration from climate and environment quarters over the climate change portfolio being outside Cabinet in the first place.”

The other possible message that the demotions send, according to Kelly Dennett of The Post, “is that Luxon is taking delivery seriously; that it’s productivity or bust in this corporate-styled National-led Government” – see: What Luxon really means when he says ‘this is how I roll’ (paywalled)

But she wonders if Luxon is using too much “corporate-speak” in these types of announcements. His phrase that “This is how I roll, this is how I lead” has been derided by a number of commentators. And Dennett argues it’s “not particularly prime ministerial, more what the sneaker-wearing CEOs volley around the boardroom.”

Melissa Lee’s poor performance

Although yesterday’s demotions were surprising due to their timing, no one seems to have been surprised, as Melissa Lee was already in serious trouble. Over the last month or two of major downsizing and threats in various media businesses, Lee has been widely viewed as ineffective and missing in action. Common reactions to her performance have involved the word “clueless” and phrases like “possum in the headlights”.

According to the Herald’s Claire Trevett, Lee was unfortunate to possess the portfolio during a crisis, but also failed to produce credible responses: “Lee’s downfall was that they came to a head on her watch – and she did not have an answer to them by the time they took their toll. Nor had she come up with anything since.”

Ben Thomas is more sympathetic to Lee’s plight, saying there was an element of unfairness in her sacking: “she had been, to differing extents, gagged by her own side. Even before the election, National refused to release her broadcasting policy”. Then during the media crisis, he says that she was stuck in limbo because of coalition politics involving NZ First: “Her office was reportedly barred from clarifying the timeline of policy development with journalists by Luxon’s office, to ease tensions with deputy PM Winston Peters.”

Newsroom’s Laura Walters appears to have more inside information on what has been going on in the Beehive, saying that Lee’s final downfall came when her third attempt to develop a Cabinet paper of solutions to the crisis disappointed the Prime Minister. Walters reports on Lee’s third Cabinet paper failing: “Sources told Newsroom that Luxon… believed the proposals in Lee’s [third] paper did not adequately deal with the complexities of the issues facing the media industry.”

Lee has now been replaced as Media Minister by Paul Goldsmith, and Claire Trevett ponders whether the new minister is simply being “handed a poisoned chalice.” The portfolio has certainly been a difficult one that appears to have defeated previous ministers like Claire Curran, Kris Faafao, and Willie Jackson – all of whom struggled to make much headway in helping the sector to modernise. For more on this, see Colin Peacock’s Media minister rolled as industry awaits plan

Penny Simmonds’ poor performance

Penny Simmonds has lost her cherished Disabilities ministerial portfolio in similar circumstances – as she too has caused the Government embarrassment, but not in a way that would normally lead to a sacking. However her mismanagement of the Disability portfolio led to savage cuts to disability support allowances, which shocked her colleagues and the sector. It was made worse by some intemperate remarks about those in the sector.

Finance Minister Nicola Willis had to intervene in the debacle, returning funding to the disability sector, and making it clear that any such changes in the future would need to be cleared by Cabinet rather than just Simmonds. And according to Newsroom’s Laura Walters, this “was seen by many as a vote of no confidence in Simmonds’ ability to oversee her own ministry.”

Despite this poor performance and bad publicity for the Government, few were tipping her to be fired so quickly. According to Walters, reporting on Beehive information, Luxon needed to demote Lee, and was less inclined to demote Simmonds this early, but “he decided to make both changes in one go to avoid another potential reshuffle down the road should Simmonds not bounce back.”

Also reporting Beehive sources, Ben Thomas says today that “insiders say Simmonds has struggled with the workload across her portfolios, and that the disabilities carer payment changes were not the only significant official-led announcements that passed under her risk radar.”

Luxon is appealing to our anti-political grumpiness

Luxon will win new plaudits from commentators for being decisive and bold, especially after years in which prime ministers have seemed highly reluctant to punish poor behaviour or performance. Luxon and his Government look like they won’t settle for “business as usual” or workmanlike politics.

If that is Luxon’s objective, then he’s smartly tapping into the Zeitgeist, reacting to a public mood that is increasingly grumpy and intolerant towards political complacency and mediocrity. We live in an age of political anger and discontent, which means that this National-led Government will quickly suffer if it protects poor performance.

Two recent IPSOS polling surveys indicate just how volatile and hard to please the public are. Last month, the market research company released its polling, showing that the public wasn’t evaluating the new government’s performance any more positively than it did for the last Labour Government when it was at its most unpopular – the average rating that people gave the National Government was only 4.6/10 – see my coverage of this: Scoring 4.6 out of 10, the new Government is struggling in the polls

Then last week, IPSOS released its survey of New Zealand’s attitudes to politics, which showed that two-thirds of the country believes that “New Zealand needs a strong leader to take the country back from the rich and powerful”, amongst many other rising anti-Establishment beliefs – see my column: Serious populist discontent is bubbling up in New Zealand

Of particular relevance was the survey question in which respondents were asked whether they agreed with the following statement: “To fix New Zealand, we need a strong leader willing to break the rules”. 54 per cent answered “yes”. The same question asked in the rest of the world had an average agreement of 49 per cent. In New Zealand, the demographics who much more likely to agree with the need for a strong rule-breaking leader were rightwing voters (60%), those on low incomes (66%), and Māori (73%).

Notably, political scientist Jack Vowles has also detected this growing grumpiness and desire for strong leadership. His NZ Election Study found that in 2020 43 per cent of the public agreed with the following statement: “A few strong leaders could make this country better than all the laws and talk”. But last year, the survey question found this had increased to 51 per cent.

Luxon and his government are also carrying out their own polling regularly, and will be well aware of how this increasingly anti-political mood means that voters will reward political leaders making strong decisions and being intolerant of mistakes and poor performance. In this sense, when he launched his surprise and ruthless demotions yesterday, Luxon was finally showing that he could be a “strong leader” or perhaps even a “populist” type of politician for our times.

Dr Bryce Edwards

Political Analyst in Residence, Director of the Democracy Project, School of Government, Victoria University of Wellington.

It’s been a tumultuous time in politics in recent months, as the new National-led Government has driven through its “First 100 Day programme”. During this period there’s been a handful of opinion polls, which overall just show a minimal amount of flux in public support for the various parties in Parliament – the levels of support for each party are roughly where they were at the last election.

Yet beneath the steady “party vote” numbers are some further polling results that should worry the new National-led administration. It appears that Christopher Luxon’s Government is not receiving the usual “honeymoon” period normally gifted to the fresh faces controlling the Beehive.

The IPSOS poll for February

The most concerning survey result for the Government comes today from the IPSOS polling company, which released its latest “Issues Monitor” report, showing that New Zealanders rate the performance of the new Government at only 4.6 out of 10. You can see the full report here: IPSOS: 23rd Ipsos NZ Issues Monitor Feb 2024

The polling company asked 1000 New Zealanders: “Overall, how would you rate the government for its job in the last 6 months from 0 to 10, where 0 means ‘abysmal’ and 10 means ‘outstanding’?” The 4.6/10 result is the mean average answer.

IPSOS reports that this poor score is very similar to the lows recorded for the last government. The Labour Government received its highest score of 7.6 in July 2020, but by August 2023 it had dropped to 4.5. You can see the changing scores for the various governments, since 2017, in the chart below from the IPSOS report:

What is also interesting is to look at the breakdown of the proportions that gave the Government a high score (7-10/10), a mid-score (4-6/10) or a low score (0-3/10). In the latest survey, 37 per cent of respondents gave a low score, which was the highest proportion since the survey began in July 2017, and the report authors label a “significant” increase. Meanwhile, 30 per cent gave a high score, and 29 per cent gave a mid-score. This suggests a rather polarised electorate.

Political scientist Grant Duncan comments today on the latest result: “We’d normally expect a ‘honeymoon’ boost in a new government’s rating, if only due to people feeling glad about a change. But the Luxon government was mired in controversy even before the coalition agreements were drafted” – see: It’s official: Luxon missed out on a honeymoon

Duncan suggests that the latest poor score might be a result of the Treaty and ethnicity debates of February: “The IPSOS poll was run in late February, after the country had gone through a lot of debate and angst, thanks to ACT’s proposed Treaty bill and to controversial policies such as the disestablishment of the Māori Health Authority”.

Luxon responded to the latest poll today on TVNZ’s Breakfast by saying he was “not too hung up on polls” and he pointed out that “for 15 of the 20 areas of concern raised by New Zealanders in the study, respondents backed the National Party’s ability to deal with them” – see Felix Desmarais’ No honeymoon: Govt performance 4.6 out of 10 so far – poll

The IPSOS survey also showed the following top five issues of concern for the public:

1. Inflation / cost of living 59% (-3)
2. = Housing / price of housing 33% (+2)
3. = Healthcare / hospitals 33% (+1)
4. Crime / law and order 27% (-10)
5. The economy 25% (+1)

The Talbot Mills poll

Yesterday, the latest Talbot Mills poll result was published by BusinessDesk, showing the following party vote support:

• National: 38% (-)
• Labour: 28% (-1)
• Greens: 14% (+2)
• Act: 8% (+1)
• NZF: 6% (-1)

More concerning for the Government was the “preferred PM” result, which had Christopher Luxon on 24 per cent (down 3 points), and only slightly above Chris Hipkins, on 23 per cent. The last National prime minister to perform this poorly was Jenny Shipley, who polled only 22 per cent 26 years ago in 1998 – one year before National lost the election to Helen Clark’s Labour Party.

The mood of the electorate has also soured. When asked if the country is headed in the right or wrong direction, 48 per cent said it was on the “wrong track”, which was up seven percentage points since February. Those who said New Zealand on the “right track” was down three points to only 40 per cent.

This poll was apparently carried out for Talbot Mills’ corporate clients, and wasn’t meant for publication, but you can read about it in Pattrick Smellie’s article, Christopher Luxon struggling to connect: leaked poll (paywalled)

Smellie also reports that “more than two-thirds of those polled named the cost of living as one of their three biggest concerns. That dwarfed the next three worries: health, crime and housing, which were all nominated roughly equally”. Furthermore, “almost three-quarters of voters opposed ‘semi-automatic weapons being made legal again’, at 73%.”

The Taxpayers Union Curia poll

Eleven days ago the Taxpayers Union Curia Poll also came out, which showed some broadly similar results. The Herald’s Thomas Coughlan reported on it: “The mood of the country appears to have soured on the Government. After a couple of months in which more Kiwis felt the country was on the ‘right track’, the right track-wrong track indicator tipped into negatives again, with net 3 per cent of people thinking NZ was on the wrong track. More people disapprove of the Government than approve of it. A net 3.9 per cent of people disapprove of the Government, a shift of 8.4 points on last month’s poll” – see: Latest poll: Christopher Luxon’s popularity crashes after allowance blunder, now trails Chris Hipkins

Also, in terms of Luxon’s favourability, the results were bad news. His net favourability had dropped 16 points to -5 per cent, behind that of Hipkins on +2 per cent. However, the other party leaders in government fared much better, with David Seymour up 6 points to -8 per cent and Winston Peters up 10 points to -22 per cent.

Thomas Coughlan points out that the Curia poll had been carried out at the time that Luxon had endured very negative media coverage over his accommodation entitlement.

Here are the party vote figures:

• National: 37.4% (-2.2)
• Labour: 25.3% (-2.6)
• Greens: 11.3% (+2.3)
• Act: 10% (-3.7)
• NZF: 7.4% (-+2.4)
• TPM: 2.5% (+0.2)

Also in March, the Roy Morgan poll – which receives less media publicity, due to this Australian company not belonging to the New Zealand agreement on survey methodology – also had broadly similar results, albeit with Labour on even lower figure:

• National: 35.5% (-2.5)
• Labour: 21.5% (-0.5)
• Greens: 15.5% (-)
• Act: 12% (+4.5)
• NZF: 7% (+1.5)
• TPM: 4% (-0.5)
• TOP: 2.5% (-2)

The lack of a honeymoon for the new prime minister was also discussed last month by 1News’ Justin Hu, who has looked at what happened when Helen Clark, John Key and Jacinda Ardern became PM: “Back in 2000, Helen Clark enjoyed a 13-point bump in preferred prime minister polling… Nine years later, following Clark’s defeat, successor John Key rose in support from 40% to 51% as preferred prime minister in the February following the 2008 election… Following the swearing-in of Jacinda Ardern’s 2017 coalition government, she also posted a 10-point lift in her preferred prime minister numbers by the following February” – see: Luxon’s popularity low compared to other first-term PMs

Political scientist Lara Greaves is reported in this article as putting the problem for Luxon mostly down to Winston Peters and David Seymour occupying much of the spotlight since the coalition was formed. She says that having “two very strong deputy prime ministers with quite strong personalities” was affecting the public’s perception of Luxon.

Since then, both Peters and Seymour have only made their presence even stronger and their controversies bigger. It’s hard to see how any of this is going to help Luxon push up his government’s report card above 4.6/10.

Dr Bryce Edwards

Political Analyst in Residence, Director of the Democracy Project, School of Government, Victoria University of Wellington.

When the First Labour Government came into office in 1935, the new Prime Minister Michael Joseph Savage was determined not to live a bourgeois, extravagant lifestyle. Being a representative of workers meant to him that he shouldn’t just take on the material comforts of the ruling class once he was elected to represent those workers. Hence, he refused to live in Premier House on Tinakori Road, near Parliament.

Savage regarded such a mansion as inappropriate for any politician, let alone one representing the proletariat. The spacious house and gardens were apparently too opulent, and he thus believed it was against socialist principles to occupy such an ostentatious home. Instead, Savage boarded with friends and purchased a bungalow in the suburb of Northland.

Premier House as a dental clinic

Savage directed that Premier House be converted into a large dental clinic for children, as part of his government’s health programme and welfare state. After that, the house was used as a crèche and then left empty for decades. As PM, Robert Muldoon lived in another government-owned house in Lower Hutt, and then David Lange chose to live in a small flat opposite Parliament, on Hill St.

But a decision was made by Lange’s Fourth Labour Government to restore Premier House at great expense. It was then occupied by Lange’s successor, Geoffrey Palmer.

Since then, prime ministers of both sides of the spectrum have lived there, largely without any real criticisms. Savage’s socialist critique of elite living was out of fashion.

Yet to avoid accusations of being out of touch and removed from the realities of the public, the various inhabitants have been careful not to spend money upgrading and maintaining the buildings. This has led to a situation in which the place has been run down, and in need of a huge investment.

Neglect of Premier House by parsimonious PMs

As Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern knew of the need to continue with at least the appearance of parsimonious spending on politician accommodation. Like other PMs, she didn’t want to run afoul of any Savage-like notions of politicians treating themselves to luxury at the public’s expense.

However, Ardern was also well aware of the neglected state of Premier House, complaining of many water leaks and possums in the walls and roof. Hence, she established the “Premier House Board” to evaluate the health of the property and recommend what should be done to upgrade it. An attempt was made to find a bipartisan solution in which at least Labour and National could quietly agree to put aside the politicking to allow the necessary upgrades.

This all came after an acknowledgement that such Parliamentary manoeuvring had meant no government felt comfortable addressing the declining state of the building. The political editor of Stuff, Luke Malpass, says: “The decades of neglect have clearly come from a lack of leadership, political expediency, buck-passing, from a number of prime ministers spanning four separate decades” – see: How decades of buck-passing left the PM’s pad in disrepair (paywalled)

The Premier House Board report was handed first to Chris Hipkins last year, and then to incoming Prime Minister Christopher Luxon. And although it hasn’t been fully released, media reports from the last week say that a price tag of about $30m has been attached to the recommended upgrades. And the descriptions of the house by officials are rather condemning, saying it is “below current building standards” and “only partially meets building and residential tenancy requirements and does not suit modern living requirements”.

This is well covered by the Herald’s Claire Trevett, who says the report “catalogues a list of problems – from 30-year-old fittings and furnishings to a lack of insulation and windows that were not adequately sealed so let draughts in” and it raises “red flags about its condition and suitability as a home for the Prime Minister” – see: Premier House: Report into Prime Minister Chris Luxon’s apartment reveals it’s draughty, dated, uninsulated (paywalled)

According to her, the report says this about the PM’s residence: “It was commonplace for things to break. It noted the apartment was ‘uncomfortable,’ had small, poor-quality bathrooms and was badly laid out… and fell well short of the status of the Prime Minister and of comparable residences in other countries.”

Others have also commented on the poor state – Grant Robertson said recently that the house had “a slight 80s motel vibe to it”, and “it is in severe need of an upgrade upstairs there … it’s not up to scratch”. Heritage NZ has also described it as being in a “dishevelled” state.

It’s not surprising that Luxon has decided to stay in his own home – in the Kate Sheppard Apartment building, opposite Parliament. Luxon explained all this three weeks ago, with a spokesperson stating that the PM was going to deal with the Premier House Board’s advice first: “The report suggests Premier House requires a significant amount of work so the prime minister will consider that before making any decisions around residing there” – see Thomas Manch’s Luxon yet to move into Premier House as he considers ‘significant’ renovations (paywalled)

The article also explained that, as PM, Luxon was entitled to an upgraded housing allowance: “He has previously claimed an annual $31,000 accommodation allowance while living in his Wellington home as an MP and now, as prime minister, he can claim up to $52,000 a year if he chooses not to relocate to the Thorndon residence for prime ministers.”

A Savage response to Luxon’s entitlement

On Thursday last week, the official work spending figures of all politicians for the last three months of 2023 were released. This showed that MPs and ministers had spent over $2.3m on accommodation, flights, and other travel between October and December. This is best covered in Felix Desmarais’ article: Expenses for MPs and Ministers revealed – who spent what?

Then on Friday Prime Minister Luxon admitted that he had filed a late return, and so although the officially-released figures don’t reflect it, he had decided to claim the accommodation allowance. While visiting Queenstown, Luxon gave a stand-up press conference in which he fielded journalists’ questions over why he was claiming the allowance when he already owned the apartment he was living in, mortgage-free. His answers boiled down to this statement that he was “entitled to the entitlement”, which went down terribly. As one commentator quipped, it looked like Luxon had come down with “chronic entitle-it-is”.

Within hours, Luxon had announced a U-turn on Newstalk ZB, saying that he had come away from his press conference thinking “Wow, people are pretty fixated on the allowance… what’s going on?”. Luxons says he listened to talkback radio and decided he would get rid of this “distraction” by paying back the $13,000 he’d recently been paid, and would no longer claim the allowance – see Adam Pearse’s Christopher Luxon won’t claim $52k accommodation allowance, to repay $13,000 amid Labour claims of ‘hypocrisy’

Commentators and activists were universally united in condemning that Luxon had taken the allowance in the first place. Even the rightwing Taxpayers’ Union spoke out strongly on the issue.

Herald political editor Claire Trevett explained that it was Luxon’s austerity policies and claims of economic parsimoniousness that meant he shouldn’t have claimed the allowance. Pointing to the cuts to the public service and beneficiary entitlements, Trevett said that taking the $52,000 “might be defensible if he was not a Prime Minister who was also a self-proclaimed defender of the taxpayers’ dollar, nipping and tucking away at spending in every other corner of government” – see: Christopher Luxon’s short-lived attempt to claim taxpayer funded accommodation allowance was never going to be defensible (paywalled)

TVNZ’s Maiki Sherman asserted on Friday that Luxon had done the right thing, after initially doing the wrong thing, explaining: “New Zealanders who are doing it tough under the crushing weight of the cost-of-living crisis might have felt they had every right to feel ripped off. At every turn the prime minister has made a point to talk about the pressure everyday New Zealanders are under and is at pains to say the Government is fixated on sorting it” – see: How Luxon learned a tough political lesson

Sunday Star Times editor Tracy Watkins said that Luxon should never have claimed the allowance, because he should simply have chosen to live at Premier House, just as other New Zealanders have to live in uncomfortable homes: “As PM he had the choice of living in a house that may not be all that comfortable, but which let’s face it is probably in better condition than most rentals. He chose not to live in that house but another one that he preferred. He had choices that a lot of other people don’t have, and he expected taxpayers to carry the cost for that choice. That’s why it’s unfair” – see: Why the PM’s accommodation allowance failed the fairness test (paywalled)

The same newspaper also published Vernon Small (a former advisor to David Parker), who said that Luxon had been extremely tone-deaf, especially given his wealth and ownership of seven properties – see: Perk blinds MPs to political risk (paywalled)

But it was Luxon’s austerity measures that were the biggest problem for the PM claiming the allowance: “It also looks like hypocrisy – restraint for others, but not for me – especially when set against cost-cutting (and inevitable job losses) in the public sector, the promise to get the most from every tax dollar and the thundering pledge to no longer treat taxpayers as a ‘bottomless ATM’. Then there is his government’s ‘tough love’ on the work-ready, and the move to curb future benefit increases.”

Similar points were made by Labour leader Chris Hipkins, who stressed that Premier House was good enough for former prime ministers and that Luxon was being rather precious and wasteful.

Should other politicians stop receiving the allowance, and pay it back?

Given the consensus that Luxon was wrong to take the accommodation allowance because he already owns an apartment in Wellington, it raises the question of whether other politicians in the same situation should do likewise. For a long time, politicians from all political parties have bought Wellington properties and claimed the out-of-Wellington allowance.

During the last Government, there were four ministers in the same situation as Luxon, living in their own homes in Wellington and claiming the ministerial accommodation allowance, which is up to $45,000 a year. These were Willie Jackson, Jan Tinetti, Deborah Russell and Duncan Webb. All these MPs are likely to be in the same situation this year, but on a lower accommodation allowance.

In addition, last year four other Labour MPs were living in their Wellington properties while claiming the allowance. These were: Jenny Salesa, Arena Williams, Jamie Strange and Sarah Pallet. This was all covered in October in the Post by Andrea Vance – see: More than 20 MPs rent back their own homes at the taxpayer’s expense (paywalled)

Vance detailed MPs from other parties too: “Twelve National Party MPs, including leader Christopher Luxon, do the same. They are: Andrew Bayly; Gerry Brownlee; Judith Collins; Jacqui Dean; Barbara Kuriger; Melissa Lee; Ian McKelvie; Mark Mitchell; Simon O’Connor; Stuart Smith; Louise Upston and Michael Woodhouse. ACT’s Simon Court also claims the allowance and owns property in the Capital”.

Again in 2024, according to Stuff’s Bridie Witton, there are 20 MPs with second-homes in Wellington which “taxpayers are helping to pay their mortgages” – see: Prime Minister Christopher Luxon saga raises questions about politician entitlements

She also points out that many MPs are claiming taxpayer funds for their electoral offices, which are often owned by the politicians themselves – which means that they are the landlords of their own state-funded rentals. For example, in the case of the PM: “Luxon was also claiming $3750 in taxpayer cash a month to rent his electorate office, based in Northpark, in Auckland financial disclosures published in August and covering the year to June, show. Luxon owns the property, which is now valued at $1.52million.”

Although such conflicts of interest must be declared, Parliament continues to allow these rental arrangements, and all parties do it. And Vernon Small argued that both arrangements for politicians – living in their own Wellington houses, and renting their own electorate offices should not be allowed, even via trusts and superannuation funds: “It would be tidier and more transparent if they instead rented their Wellington digs or electorate offices from a third party, though the net effect is probably neutral for taxpayers. (For the benefit of Labour and the Greens, a political party or private superannuation fund are not third parties.) In the interests of public confidence, it is a change our parliamentarians should have made long ago.”

Rising discontent about politicians rorting the system

In the last two decades, there has been a growing global discontent about politicians being overpaid and rorting the system. This phenomenon really kicked off after the 2008 UK Parliamentary Expenses scandal. More scrutiny is now applied everywhere to the cost of politicians. And when Covid hit in 2020, here the Labour Government made a popular move in (temporarily) cutting ministerial salaries and encouraging top public servants to do the same.

In 2024 there’s now an increasing expectation of belt-tightening for the politicians. Part of this is due to the anti-political atmosphere in which elites are challenged and scrutinised more. But it’s also an immediate reaction to the cost-of-living crisis and the austerity that the new Government is pushing on others, especially in the public sector.

The consensus that quickly pressured Luxon to U-turn on Friday was extraordinary. There seemed to be no one willing to defend politicians’ right to their generous allowances. It was almost as if the spirit of Michael Joseph Savage had been revived.

Should politicians’ pay be cut?

That same socialist-like intolerance of elite self-aggrandisement might well continue to plague the new Government and Parliament whenever their perks and extravagance are out of line with any austerity being imposed on the public.

They might even find that there’s a public appetite for politicians to tighten their own generous salaries. At the moment the Remuneration Authority is undertaking their review of how much politicians should get paid. Their recommendations will be delivered next month, mere weeks before Nicola Willis presents her austerity Budget.

Expect to see some campaigning for pay cuts. The Taxpayer Union has recently said: “New Zealand’s MPs are already among the most highly paid in the world, and when you add in their additional perks and spending allowances, all of which are not subject to the Official Information Act, taxpayers aren’t getting a fair deal.”

The last time a major revamp of politician remuneration took place was in the 1980s. Previously politicians were paid more in line with the general public – a backbench MP earned roughly the same amount as an experienced teacher. Now MPs earn more than twice that ratio. And many politicians earn much more because of the other responsibilities they take on in Parliament and Government. With a basic salary of $460K, the prime minister earns about nine times the average wage.

The Remuneration Authority’s review might be expected to give politicians even higher pay, in line with escalating CEO pay. However, part of the Authority’s remit is to consider the economic conditions. They will need to therefore take into account the cost-of-living crisis that the public is experiencing as well as the coming austerity cuts from the new government. This should mean that politician pay is cut.

But if bigger salaries for politicians do come about from the review – especially at the same time that public services are being slashed – then Parliament might expect fireworks from an angry public.

It is also notable that Ministerial Services (the agency in charge of the Beehive administration) has recently briefed the new Government that entitlements for ministers may have to be trimmed to achieve the required 6.5 percent cuts demanded of the agency.

Housing allowances and other perks will also continue to be controversial. In the past, the only real scandals have been when ministers from Wellington have claimed accommodation or allowances that are only meant for those from outside the capital. This happened in 2001 when Labour and Alliance ministers Marian Hobbs and Phillida Bunkle claimed housing allowances even though they owned their properties in Wellington Central and had been candidates and voters in that electorate.

Similarly, in 2009 then Finance Minister Bill English had become a list MP and moved his family to live in Wellington, but illegitimately claimed a ministerial housing allowance based on his belief that he still represented constituents in his old Dipton electorate of Clutha-Southland. In that case, a TVNZ poll at the time showed that 62 percent of the public thought English’s entitlement issue had damaged his credibility.

What should happen next to Premier House?

The new Government has a headache about whether to spend the estimated $30m required to do up Premier House. The Opposition has now made it clear they will politicise anything except the most modest proposal for maintenance. And Luxon himself has suggested that they might just sell the property off.

Some commentators are telling National to just move ahead with the restoration. For example, Stuff’s Luke Malpass is calling for the proper investment to be made, saying “New Zealand is not a two-bit poor country and whoever the prime minister is should have a decent residence where various dignitaries and New Zealanders can be hosted”. He tells Luxon to show some leadership and spend the necessary money: “Simply wimping out and not investing in the House, or selling it to scratch an urgent political itch, would also be far from the leadership Luxon promised when coming into the premiership.”

Or else Luxon could ask himself, “What would Michael Joseph Savage do?”. Looking at the state of the public health system, or even the dire dental system, Luxon might be best to revert Premier House into what it was in the 1930s – a building that served the public rather than politicians.

Dr Bryce Edwards

Political Analyst in Residence, Director of the Democracy Project, School of Government, Victoria University of Wellington

This article can be republished for free under a Creative Commons copyright-free license. Attributions should include a link to the Democracy Project (https://democracyproject.nz)

Analysis by Dr Bryce Edwards – Democracy Project (https://democracyproject.nz)

Elections in the United States are dominated by big money. But what isn’t commonly understood is that most of it is raised and spent, not by the political parties and candidates for office, but by special interest groups who run their own election campaigns to influence the outcome.

Billions of dollars are channelled into campaign groups to run what are normally attack ads against politicians. The reason for this is because the political donations rules are designed to encourage this – with big clampdowns on people funding the politicians, but allowing them to more easily give to advocacy and lobbying groups instead.

This is a trend that is finally starting to occur in New Zealand. As the rules tighten on money going to candidates and political parties, this is pushing the big money towards less regulated and less transparent special interests. Critics call this “dark money” or “soft money” because it’s outside of the party system and therefore more difficult for officials and the public to scrutinise.

As with the US, such groups are incentivised to run negative attack campaigns, because if they run positive campaigns in support of a party or candidate, then that spending has to be allocated against the expenditure limits of the politicians, who also need to sign off their agreement with the campaigns (which they never want to do).

Dark money spent in the 2023 general election

Some of the money spent by campaign lobby groups must be declared. The Electoral Commission has just published the declarations of those organisations that spent more than $100,000 on advertising at the last election. However, there are many ways that “dark money” spending can stay below the threshold, and so most lobby group campaigning isn’t captured by the Electoral Commission.

The amount spent by these so-called “Third-Party promoters” has escalated quickly in recent elections. At the 2020 election, only $147,000 was spent. This increased by 13 times in 2023, with nearly $2m being declared. You can view all the declarations here: Registered promoter expenses for the 2023 General Election

The top spender lobby groups were the following, in order of money spent:

1. Vote for Better Limited: $386,515
2. New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union: $371,565
3. New Zealand Council of Trade Unions – Te Kauae Kaimahi: $299,344
4. Hobson’s Pledge: $283,899
5. Family First New Zealand: $204,771
6. The Better NZ Trust: $266,069.39
7. Groundswell NZ: $283,899

Lobby group spending dominated by the political right

This big spending list is dominated by rightwing campaigners – with only the CTU and Better NZ Trust being aligned with the leftwing parties. The latter carried out a campaign promoting policies to enable greater electric vehicle uptake. It’s unclear who funded the group, but previously they had listed one of their supporters as being Energy Efficiency & Conservation Authority (EECA) – a government agency – which led to allegations that they were a “sock puppet” group. And the CTU ran an attack campaign against Christopher Luxon, with advertisements saying he couldn’t be trusted.

On the right, there was a real mix of socially and fiscally conservative lobby groups. The biggest spender was the mysterious Vote for Better group, run by businessman Tim Barry, whose main interests are in the horse racing industry.

The next biggest spender was the Taxpayers’ Union, run by director Jordan Williams, which ran anti-Government campaigns, mostly focusing on extravagant spending. Some of the TU’s declared advertising expenses were paid to The Campaign Company, which is also owned by director Jordan Williams. The Campaign Company was also contracted to several other lobby groups – such as Groundswell and Hobson’s Pledge. The company was also employed by electorate candidates, such as NZ First’s Casey Costello.

Some of this is covered today by Farah Hancock’s very good RNZ report, $2m surge in election campaign spending by third-party groups. In this she raises whether some groups such as Hobson’s Pledge have been involved in “astro-turfing”, in which elite well-funded campaigns are passed off as grassroots movements. She also draws attention to the increasing amounts being spent by the conservative groups – Hobson’s Pledge increased their spend from $254,115 in 2017 to $283,899 last year, and Family First went from $141,224 in 2020 to $204,771 in 2023.

There were 31 “third party promoters” that were registered with the Electoral Commission because they were planning to spend significant amounts of election advertising, but 26 of these didn’t make a declaration, presumably because they say they didn’t spend above the $100,000 threshold that necessitates one.

RNZ’s Farah Hancock has also investigated some of these groups. One appears to have been politically successful in its objectives: “The Natural Health Alliance encouraged voters to choose NZ First to get the Therapeutic Products Act repealed. It ran several full-page advertisements in the New Zealand Herald. Chairperson Paddy Fahy indicated these cost close to $10,000 each. Repealing the Act formed part of National’s coalition agreements with NZ First and ACT and is included in the government’s 100-day plan.”

While we know some of what these campaign groups have spent money on, it’s difficult to discover where they raised their money from. Although New Zealand’s political donations rules keep tightening up – and some scholars think they should be tightened significantly more – this has merely pushed the big money into these more mysterious groups, who don’t need to disclose their funding. This trend is only likely to worsen. And because such groups are incentivized to run campaigns against political parties (because the rules discourage them from campaigning in favour of parties or candidates), New Zealand is likely to go further down the route of elections dominated by Americanised attack advertising funded by dark money.

Fights between left and right activists about such dark money are likely to escalate. The Labour Party’s Greg Presland, who is also a part owner in corporate lobbying-PR-consulting firm Polis Consulting Group, has been drawing attention to the funding of groups on the right, asking questions about the rightwing Vote for Better Limited, which was the biggest campaigner last year – see: About the promoters electoral returns

Here’s his key point about this campaign run by businessman Tim Barry: “There is nothing to suggest that he is a well healed individual who is deeply upset with the direction of the last Government and the thought struck me what if he was paid by someone to do all of this? What if he was instructed by a Fisheries Company or an Oil Company or a fundamentalist American Christian Church or the Atlas Network for that purpose to do his best to undermine confidence in the left during the election campaign? The problem with the promoter rules is there is no obligation for them to say who they were paid by. And it can be an overseas person or corporation.”

Other political donations scrutinised

Newsroom’s Jonathan Milne has also drawn attention to a big mining company that appears to have successfully influenced an election race on West Coast last year. He has been investigating the spending of $32,600 by Bathurst Resources to bankroll the campaign of an Independent candidate at last year’s election, which is said to have been a decisive factor in leading to Labour’s Damien O’Connor losing to National’s Maureen Pugh – see: Big coal company bought West Coast election campaign

The mining company was opposed to the Government’s mining policies, and so funded the contest of independent candidate Patrick Phelps who was campaigning for more mining on the West Coast. Phelps is the manager of Minerals West Coast Trust, which last year was given $220,000 by various mining companies.

The donation from Bathurst Resources meant Phelps was the biggest spending candidate, and according to various sources was able to pull enough votes off O’Connor to let National win the seat – something that the Bathurst Resources company also boasts about.

The experience has made Labour’s O’Connor even more critical of the role of the wealthy in the political process: “There are many international companies and organisations wanting to influence New Zealand elections for their own purposes – the smoking industry, the investment and real estate industry as we’re starting to see. And there’ll be many more… I think what people have to do is follow the money, ask the question: why such investments would be made? And for the most part, no business makes an investment without some realistic expectation of a return.”

The big fundraising and spending electoral candidates

The Electoral Commission released the donations and expenditure declarations of all electorate candidates last week, which means the public has a better understanding of the money being used by politicians at the local level. Below are some of the top figures from these declarations, detailing whether they were successful in their campaigns.

The top ten donation recipients:

1. Siva Kilari, National, Manurewa – unsuccessful: $110,483
2. Mahesh Muralidhar, National, Auckland Central – unsuccessful: $109,496
3. Shane Jones, National, Northland – unsuccessful: $95,524
4. Chlöe Swarbrick, Greens, Auckland Central – successful: $95,023
5. Chris Bishop, National, Hutt South – successful: $98,549
6. Cameron Brewer, National, Upper Harbour – successful: $86,659
7. Tim Costley, National, Ōtaki – successful: $79,679
8. Hamish Campbell, National, Ilam – successful: $70,677
9. Scott Sheeran, National, Wellington Central – unsuccessful: $64,260
10. Catherine Wedd, National, Tuktuki – successful: $61,920

The top ten election advertising spenders:

1. Scotty Bright, Democracy NZ, Port Waikato – unsuccessful: $41,905
2. Rachel Boyack, Labour, Nelson – successful: $32,560
3. Julie Anne Genter, Greens, Rongotai – successful: $32,554
4. Raf Manji, TOP, Ilam – unsuccessful: $32,502
5. Tim Costley, National, Ōtaki – successful: $32,089
6. Chlöe Swarbrick, Greens, Auckland Central – successful: $31,643
7. Dana Kirkpatrick, National, East Coast – successful: $31,565
8. Cameron Brewer, National, Upper Harbour – successful: $31,243
9. Katie Nimon, National, Napier – successful: $31,191
10. Carlos Cheung, National, Mt Roskill – successful: $31,072

Some of this information is also available today in Glenn McConnell’s very good Stuff article, The politicians who were flush with cash and broke the bank campaigning

Dr Bryce Edwards

Political Analyst in Residence, Director of the Democracy Project, School of Government, Victoria University of Wellington

This article can be republished for free under a Creative Commons copyright-free license. Attributions should include a link to the Democracy Project (https://democracyproject.nz)

Analysis by Dr Bryce Edwards: Democracy Project (https://democracyproject.nz)

The Labour Party’s fortunes go from bad to worse. Ever since the party was turfed out of power in October, incurring its biggest-ever loss, the party has shown no real sign of learning any lessons from its defeat, nor does it show any capacity to revive itself.

Last week is being labelled its “worst week yet” by commentators. One of them, Vernon Small, who until recently was the senior adviser to David Parker, wrote yesterday in the Sunday Star Times that Labour appears to have finally hit rock bottom last week, with another poor opinion poll result of 28 per cent support, Grant Robertson abandoning ship, and a new report out showing that in government Labour had failed on child poverty – see: Was that Labour’s worst week yet? (paywalled)

Not only is Robertson a major loss of talent for the party in opposition, Small points out that most of the other stars have been departing: “As well as Robertson and Ardern, Kelvin Davis, Nanaia Mahuta, Andrew Little, Michael Wood and Kiritapu Allan have all jumped ship or been thrown overboard. Third-ranked Megan Woods is being equivocal about her long-term plans.” Meanwhile, Small points out that Chris Hipkins has demoted other solid talent, such as Damien O’Connor and David Parker, leaving Labour’s front bench “looking decidedly callow.”

Small suggests that Labour views tax reform as a recurrent campaign nightmare” to avoid rather than “an opportunity to define itself, and fund its policy platform”. And he says that in keeping Parker away from the revenue and economic portfolios, he’s signalling that a wealth tax is off the agenda. Instead, Hipkins has put the rather dry Deborah Russell in charge of tax, and she says that wealth taxes are “largely unknown” and too complicated to explain.

And in the weekend another Labour insider wrote an analysis on the Labour-aligned blogsite The Standard about how Hipkins is more interested in preserving his leadership than giving MPs like Parker a chance to innovate on tax policy: “Hipkins is also using the elevation of Edmonds and Russell to shank David Parker. Parker is the only guy left with that combination of progressive chops, huge track record, and the merest mote of charisma to be an alternative leader to Hipkins. Hipkins has sent yet another signal to Parker to retire. This leaves Hipkins free to turn the entire Labour effort into an even more ineffectual Wellington-circling wankathon taking two terms to recover from the smashing he got it in 2023” – see: What’s Left?

Labour failed on poverty and inequality

It’s last week’s Statistics New Zealand report on child poverty that is truly eviscerating for Labour. As Small argues, Labour MPs and activists now need to acknowledge their government “didn’t adequately protect the most vulnerable being hit hard by the cost-of-living crisis.”

This is why many on the political left have been so disappointed by the last government. Arguably things got much worse for the poor and working class, while the rich got richer under Hipkins, Jacinda Ardern and Grant Robertson. Hence, some of the farewell commentaries for Robertson have been less than positive.

Some of the most scathing are from those on the political left. For example, activist Steven Cowan sums up what a lot of those on the left think: “The unvarnished truth is that, despite Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern promising to lead a government focused on economic transformation, very little changed. The Labour Government, supported by the Greens, merely tinkered. Working people were, again, like Oliver Twist, left pleading for more. The new child poverty figures only serve to underline the fact that the Labour Government continued to deliver out thin gruel for the working class its so-called ‘socialist’ MPs claimed to represent. And, presiding over it all, was Finance Minister Grant Robertson. While he wrote, in a nod to New Zealand’s myth of egalitarianism, that he wanted to give everyone ‘a fair suck of the sav’, in reality he was a resolute defender of the neoliberal status quo” – see: A loyal lieutenant of capital

Robertson’s end of an error

The toughest column on Robertson’s time in power has been written by Newstalk’s Heather du Plessis-Allan who says that his departure is not being accurately evaluated by the commentariat and press gallery because he’s the sort of politician that they like having a beer with. She rightly reckons that Robertson won’t be willing to have any more beers with her once he’s read her column: Grant Robertson is a great bloke, but he was a terrible Finance Minister (paywalled)

Robertson is praised by du Plessis-Allan for many of his talents, but she says he should be ranked as New Zealand’s worst finance minister on record – even worse than Robert Muldoon. This is mainly because he took the public’s debt from “$5 billion in 2019 to a projected $93b this year” without producing anything much to show for it. She says at least when Muldoon wasted money on building dams and energy infrastructure the country was left with some assets as a result – but in Robertson’s case, he seemed to blow all those billions without anyone really knowing where it went. She poses the question: “What can we point to and say ‘Grant paid for that’?”

Here’s one good example she gives of Robertson’s propensity to spend very poorly: “He said yes to Michael Wood’s bike bridge, which is the perfect example of wasteful spending. It was a stupid idea. It cost us more than $51m in consultants and rented office space. Then it was canned. We spent money and we have nothing to show for it. The implications are serious. We now don’t have enough money to pay the nurses their backpay or the police the pay rise they’re due. Or the GPs.”

Robertson also failed to advance any real economic reform. And despite lots of talk about how unfair the tax system is, Robertson mostly retained the status quo: “If he really believed the tax system needed to be fairer, he had his chance. He had the ear of Jacinda Ardern. He is one of her best friends. And he either couldn’t convince her or didn’t really try.”

Should Hipkins be replaced as Labour leader?

The worst part of the 1News poll for Labour last week was Hipkins’ plummeting numbers for preferred prime minister. Falling by ten percentage points revived speculation about whether Hipkins had to go. The NBR’s political editor Brent Edwards argued in the weekend that Hipkins is safe for the moment: “the knives will not be out now. It is surely too early in the electoral cycle to consider a change of leader, but the question might arise closer to the election if Labour is unable to lift its support and bridge the gap between it and National” – see: Tragedy, polls, retirement, forced apology and a grim scorecard

Herald political editor Claire Trevett also says that Hipkins is currently safe: “He does have some time up his sleeve. There are no signs as yet that any other credible leadership contender is ready to put their hand up. Once regular speculation starts around one or two names, that will become a more present danger for him. But until there are proper contenders to be a new leader, there is no point in rolling the old one. That gives him a window of opportunity to make sure that those names do not emerge, and that he is the one still standing in 2026” – see: Ginny Andersen’s attack on Mark Mitchell does Chris Hipkins no favours (paywalled)

Trevett also points to another low point in Labour’s past week, with another rising star in the party displaying questionable judgment, and making HIpkins’ job harder: “Ginny Andersen has done no favours for him with her bizarre attack on Police Minister Mark Mitchell on Newstalk ZB about his past as a security contractor in the Middle East. Mitchell quite rightly described it as a character assassination. Hipkins has said it went too far. Andersen has apologised to Mitchell personally, but not publicly and clearly not satisfactorily. She is now refusing to front on it.”

Nonetheless, Anderson is still talked about as the “running mate” for Kieran McAnulty in any attempt to replace the current leadership with a new generation of leaders that might be more able to connect with working class voters.

Labour is still the party of the Professional Managerial Class

The Labour’s progressive agenda and identity is very much their strongest sales pitch. And with the departure of Grant Robertson, the party’s reputation as a feminist force has become stronger – 70 per cent of its front bench is now female.

Also, by appointing Barbara Edmonds to replace Robertson as finance spokesperson, she creates a record as the party’s first female in that role and the first the Pasifika person as well.

This achievement is saluted in yesterday’s Herald with an editorial that says “The once impossibly high glass ceiling has been smashed”, with Edmonds creating “a new pathway not only for herself but one for other Pacific politicians and those aspiring to be so one day. She also represents something that was not always evident in New Zealand and overseas – brown women in leadership roles. Brown women in politics” – see: Barbara Edmonds’ new appointment another step forward for Pasifika (paywalled)

However, as to whether the party still represents working people is more in question these days. In recent years it’s become more apparent the party has been captured by the Wellington “professional managerial class”, pushing the party away from its traditional working class politics towards a middle class social liberalism.

This was discussed in the weekend by political commentator Janet Wilson: “October’s election result proved Labour has a problem of Democrat-sized proportions; they’ve become disenfranchised from their base while other left-wing parties enjoy the benefits. Which is how the Greens managed to snaffle the red strongholds of Rongotai and Wellington Central, and Te Pāti Māori grabbed six of the seven Maori seats. That’s what happens when there’s a divide between the professional managerial class running the party and the supposed blue-collar workers they’re meant to represent” – see: As Robertson heads for the exit, Labour’s reset becomes critical (paywalled)

Wilson explains that Hipkins epitomises that professional managerial class, and continues to hamper any tax reform that might threaten the interests of his own wealthy milieu: “As a paid-up member of that managerial class, having worn the well-trampled path from student politics directly to Parliament, the question must be, is Chris Hipkins the man to represent the workers in an age when AI threatens to disrupt all jobs? Can a leader who scuttled the tax work of his peers in one election hope to stop increasing dissension in the ranks if its polling numbers continue to slide and party irrelevancy beckons?”

There’s a hollowness to a party that continually refuses to implement reforms that would benefit Labour’s traditional base. Wilson says the party has therefore “lost its ideological compass and is adrift in the wilderness of what-it-doesn’t-stand-for. All while applying the magical thinking of all opposition parties – that the government of the day will only last for a term before they are ushered back into power.”

The hollowness has been recently discussed by Matthew Hooton, who has argued that Labour (along with National) has become a “mere empty vessel” for “the personal ambitions and brands of whoever gets control” of the party. Therefore, in lacking any real connection with social forces apart the Liberal Establishment of places like Grey Lynn, Hooton says the party can’t enthuse working people anymore.

In his recent column, What Labour must do to reclaim its core support (paywalled) Hooton says that Labour was “supposed to be about redistributing at least some power and wealth, from capital to labour and from the ruling establishment to ordinary people.” But looking through Labour’s last two times in office, Hooton suggests that the party has given up on its traditional constituency in favour of conservatism, and this will need to change if it is to be re-elected: “Labour will never win back the working-class and middle-income voters who switched to National in 2023 until it offers more change than Ardern and Hipkins were comfortable with. If there is to be a do-nothing Government, former Labour voters may as well stick with National, which is historically so good at it, but isn’t seen to pander to the woke, Wellington, pounamu- and David Jones-wearing, yet mainly Pākehā elites.”

A similar argument was made two weeks ago by Andrea Vance, writing in The Post, saying that Labour’s “existential crisis” relates to its inability to relate to working people, and the fact that it has evolved “into a clique of career-driven politicians who marketed themselves at the progressive middle class”. In lieu of an interest in working class politics, Labour now specialises in “futile culture wars and identity politics” – see: What’s left for the left? (paywalled)

To find a way forward, Vance argues “Labour should be asking: who does it now represent?” And “this requires a more fundamental reshaping of how the party thinks about workers.”

Is there anyone in Labour that can at least pretend to be in touch with working people rather than the professional managerial class? Hooton wrote a column for the Herald at the start of the year that singled out who the best replacement for Hipkins might be – see: Apologies needed for Labour to be taken seriously (paywalled)

Here’s his conclusion: “Thirty-eight-year-old list MP Kieran McAnulty is on manoeuvres, with speculation list MP Ginny Andersen would make a good running mate. Both served briefly as ministers in the last year of the defeated regime. McAnulty, while assuring Labour activists he is well to the left of Ardern on economics and tax, has built a blokey non-woke brand based on driving a ute and liking a beer and a bet. He’s certainly more in tune with today’s post-Covid, recessionary New Zealand than anyone from Grey Lynn.”

Dr Bryce Edwards

Political Analyst in Residence, Director of the Democracy Project, School of Government, Victoria University of Wellington

This article can be republished for free under a Creative Commons copyright-free license. Attributions should include a link to the Democracy Project (https://democracyproject.nz)

Incoming Prime Minister Christopher Luxon is now being openly mocked and ridiculed by political commentators for his failure to achieve a coalition government. There are certainly signs that Luxon hasn’t managed the process well, and raising questions about competency at this early stage is a poor start to government.

The most savage criticism of Luxon is coming from the political right. Today rightwing political commentator and former National Beehive staffer Matthew Hooton has a scathing column in the Herald giving his account, obviously based on insider leaks, of how the negotiations have unfolded. Hooton paints a picture of National’s negotiations as a failure, caused by Luxon’s arrogance and hubris.

Hooton records Luxon’s criticisms immediately after the election of how previous Prime Ministers have conducted coalition negotiations and his claims that “I’ve done a lot of mergers and acquisitions”. With the exception of the Air New Zealand-Virgin alliance that broke up when he was chief executive, there is little evidence of any other mergers Luxon worked on in his business career.

Despite boasting of his business experience and relationship-building skills, Hooton says the National leader has astounded those involved in the negotiations by his cackhandedness.

After apparently not achieving much of the promised progress in the three-week period before final results came in, Hooton reports that the presumptive PM then entered talks without bothering to take his coalition partners seriously. Hooton reports, “Act, NZ First and National insiders say Luxon is a talker rather than a listener. He never asked how Act or NZ First thought negotiations should proceed, or what they wanted from them.”

Newstalk ZB’s Heather du Plessis-Allan has also criticised Luxon’s management of the negotiations, pointing out on Monday that only the 1996 MMP coalition negotiations have taken longer: “That’s embarrassing for Chris Luxon. Because he’s the guy who’s talked up his negotiating skills, given he’s done a lot of mergers and acquisitions. And he’s the guy who set the deadline of wrapping this up in time for him to go to APEC.”

Why is this important? First impressions matter, and du Plessis-Allan suggests that Luxon and National’s reputation is suffering: “The start of a Government is a really important period. It sets up voters’ expectations for the first term, that’s why Governments often write up 100 day plans. Because they want to create a sense of urgency and give the impression they’re changing things fast. Literally the opposite of that is happening right now. There is no sense of urgency, nothing’s changing fast, there’s no momentum.”

Why the rush? Danyl McLauchlan explains today in the Listener that Luxon “promised to introduce a mini-Budget by Christmas and he’s running out of runway to get that done. They want their ministerial offices staffed and running but they can’t hire anyone because they don’t know who has what portfolio. They’re wasting crucial time.”

McLauchlan says the speed of the negotiations “will be driving Luxon wild with frustration” but Winston Peters will be entirely comfortable: “For Peters these negotiations – the tactics, the games, the stalling, the triumphs – are the quintessence of politics.”

He also points out that, although Peters cannot leverage the threat of supporting Labour instead, “he’s demonstrating his power over his larger coalition partners, making them come to him. He is the most important person in the country, the absolute centre of attention. And he will go on like this: he always does.”

Luxon has, according to commentators, failed to grasp the power that NZ First and Act have in the negotiations. He has assumed they are captive negotiators who will essentially have to agree to whatever he offers them. Hence there have been reports of low-ball offers that both Act and NZ First have been dismissive of, if not offended by.

Seymour and Peters have outmanoeuvred Luxon, not only because they have shown they are willing to work together, but because Luxon has failed to realise that the minor parties can walk away from the negotiations, causing a new election or forcing National to form a minority government that would be even more reliant on them.

As Hooton points out today, the pressure is on Luxon to produce a deal: “It is he who must close a deal before Christmas or there will be new elections. Seymour and Peters can quite happily walk away, leaving Luxon to form a minority Government that would need to win their agreement issue-by-issue. If anything, Seymour and Peters would be more powerful if not limited by a coalition agreement and the decaying but still burdensome rules of Cabinet confidentiality and collective responsibility. Seymour and Peters understood this all along. Luxon needs them if his Government is not to be a complete circus, with the clown show of the past five weeks being repeated whenever it wants to do anything contentious. Seymour and Peters don’t need him at all.”

Does this suggest Luxon will prove to be a weak prime minister? Leftwing political commentator Chris Trotter thinks so, arguing that Luxon’s poor negotiating skills only illustrates how little power he has, and essentially Luxon now looks like “an inexperienced numpty”.

Writing for Newstalk ZB today, Trotter suggests Luxon has overplayed his hand: “Placing insultingly meagre first-offers before such men might be survivable if Luxon had come to the table, as Key did in 2008, with 45 per cent of the party vote. Turning up with this election’s 38 per cent is nowhere near so impressive.”

Trotter argues the troubled negotiations should remind the public just how poorly Luxon has performed since becoming National leader, especially compared to the likes of his mentor John Key. On becoming leader Key made audacious raids into Labour constituency and ideologies by first visiting poor parts of Auckland and then helping Sue Bradford get her “anti-smacking bill” passed.

Luxon’s record is derisory by comparison, and in his first big test all that he has achieved is the own-goal of uniting David Seymour and Winston Peters in a negotiating bloc against him. And Trotter agrees that they now hold the winning cards, and Luxon is under pressure to capitulate: “What Luxon and his colleagues have seemingly failed to appreciate is that all the pressure is on them. As the largest party, they come, not with all the cards in their hands, but with a very large clock ticking loudly in their ears. Covid and a cost-of-living crisis have made New Zealanders ill-tempered and impatient. In the minds of many, the wait for a new government has already gone well over time”.

It’s now five weeks since the election. But there is talk today of an agreement being reached, perhaps on Sunday. But it could take much longer – especially if the three parties take the offers back to their respective parties and fail to get their immediate sign-off. We already know that the big policy sticking points have been over tax and a referendum on the Treaty. These will be the big issues to watch out for, to see who has compromised.

Hooton says today that if the minor parties aren’t happy with what Luxon offers on tax and the Treaty, they will be happy to have another election and campaign on those issues – which is likely to only make them more popular.

Then there are the portfolios and baubles. All parties deny these are big issues, but they always are crucial to the minor parties. And they might prove to be a big headache for Luxon. Who does he give Deputy PM to? And Peters is rumoured to have demanded the role of Attorney General, in charge of his old foes the Serious Fraud Office.

Such dilemmas would tax even the best negotiators. And in Luxon’s case, it might well defeat him.

*******

Dr Bryce Edwards is the Political Analyst in Residence at Victoria University of Wellington. He is the director of the Democracy Project (https://democracyproject.nz)

New Zealand’s new Government will need to hit the ground running on foreign affairs.

Determining New Zealand’s full response to the war in Gaza and the fallout in the wider Middle East will be the first major test for whoever takes the foreign minister’s role.

New Zealand has been run by a Labour caretaker administration since elections were held on October 14.  But the final results are now in – and once coalition negotiations are out of the way, a new right-leaning government will take office.

During the transition period, caretaker Labour Prime Minister Chris Hipkins and outgoing foreign minister Nanaia Mahuta have respected the convention of saying as little as possible while waiting for their successors.

When Labour has spoken out on foreign affairs, it has been after consultation with the National Party leader and soon-to-be Prime Minister, Christopher Luxon.

Luxon has characterised the new war in the Middle East as ‘sad and tragic on both sides’ – a phrasing that reflects New Zealand’s overall balanced position towards the conflict so far.

One possible exception to the low-key approach was New Zealand’s decision to cast a vote in favour of a resolution in the UN General Assembly that called for a ‘humanitarian truce’ in Gaza.

Many of New Zealand’s closest Pacific and Western partners either abstained on the resolution (e.g. Australia, Canada and the UK) or opposed it altogether (such as the United States, Tonga and Fiji).

It seems likely that New Zealand’s own vote in favour was decided by a narrow margin.

Carolyn Schwalger, New Zealand’s ambassador to the UN, said New Zealand’s support came despite Wellington being ‘deeply disappointed’ by the resolution’s failure to directly condemn Hamas.

Luxon later largely echoed Schwalger in a media interview, stressing the need to ‘prioritise the protection of civilians’, but condemning Hamas and emphasising Israel’s right to defend itself.

Still, New Zealand’s vote in favour suggests there is still life to the country’s ‘independent foreign policy’, even as Wellington creeps closer to Washington at a broader level.

It will now be up to the new Government to decide what happens next.

To command a majority in Parliament, Christopher Luxon’s National Party will need a deal with two other parties. These are the Act Party, led by David Seymour, and Winston Peters’ New Zealand First.

Of the two smaller parties, New Zealand First is likely to play a particularly crucial role in determining the shape of New Zealand’s international relations.

Winston Peters has served as foreign minister twice before – but only under Labour-led governments. He held the role under Helen Clark from 2005-2008 and again under Jacinda Ardern from 2017-2020.

Peters is said to want the foreign minister’s job again – which would come as little surprise.

Of course, the rumours could still prove to be incorrect.

Now aged 78, Peters may not want the burden of travel himself.

Other options include Judith Collins, a former National leader, and Gerry Brownlee.

However, Brownlee is a likely candidate for Speaker. For her part, Collins easily has the experience for foreign affairs, having been in Parliament since 2002.

If Collins is not chosen, the defence portfolio would be a worthy alternative option, especially as New Zealand looks to make some major decisions on military spending.

Surprisingly, no woman has ever served as New Zealand’s defence minister. A role model for Collins could be Ursula von der Leyen, a centre-right politician who served as Germany’s first-ever female defence minister from 2013-19 and went on to become a high-profile president of the European Commission.

Yet another option could be for Peters to claim the foreign minister job for his New Zealand First deputy, Shane Jones, who served as a roving ‘Ambassador for Pacific Economic Development’ in the foreign ministry from 2014-2017.

The position was somewhat controversially created for Jones by the then National-led government after Jones quit as a Labour MP, before he later reemerged as a key figure in New Zealand First.

Even if it passes up on the foreign affairs portfolio, New Zealand First is likely to be influential and outspoken on international relations issues.

An ‘agree to disagree’ clause in New Zealand First’s coalition agreement with Labour in 2017 prevented New Zealand First from being muzzled under usual collective Cabinet responsibility provisions.

Peters’ past speeches provide some clues as to how he might respond to current developments.

During his first term as foreign minister, Peters observed at the UN shortly after Israel’s 32-day war with Hezbollah in 2006 that conflicts in the Middle East had largely been left to fester, resulting in ‘an unstable environment where extremism, injustice and despair flourish’.

Peters told the UN General Assembly that peacekeeping efforts – such as the strengthening of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) following the 2006 war – were only a stopgap solution and would be ‘doomed to failure unless the underlying political and security issues are addressed’.

More recently, as tensions between the US and Iran mounted, Peters observed in a speech to the Otago Foreign Policy School in 2019 that it was in New Zealand’s interest to stop ‘flashpoints escalating’ and commended Washington for avoiding ‘retaliatory strikes’. The speech built on an earlier statement in which Peters called for ‘caution, restraint and commonsense’ from all involved.

A 2023 election campaign speech by Peters that was dedicated to foreign affairs provides some wider insights into New Zealand First’s foreign affairs and defence priorities.

These include picking up on New Zealand First’s efforts from 2017-2020 to boost New Zealand’s foreign aid and defence budgets. At the time, Peters secured an additional $NZ714m in funding for foreign aid – largely targeted at the Pacific as part of his ‘Pacific Reset’ policy. Meanwhile, military spending was boosted by around $NZ4 billion over the same three-year period.

Peters also gained funding for 50 more diplomats – a feat he seems keen to build on.

Contrasting New Zealand with two other small states – Singapore and Ireland – Peters argued New Zealand needed ‘highly active diplomacy’ which in his view had been ‘shockingly not pursed with vigour’ since 2020.

This was probably partly a jibe at the outgoing foreign minister, Nanaia Mahuta, who came under pressure during her tenure for a perceived reluctance to travel frequently.

Peters’ contrast with Singapore and Ireland also surfaced in a campaign interview, with some eviscerating criticism: ‘Ireland has two-and-a-half-times more diplomats offshore, so does Singapore – maybe they know something about exporting and trade that we should be practising, rather than this eternal idiotic statement that New Zealand is ‘punching above its weight’’.

As foreign minister, Peter oversaw the opening of new diplomatic posts in Cairo (2007), Dublin (2018), Stockholm (2008 and 2018 – the latter a reopening). But not all of these were his idea.

On the substance, Ireland already has around 100 diplomatic missions globally – twice the number maintained by New Zealand – and is currently expanding its diplomatic footprint even further under an initiative dubbed ‘Global Ireland 2025’.

It remains to be seen whether Peters will be in a position to replicate the ‘Global Ireland 2025’ plan in New Zealand – and what exactly he would seek to achieve with more diplomatic resources.

Opening up more missions in the Middle East would help to give New Zealand the eyes and ears it needs to understand and respond more effectively to events in the region. As the current war shows, these frequently have a global impact.

Another focus might be to boost diplomats’ access to foreign language training, which has been dealt a blow by recent cuts to languages by New Zealand universities.

Nevertheless, stepping up engagement in the Pacific is probably going to be the bigger long-term priority for New Zealand First.

In a 2006 speech, Winston Peters remarked that the Pacific’s ‘strategic significance presents opportunity and challenge’ and the threats included ‘chequebook diplomacy’ – probably an early veiled barb at China.

Fast-forward to 2023, and the New Zealand First leader seems keen to pick up on the ‘Pacific Reset’ policy he launched in March 2018.

In his September campaign speech, Peters recapitulated how as foreign minister he had sought to work more closely with Pacific countries themselves, as well as boosting engagement with the US and Japan – on top of the foreign aid and defence budget boosts.

But Peters warned he was ‘seriously concerned that the momentum we started has fallen by the wayside since 2020’.

After a successful election campaign, the New Zealand First leader is now in a position to change that.

Christopher Luxon needs Winston Peters to form a government.

And a shakeup of New Zealand’s international relations seems likely.

*******

Geoffrey Miller is the Democracy Project’s geopolitical analyst and writes on current New Zealand foreign policy and related geopolitical issues. He has lived in Germany and the Middle East and is a learner of Arabic and Russian. He is currently working on a PhD at the University of Otago on New Zealand’s relations with the Gulf states.

This article can be republished for free under a Creative Commons copyright-free license. Attributions should include a link to the Democracy Project (https://democracyproject.nz)

In recent decades the New Zealand Parliament has become more representative of some of the historically neglected demographics in our society. As I told TVNZ’s Q+A programme in the weekend, it’s become browner, younger, more female and more gay, and this is good progress – see: New MP intake heavy on farmers, light on unionists.

But at the same time as Parliament has become more diverse in terms of gender, ethnicity, age, and sexuality, it has become significantly narrower in terms of socioeconomics, occupation, or social class. Ordinary working-class people have been squeezed out of politics.

The trend reflects the professionalisation of politics that has occurred since about the 1980s, when all political parties increasingly became staffed and represented by people from the professional managerial class. Gone were the manual workers, the wage-earners, and in came the managers and higher socio-economic professions. Candidates and MPs were much more likely to be lawyers, public servants, accountants, and businesspeople than even teachers or nurses.

In the 2023 intake of 40 new MPs, ten are business owners, nine are former local government politicians, eight are lawyers, four are from media backgrounds, three are accountants, and another three are former parliamentary staffers. There are no union workers, classroom teachers, clerical workers, and certainly no blue-collar workers among them. Such occupations are seemingly unwelcome in today’s professionalised political parties.

At the same time, we have seen the rise of career politicians, with much younger candidates coming into Parliament after rising through the ranks of student associations, working as Parliamentary staffers, or even as local government politicians.

Labour’s professionalisation

A big part of Parliament’s changing demographics is due to the transformation of the Labour Party. Although the party was expressly established as a vehicle to get working class people into Parliament and Government, Labour has long since ceased with this aim and has become similar to National in terms of the backgrounds of the MPs and people at the top of the party.

The original Labour Party was based in the trade union movement, but by the 1980s it was a middle-class party – which is why the Fourth Labour Government was so easily captured by the neoliberal economic reform programme.

According to leftwing political commentator Josie Pagani, the middle-class bias of modern leftwing parties means that more liberal or social issues are prioritised instead of fixing the problems that most materially impact working class citizens. She argued earlier this year that parties of the left still promise a lot to the working class, but once in power “they reflect the priorities of the college-educated middle classes – who now run these parties. Ban plastic bags. Subsidies for EVs. Cycleways, ban hate speech” etc. Pagani argues that although Labour is inclined to sneer at the working class, what the party really now needs to do is “recruit more candidates who are comfortable in the smoko room, not just the university common room.”

Labour currently has a contradiction whereby the party’s caucus is mostly made up of middle class or wealthy individuals, yet they are seeking to win office on the votes of largely working-class people, with whom the party doesn’t have much organic connection. Increasingly Labour is seen as a creature of the Wellington central bureaucracy rather than ordinary people in provincial or working New Zealand. This isn’t helped by the fact that a quarter of the new Labour caucus live in the capital.

Conservatives reorientate back to farmers

The National Party has also been professionalising in recent decades, bringing in more of the professional managerial class as MPs and moving away from some of its original base in areas like farming. Whereas Federated Farmers was once known as “the National Party in gumboots” this connection dwindled after the 1980s, and farmer representation in Parliament declined too.

However, after National’s shock 2020 defeat the party has been rebuilding, which has involved bringing farmers back into the party, including as candidates. Hence the new National caucus has an influx of MPs from a farming background.

What’s more, Act and NZ First have also brought more farmers into Parliament. In the new intake there are, on current votes, going to be seven new farmers in Parliament. In fact, amongst the conservative parties there will now be a total 18 MPs with a farming or horticultural background.

This shift is in line with a global public mood that is against technocrats, insiders, and cosmopolitan elites. National, Act, and NZ First have grasped, to some degree, the populist Zeitgeist away from the professional managerial class, and have been electorally successful because of it.

Parliament’s working-class democratic deficit

Working class voices were largely absent from the recent election campaign. Instead, the contest was mostly just a debate between different elements of the educated classes and the wealthy.

Democracy suffers when politics is so narrow. It means our representatives simply don’t have the lived experience of ordinary people. They don’t have to worry about paying the bills, they don’t have to worry about the housing crisis.

Josie Pagani has recently pointed out that although only about nine per cent of the general public own more than one house, nearly two-thirds of Parliamentarians do. And while only one in four New Zealanders have a tertiary education degree, in Parliament it’s nine out of ten.

This means that our political system excludes most of the population – those who don’t have capital, great wealth, or aren’t highly educated. So, this large part of society is increasingly feeling disenfranchised. Pagani says: “If a group of people don’t see themselves – or their concerns – represented in their parliament, trust in government declines. Our country gets more divided.”

Furthermore, the fact that our Parliament is made up of the wealthy property-owning professional managerial class helps explain why governments do so little for working people. As Pagani points out, under the new professionalised model of politics the “share of the nation’s income going to wage earners, which had sat at around 70% in the 1970s, fell to under 60% by the late 2010s. If it had stayed at 70%, the average wage today would be $12,000 higher.”

The dominance of middle-class professionals also means that politicians do little to fix the many crises that disproportionately impacts those at the bottom – from the housing crisis through to the cost-of-living crisis, poor public transport or public health services.

For example, the current Prime Minister and Labour leader, Chris Hipkins, who was previously the Minister of Health, pays for personal private health insurance which means that unlike most citizens, he’s not so reliant on the underfunded and crisis-plagued public health system. It’s the same for most politicians, regardless of which party they are from – they’ve used their wealth and professional abilities to separate themselves from the travails and difficulties that most voters face.

Can the left bring working people into Parliament?

Perhaps, therefore, it’s time for the New Zealand Parliament to get an injection of working-class politics. National and the other conservative parties will always bring businesspeople into Parliament, and now we are seeing them return to their traditional constituency with more farmers too.

Looking at the left, it’s unlikely that the Green Party can foster any sort of working-class politics, as their voting constituency is very much the professional managerial class. It’s no coincidence that the Greens now win electorates like Auckland Central, Rongotai, and Wellington Central.

Perhaps it’s only the Labour Party that can bring working people into Parliament. And just because Labour has been failing on this doesn’t mean that the party can’t change. Certainly, after the party’s big defeat at the ballot box, and arguably its failed record in government, Labour is going to need to do some soul searching. This should involve questions about why the party exists, and who exactly it represents.

Although it might not be a popular proposal amongst the current Labour caucus, the answer to the party’s current woes could well lie in ditching the middle-class approach. Of course, all of this is more easily said than done. And ultimately, even if Labour decided to put more working people into Parliament, there’s a big question about whether such people would be ready to embrace a party that long ago abandoned the working class.

Dr Bryce Edwards is the Political Analyst in Residence at Victoria University of Wellington. He is the director of the Democracy Project (https://democracyproject.nz)

Analysis by Dr Bryce Edwards.

The Labour Government was elected with 50 per cent of the vote three years ago, but current opinion polls show their vote could halve in this year’s election, which would be one of the biggest plunges in political history.

Most polls have Labour on about 26 per cent. And the downward trajectory is clear – 1News has reported Labour dropping seven times in a row in their poll. And it’s not just the polls showing Labour is in serious trouble. The Australian TAB takes bets on the New Zealand election, and for each $1 dollar bet they are currently paying out $4.50 for a Labour win, and only $1.18 for a National win.

Newshub political editor Jenna Lynch has predicted “absolute carnage and political armageddon” for Labour – pointing out the party risks losing senior MPs like David Parker, Willie Jackson, Adrian Rurawhe, and Ayesha Verrall. And if things go really badly, even Finance Minister Grant Robertson could be chucked out.

Labour could be headed for an even bigger defeat than in 1931 when Gordon Coates’ governing Reform Party plunged to just 26.6 per cent.

So why has Labour gone from such highs to such lows so quickly? The answer to this question will be discussed for a long time after 14 October, but we are already seeing some early explanations for why Labour has become so unpopular.

1) Labour’s handling of Covid

Labour won its 50 per cent vote in 2020 in response to its successful handling of the first wave of Covid. The public was extremely grateful that Jacinda Ardern’s government prioritised protecting public health until vaccines became widely available, and ensured workers and businesses were supported. But subsequent Covid waves made it into the country, and various aspects of Labour’s management of Covid were found wanting.

Last week former Cabinet Minister Peter Dunne said the main damage to Labour’s re-election prospects can be traced back to the middle of 2021 when Covid hit the country: “the government’s perceived slowness in winding back pandemic restrictions, alongside the mounting cost-of-living crisis brought about rising levels of public discontent. Compounding that was the second Auckland lockdown, which Ardern promised would be ‘short and sharp’, but which went on for over four months.”

Labour’s Covid story is now seen by many as negative rather than positive, and the Government is barely mentioning it in their re-election campaign. As Stuff political editor Luke Malpass has reported, “Voters just don’t seem to want to hear about it any more. They don’t want the Government crowing about how good it was – because it doesn’t feel that way now. And all the privations and disruption seem best forgotten.”

2) Failure to deliver the promised transformation, or even the basics

Labour came to power in 2017 promising transformational reform. They were largely judged to have failed to deliver on their promises after their first term, and it was only their handling of Covid in 2020 that saved Labour from being turfed out that year. Since then, the narrative that Labour hasn’t delivered has only grown stronger.

Labour’s flagship KiwiBuild programme, with its promise of 100,000 affordable new houses, still exists but has become something of a joke. Auckland’s Light Rail project was supposed to be complete by 2021, but hasn’t even begun, typifying Labour’s general weakness on infrastructure.

In the Listener last week, Duncan Garner argued Labour over-promised and leaned on slogans and gimmicks such as KiwiBuild and, as a result, the Government’s record of achievement is very slight.

Unsurprisingly, Labour is not running its election campaign based on what it has achieved. Malpass notes: “It’s remarkable that a Government of six years doesn’t appear to be running much on its record.”

Crucially, it also means the public are far less inclined to believe Labour’s latest promises. As TVNZ’s Jack Tame says: “what good are new promises if a government didn’t deliver on its previous ones?”

He has pointed to all the areas Labour has failed to deliver on – especially housing, mental health, and child poverty. In all these areas, Labour can point to progress, but there’s too much evidence of things going backwards. Even on climate change, some progress has been made, but ultimately “the most difficult emission reductions decisions have been deferred to future governments”, including how to deal with New Zealand’s largest gas-emitting industry.

Billions have been poured into the mental health system, but there’s a lack of clarity on where it’s all gone and why it hasn’t fixed the crisis. As the Mental Health Foundation says, the promised transformation hasn’t occurred, and “Things are overall getting worse, not better.”

Tame says, “there is no escaping the transformational void” under Labour, and its current campaign is a pale version of what got them into government in 2017.

In September, the research company Ipsos asked the public to rate the Government’s performance out of ten – with the result being 4.5/10, down from 7.2/10 three years ago. On all the issues voters consider most important at the moment, survey respondents rate Labour as inferior to National in terms of competence. This includes Health, Education and Housing – areas which Labour have traditionally dominated.

3) It’s the economy, stupid

Many voters will essentially ask themselves whether life has materially improved or worsened since Labour took power in 2017. Unfortunately for the Government, on many measures it seems to have worsened, particularly with record high inflation and interests rates. The housing crisis, in particular, has worsened significantly since Labour came to power, meaning people are struggling more than ever to pay skyrocketing rent or buy their first home.

Political journalist Henry Cooke sums it up like this: “New Zealanders are rightly upset about their falling real incomes, with high food costs in our uncompetitive grocery sector, high rents in major cities, and high interest rates for those who bought houses while they were severely overvalued… In New Zealand the government is not so squarely seen as the source of everyone’s economic pain, but it is hardly seen as the solution either”.

A common complaint is Labour has spent too much money, and has too little to show for it. Duncan Garner writes in last week’s Listener that “$48b more is spent annually than in 2017. What do we have to show for it? New motorways, trains, light rail and hospitals? No chance.”

Even on the left there is a feeling that the $48b extra spend per year under Labour – and especially the extra $60bn that was spent due to Covid – could have been targeted at transformational change, but has been frittered away on pet projects and more bureaucracy.

Some of this money has been put into expensive structural changes – centralising healthcare (Te Whatu Ora) and polytechnics (Te Pūkenga), but these have become lightning rods for discontent.

4) Broken New Zealand

For the last fourteen years polling companies have asked the public about whether New Zealand is headed in the right or wrong direction, and until recently the majority have always given a positive response. According to polling in 2020 over two-thirds of the population thought the country was headed in the right direction, with few dissenting. By 2023 this has entirely reversed – the vast majority of those polled believe New Zealand is on the wrong track.

A big part of this discontent is with key public services, which are increasingly criticised as dysfunctional, overly-bureaucratic, and under-performing. Stuff’s Luke Malpass reported that dissatisfaction with government services appears to be skyrocketing. According to a Curia survey, voters say public services have got worse since 2020 in the following key areas: Health (70 per cent say it’s worse), Criminal Justice (64 per cent), Education (57 per cent), Transport (47 per cent), and Welfare (37 per cent).

The term “polycrisis” is being used to describe the inter-connected nature of the various crises in the country. It all adds to a sense of anger and frustration with the status quo, creating a mood for change that Chris Hipkins’ government is struggling to turn around.

According to the Listener’s Danyl McLauchlan, Hipkins hasn’t been able to connect with voter dissatisfaction: “he never spoke to the very sour mood of the nation after three years of post-covid disappointment, high prices and political failure.” McLauchlan says that when this year’s Budget came out, voters could see that Labour had no plan or vision for how to fix all the problems in New Zealand: “I suspect they wanted Hipkins to signal that he had a plan to send it in the right direction. A diagnosis of our problems and a plan to solve them. The budget and now the campaign have revealed that there’s no such scheme.”

5) Failure on tax reform

New Zealanders are particularly dissatisfied with the tax system. Experts and the wider public are in agreement about the need for change – it’s only the Labour Government that seems wedded to the status quo, ruling out change. Survey after survey shows the public is open to significant reform of taxes, including introducing capital gains and particularly wealth taxes.

The Labour Government came to power promising tax reform and especially to investigate a capital gains tax. However, Jacinda Ardern went on to rule out a capital gains tax from being implemented under her watch. Under Chris Hipkins, Labour once again ruled out any new progressive taxes.

Some in the Labour Party wanted a wealth tax brought in, and Revenue Minister David Parker worked on a tax that could’ve been implemented this year, only to be overruled by the more conservative Hipkins. A Newshub Reid-Research poll recently asked voters whether he was right to rule this out – with 47 per cent disagreeing with Hipkins’ decision, and only 39 per cent agreeing.

6) Perception that Labour is arrogant and out-of-touch

Winning 50 per cent of the vote in 2020 was both a blessing and a curse for Labour. It meant that Labour had the largest number of MPs any party has ever had, and the ability to push through reform. Labour has been judged to have squandered that historic opportunity, falling into complacency and arrogance.

Labour ministers felt they could implement unsignalled projects – from Three Waters to a social insurance scheme – without the pressure to take the public along with them. As Duncan Garner said last week, “The majority vote meant no one was acting as a gatekeeper.”

Labour is perceived as out of touch with the public, which always leads to electoral death. Recently, Newshub’s Reid-Research poll asked voters whether they thought the Government was concerned with the issues that matter to Kiwis, and only 29.8 per cent thought they were, with the majority – 62.1 per cent – saying the Government isn’t.

7) Lack of clarity about what Labour believe in

Labour’s popularity declined significantly while Ardern was leader, which led her to hand over to Hipkins. Hipkins was initially able to restore a strong degree of public support, mostly through jettisoning many of the pet projects of the Ardern era. He took the party back up to about 38 per cent support after his “policy bonfire”, which signalled to the public that Labour was re-orientating to more traditional concerns.

The problem was Hipkins wasn’t willing or able to replace the jettisoned policies with anything, and it made it look like the party had no vision or plan for fixing the big problems in New Zealand. Instead, it started to look opportunistic. Leftwing political commentator Chris Trotter reflected: “My view is that Hipkins ‘policy bonfire’ was a mistake for Labour as it’s looking now like the Party has burnt down its own house by abandoning its principles. Hipkins has deserted the party’s core support base in his lust for power.”

Peter Dunne explained last week that: “when it became clear that the bonfire was simply about getting unpopular policies off the table, without replacing them with more popular alternatives, the freefall in Labour’s support resumed. The various policy announcements Hipkins has made during the election campaign have simply raised the retort that why is Labour only promoting these policies now, when it has had the best part of six years in office to have implemented them.”

Policies like GST off fresh fruit and vegetables looked cynical, which was reflected in opinion polls showing the public was largely unmoved by the new policy. As Herald political editor Claire Trevett explained, “the GST policy was seen as an attempt to offer something that looked more generous than it was, purely for the sake of votes.”

Labour’s justice policy announcements show how the party has swung between two radically different approaches in a way that lacks authenticity. In the campaign Labour has been banging the law and order drum – something political commentator Janet Wilson describes as “hypocritical” because they are shedding “what they stand for in a hasty grab for the centre vote.” By promising a crackdown on youth offenders and ram-raiders, Labour has simply appeared to be “National-lite” – and failing to convince liberals or conservatives.

In emulating National on many policies, Labour has allowed its opponents to set the agenda. Financial journalist Bernard Hickey has characterised Chris Hipkins’ pitch to voters as: “Labour’s version of tweaking the status quo in Aotearoa’s political economy is better than National’s.”

8) Labour’s focus on woke politics instead of working class politics

Under Jacinda Ardern’s leadership, Labour morphed more into a more middle-class-orientated party than ever before. Instead of focusing on the issues that working class voters care most about – such as living standards and public services, Labour became more associated with social issues, gender, ethnicity, and what some call “woke” politics. Social justice rather than economic justice became the characteristic of this Labour Government.

On taking over, Hipkins promised to ditch the more liberal focus and go with a “bread and butter” agenda. But despite the rhetoric, Hipkins was never able to deliver on this.

Josie Pagani argued this week that Labour has continued to pander to higher socio-economic voters with many of its policies. The example she uses is Labour’s environmental policies: “You see the symptoms in Labour’s priorities designed to please wealthier, urban, middle classes more than their working-class supporters, from subsidising heat pumps and EVs to planetary-scale ‘light rail’.”

This shift away from policies that might help Labour’s traditional working class constituency went hand in hand with enabling the “professional managerial class”, especially within the state sector. A big part of Labour’s approach has been to grow the bureaucracy and give more power to consultants. As Duncan Garner has explained, “The recession was biting, cost of living had already increased and yet still Labour insisted on setting up the hugely costly Health NZ and Māori Health Authority. We employed consultants not nurses.”

Others in the professional managerial class, from lobbyists to law firms, have been looked after well by Labour. Transport projects were entrusted to consultants to carry out. For example, Michael Wood sunk $50m into an Auckland Harbour cycle bridge that was never built. Likewise, $140m was spent on consultants for the Auckland Light Rail project, which still isn’t anywhere near getting off the ground.

A number of controversial government department scandals also created a perception of extravagance and profligacy. Most recently, spending by the Ministry for Pacific Peoples hit the headlines with its $40,000 farewell for its outgoing chief executive who was shifting to another government department.

9) Labour’s radical reinterpretation of the Treaty

Labour’s most radical and unpopular agenda during the last three years has been its adoption of co-governance in public services and especially the Three Waters reforms. The Treaty of Waitangi has been radically reinterpreted, and new bi-cultural governance policies have been advanced as a result, which have been perceived as separatist.

This approach was very different to that taken in Labour’s first term. Back in 2018 both Jacinda Ardern and Grant Robertson stated an intention to work with a traditional social democratic orientation that would deliver to Māori as part of a universalistic strategy to lift the fortunes of everyone in need, rather than specifically targeting Māori. Ardern strongly emphasised the need to deal with the long list of social ills that have disproportionately impacted Māori, but said that race-based methods were not the best way of doing so.

However this universal approach was out of favour with Labour’s Māori caucus. After the 2020 election when it came to the much-needed reform of water infrastructure, an attempt was made to do so in a way that would empower iwi leaders.

Chris Trotter has recently explained how Three Waters prevailed within the Government: “The Māori Caucus wanted it because Iwi leaders wanted it, and if they didn’t get it, they might start knocking on Te Pāti Māori’s door. No one else in the Labour caucus proper felt strongly enough about the issue to organise any kind of serious resistance. So, Hipkins allowed Three Waters to be tweaked and re-named, and hoped that the public would be satisfied with a ludicrous name change. They weren’t.”

Very little of this approach has been debated or communicated with the public, leading to suspicions that it’s being implemented by fiat in an elitist and undemocratic way because the public won’t agree with it. And ultimately the public hasn’t felt convinced by it all.

Public surveys show unhappiness with co-governance. Stuff reports that the recent Freshwater poll has 48 per cent of people agreeing with the statement that there “should be a referendum on Māori co-governance, to end the confusion and let every New Zealander have a say”. Only 17 per cent disagreed with the referendum.

Similarly, when asked if there should be more co-governance with Māori in government decision-making, 45 per cent disagreed, and only 28 per cent agreed. And in terms of the state’s use of te reo Māori, 49 per cent said that government departments should be known by their English, not their Māori name (and only 26 per cent disagreed).

10) Integrity scandals

When the history of Labour’s 2023 poll dive is written in the future, much is likely to be made of the fact that four Cabinet ministers were lost in controversial circumstances in quick succession after Hipkins took over as PM. The loss of Stuart Nash, Michael Wood, Meka Whaitiri and Kiri Allan will be seen as the final nail in the coffin of the Sixth Labour Government.

Three out of the four ministers left due to integrity failures. Nash went after he committed a string of integrity violations, the last being breaking Cabinet Responsibility rules by passing on confidential information to political donors. Wood left after his continued inability to deal with conflicts of interest over his share portfolio ownership. And Allan spectacularly resigned when she was charged after crashing her ministerial car into a parked ute. Being the first Cabinet minister to be arrested in New Zealand history, was a damning indictment, especially for a Minister of Justice during a period of heightened concern about law and order.

After these scandals Labour’s popularity fell decisively, pushing the party below 30 per cent in the polls. Earlier scandals didn’t cause too much damage, but according to Danyl McLauchlan, once Wood and Allen left in spectacular disgrace, it was “a slow decline that turned into a dramatic loss of public support.”

Taken together, the departure of five ministers in the same number of months, gave the impression of a government in crisis. Nothing in the election campaign has turned around that reputation.

Labour needs honest soul-searching about its defeat

The Labour government of 2017 to 2023 have achieved plenty of good things, and during this election campaign they’ve had a chance to highlight their achievements. There will still be at least a quarter of the electorate who will vote for them. But half of Labour’s 2020 supporters are obviously less than impressed. For too many, Labour’s achievements are overshadowed by the factors raised above.

After 14 October there must be some honest soul-searching about what went wrong. There will be some temptation to put the blame on Covid or ill economic winds. Those factors are part of the story of Labour’s decline, but if Labour doesn’t look at some of the more difficult factors in their fall from favour, they could face a very long road back to power.

As the National Party gets closer to government, lobbyists and business interests will be lining up for influence and to get policies adopted. It’s therefore in the public interest to have much more scrutiny and transparency about potential conflicts of interests that might arise.

One of the key individuals of influence in National is former Cabinet Minister and now businessman, Steven Joyce. His continued sway with National and various business interests is a useful case study in how New Zealand politics works.

Steven Joyce – Minister of Everything, and now Adviser on Everything?

Steven Joyce is a figure who continually comes up as key to much of National’s policy development. He has fingers in many pies, and is close to decision-makers in National. So, if you want to know what the new government is going to do, it’s instructive to keep an eye on Joyce’s business activities and lobbying.

Joyce, of course, has been a major figure in National for the last two decades. He led the restructuring of the party in the Don Brash years, and then ran National’s election campaigns from 2005 to 2017. Upon entering Parliament in 2008 he was instantly appointed as a Cabinet Minister, and eventually became Minister of Finance (as well as becoming known as The Minister of Everything and Mr Fixit).

His time in politics was not uncontroversial. Joyce was criticised for an approach that many saw amounted to cronyism – especially because of his deal with SkyCity to build Auckland’s convention centre – and was sometimes compared to Robert Muldoon in his pragmatism and style. Once John Key and Bill English departed, Joyce ran for the leadership but lost out to Simon Bridges, which led to his resignation from Parliament in 2018.

Joyce had been a businessman before entering politics, and returned to this in 2018, setting up Joyce Advisory, a company specialising in business strategy, consultancy, brand management and reputation. In addition to this, Joyce has been appointed to and employed by an array of businesses, from property development through to engineering. Some of these clients have developed close relationships with the National Party under leader Christopher Luxon.

Joyce has also stayed extremely close to his old party, and has obviously remained influential – especially in terms of policy development. According to some party insiders, National’s lack of policy development has made Joyce’s advice invaluable in helping fill the void.

Winton property developers

The most politically controversial business Joyce has joined is the major property developer Winton, a company that is currently locked in a legal battle with the Government. Winton claims Kāinga Ora is stymying its “Sunfield” development plans in South Auckland by not giving the company a fast-tracked development under the new Urban Development Act. In appointing Joyce, the company put out a press release to say that Joyce “has not been appointed for government relations or political lobbying.”

The company is associated with some big donations to the National Party. Back in May 2022 the party received $52,000 from a holding company called Speargrass, which is owned by Winton’s CEO Chris Meehan. This year Meehan has donated $103,260 to National and $50,000 to Act.

National and Act have both come out publicly this year in favour of Winton in their fight with Kāinga Ora, with the parties’ respective housing spokespeople Chris Bishop and Brooke van Velden issuing press releases pushing Winton’s case.

National had already received the first donation when Bishop went public with his support for Winton, but he failed to declare this. In fact, Bishop later told Newsroom that he wasn’t aware of the big donations and could not give further comments due to Winton’s court case. He also told Newsroom that there was no conflict of interest, and any question of whether the property developer would get a meeting with an incoming National prime minister was an issue for after the election campaign.

National’s foreign buyer tax policy

When National announced that its new tax policy would involve a partial abolition of Labour’s ban on house sales to foreign buyers, political commentator Matthew Hooton suggested in the Herald that, “incredibly”, the policy had been created “with the help of lobbyists” for “the property-development industries”.

Certainly, property companies would stand to benefit from National’s new policy as, if implemented, all properties worth over $2m could be sold to foreign buyers, increasing the market and demand for the houses being sold by property developers.

This week Hooton has expanded on his claim that National designed the policy with the help of property developers, pointing to Winton and its close relationship with National, and suggesting that property developers have been able to help shape National’s housing-tax policies. Hooton says, “It may well be that National has thought through its tax policy much more carefully than it has been given credit for.”

He points out that the new policy could raise a lot of tax revenue and profit: “If Winton, say, sold 5000 residences for $2m+ over four years to foreign buyers, that alone would raise half the $20b of houses and apartments National needs to make its books balance. And, of course, some would be worth more than $2m. Some of the properties Winton has in its pipeline are planned to be sold for $10m+.”

Hooton therefore suggests that with a change of government, and a new minister in charge of Kāinga Ora and housing, there might well be a law change and the green light given to property developers to proceed with high-end developments.

Waikato University’s work with National

National has also released its tertiary education policy, including the promise to create a new $300m medical training school at Waikato University. The party worked closely with the University, and particularly its vice-chancellor Neil Quigley, to come up with the policy. The University even helped pay for National’s announcement, and Quigley emailed Health Spokesperson Shane Reti to say the policy could be “a present” to a future National government.

RNZ’s Guyon Espiner has uncovered how closely the University and National Party worked together on the policy development, and how Steven Joyce’s consultancy company Joyce Advisory was paid nearly a million dollars for helping with “lobbying advice” on such issues. On top of this, one of Joyce’s former Beehive political advisors, Anna Lillis, was contracted to sell the policy.

Espiner notes that Labour-aligned lobbyist Neale Jones has previously been employed by Waikato University to try to get the Labour Government to pay for a new medical school. But Joyce essentially took over this work from Jones, helping get the policy adopted by National instead.

SkyCity’s deals with National

National’s latest tax policy included trying to squeeze tax out of the foreign gambling websites that sell their services to New Zealanders. National has been upfront in stating that the SkyCity Casino advised on this policy. A confidential report from SkyCity was used by National to pull together the figures suggesting that $176m per year could be raised in tax.

National’s tax policy would also benefit SkyCity, because a tax on foreign gambling sites would reduce the competitiveness of their opponents and, in some cases, it might mean those offshore websites will be blocked from operating in this country.

Of course, the National Party has a long-running association with SkyCity. The last National Government negotiated a deal with the casino operators to build a convention centre for Auckland in exchange for concessions on the tight regulations on the number of SkyCity casino tables and pokie machines. The deal was partly brokered by Steven Joyce when he was Minister of Economic Development.

Joyce’s influence in National and business

Steven Joyce has become a useful nexus between National and the business community, which means he is able to help advise on policy for the party that bolsters their credibility with captains of industry.

It helps that Joyce is still very close to many in National. Chris Bishop, for example, has always been a close ally of Joyce, starting as an adviser for Joyce when he was a Cabinet Minister. Now a senior member of the National caucus, Bishop is chairing National’s election campaign.

Joyce used to run National’s campaigns, and his right-hand person was another former Beehive adviser Jo de Joux, who was his campaign manager. She is now a lobbyist, but has come back to run the party’s campaign in 2023, and is said to still be very close to Joyce.

As well as giving “lobbying advice” to Waikato University, Joyce is now on the University’s Management School Business Advisory Board. Of course, this is also useful and unsurprising given he’s a former Minister for tertiary education. He also writes regularly for the media about tertiary education policy, adding to his influence in this area.

As well as becoming a director of the Winton property company, Joyce has joined other company boards – Icehouse Ventures (a venture capital fund manager), Hammerforce (a technology and IP company), and RCP (a property and construction project management consultancy).

Time for more scrutiny of National-Business relationships

The roles played by these businesses or individuals advising National are to be expected in a liberal capitalist democracy. And individuals such as Steven Joyce or National’s business donors should be allowed to pursue the agendas of their companies and political parties.

However, it is imperative that these relationships are heavily scrutinised. At the moment much of the election campaign is lightweight and hollowed out. More focus on the influences behind the policies and those who are set to benefit from them would be beneficial to public debate and an informed electorate.

This is especially the case for National, which looks almost certain to lead the next government. Matthew Hooton is well-placed to comment on some of this, having experience as a lobbyist as well as a National Party spin-doctor and insider. He wrote yesterday in his regular email newsletter on politics that “National promises a ‘full economic plan’ in the next day or so. It will likely consist of another set of random bullet points gathered together from lobbyists and industry associations, similar to the ‘business growth agenda’ brochures of the Key years.”

If National’s policies are being created by or with the help of vested interests, then the public would be advantaged by knowing about these details. Leaving this until after the election might be too late.

The 2023 general election campaign must be the most hollow in living memory. There really isn’t much that is positive or attractive about the electoral options on offer. This is an election without inspiration.

An angry mood for change

There is a definite gloominess amongst the public right now – with a perception that not only is the country broken in many ways, but the political system is too. We see this most strongly in surveys that ask if the country is on the right track or not. Generally, New Zealand has flipped in a few short years from having about two-thirds of the public saying the country is headed in the right direction, to now having two-thirds saying we’re going the wrong way.

Journalists and politicians report that out on the campaign trail they are discovering that the public is angrier than ever. Mark Blackham reported this week that “MPs are encountering angry people – a general anger about the state of affairs and paucity of political choices.”

Stuff journalist Julie Jacobson summed up the political mood in the weekend as “Disillusioned, demoralised, disenchanted, disgruntled”. And she argues this has only increased during the campaign: “what was a low hum has become a sustained grumble.” Jacobson reports that across the political spectrum people are “out of love with what’s currently on offer.”

Certainly, much of what the politicians are offering is extremely grim. For example, both Labour and National are promising to slash billions of dollars from public services.

This promised austerity drive reflects a reality that the government’s books are empty, with no room for additional new spending. Hence Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has openly said that this election can’t be one for big spending policies.

Hipkins has gone from promising “bread and butter” reforms to, as leftwing political commentator Chris Trotter points out, being committed “to less butter and thinner bread for at least the next three years.” Trotter says, in general, there’s not much for the public to positively vote for, and instead people will vote negatively – choosing whoever they regard as the best of a bad bunch. Hence, “This is not going to be a happy election.”

For traditional leftwing voters Labour’s austerity programme is a major disappointment, as it goes hand in hand with opposition to any real tax reform that might collect more revenue for public services and infrastructure.

Likewise, on the right, there is a strong suspicion that National’s tax cuts are simply unaffordable. The policy is being called out by the likes of rightwing political commentator Matthew Hooton as being unprincipled and incompetent, and by the Taxpayers Union as foolhardy.

There is also growing scepticism that some of the bigger policy promises are electoral bribes that can’t be delivered. Hooton says that a “cynical electorate” sees many of these policies as empty promises – especially because voters have got used to being lied to or misled by politicians who don’t deliver their promises once in power. He suggests that voters are right to be cynical because New Zealand has had “15 years of people hearing promises from politicians which are platitudes on the face of it and they haven’t even been delivered to that extent”.

Similarly, Stuff journalist Andrea Vance argued in the weekend that “Voters know when they are being used”, suggesting that the “bribes” being offered don’t compute for voters. Vance says politicians are promising to slash “public services and spending – in the name of savings and efficiencies – when they are already stretched and degraded.”

Voters shouldn’t have confidence, she suggests, that the next government will be able to meet the existing needs of public services, let alone start fixing the severe deficits in infrastructure and services. Fundamentally there is a credibility gap between politician promises to cut spending but to properly maintain all “front-line” services.

The Politicians aren’t up to the challenge

Voters are aware that we’re in something of a “polycrisis”, and the status quo is unsustainable. Political pollster Peter Stahel wrote last week that there is “an unmistakable mood for change” based on a “strong undercurrent of dissatisfaction, driven by personal financial hardships and an uncertain economic outlook”. His company’s polling show “only 29% of voters say the current options for prime minister appeal, with nearly half (46%) saying they don’t.”

There’s a cost of living crisis, failing public health and education systems, a housing crisis, a climate crisis – the list goes on. As Newstalk’s Mike Hosking says, “There is no shortage of serious, worryingly serious, issues to discuss this campaign”, but the politicians are largely missing in action.

Because the politicians haven’t risen to the challenge, the contrast between what is desperately needed and what is on offer has never been so great. The public is right to be disenchanted – parties are mostly just offering sniping and petty criticisms of their opponents. As political commentator Josie Pagani has put it, “This is an election of parties wrestling on the ground, when we crave a new Jerusalem.”

Pagani says “We have gone from ‘Hope and Change’ to ‘Perhaps Just a Biscuit’.” Whereas in previous elections, parties ran on a programme of grand causes, this time around, issues like child poverty and the housing crisis are being ignored by politicians.

Former Labour leader David Cunliffe appears to agree – he went on Breakfast TV on Thursday to say that “voters are grumpy. They don’t think that either party is really hitting the nail on the head in terms of what’s worrying them.”

Similarly, business commentator Bruce Cotterill wrote in the Herald last week that the campaign has been highly disappointing so far because it’s more about attack ads and petty sniping than about illuminating the big issues and the policies that the parties have for fixing them. He laments the lack of debate about the crises in the health and education systems, and says problems like housing waiting lists and child poverty have been virtually ignored.

Hooton also says this avoidance of the big issues is a tragedy, especially since we are now in what he argues is the worst economic crisis in decades.

An Uninspiring election campaign

In lieu of being focused on the things that matter, the politicians are becoming more aggressive, threatening to turn this year’s campaign into the most negative in living memory. Press gallery journalist Glenn McConnell reports that as we go into the last month of the campaign its “becoming more feral”. He says the politicians are largely to blame: “nobody is running a wholesome forward-looking, solutions focused campaign. They are frothing to attack, attack, attack.”

The lacklustre nature of the parties is reflected in their campaign slogans according to Jacinda Ardern’s former chief of staff Mike Munro. He says none of them are original, because “every variation of wording around concepts like change, hope, aspiration, unity and the future have been previously used on party billboards”. And he argues that the parties are incredibly risk-adverse this election, being determined to stage-manage every element of the campaign and the candidates, reducing any chance of life in the election.

Is this therefore the most uninspiring election ever? Writing on Sunday, journalist Andrea Vance asks: “Has there been a duller election campaign in recent memory?” She labels it “the election of The Great Uninterested” because people seem to be turning away in boredom or disgust. Vance says: “It’s not just that voters are bored. They’ve stopped listening.”

Political commentator and former Cabinet Minister Peter Dunne is also amazed at the lacklustre performances of the politicians so far – especially Hipkins and Luxon who are in the fight for their political careers. He says, given the big issues at stake, “Neither Hipkins nor Luxon has so far shown sufficient passion or boldness to convince New Zealanders they have what it takes to be an effective prime minister in the difficult years ahead.”

Election fatigue and low voter turnout

Do you wish the election was over already? You are probably in good company. This year there is no apparent enthusiasm for the campaign. You’ll notice that there aren’t many pictures or videos of politicians being swamped on the campaign trail, signing autographs or having mass selfies with fans – as occurred in recent elections.

Young people, in particular, seem unimpressed this time around. According to political scientist Richard Shaw, the students he teaches are losing faith in the New Zealand political system. He says that they are part of a growing cohort who are now “over” politics. Shaw is also picking that voter turnout is going to be low this election.

So, could the most popular choice at the coming election be “none of the above”? Certainly, the number of eligible voters who choose not to vote in the upcoming election could surpass a million, effectively making it the most popular option in 2023.

Voter turnout has generally been trending down in recent decades, and it hit a low of only 69.6 per cent at the 2011 election. That low turnout was generally because none of the parties were offering much that was inspiring, and no one expected the result to be close. Hence, one third of the electorate turned away in that election in disgust, apathy, or whatever.

The fact that the politicians and debate have become more aggressive and divisive puts people off. Other commentators are also now picking a decline too. David Cunliffe says: “Expect a record low turnout, and expect a record low vote share for Labour and National combined, and the highest ever share for the [minor] parties on both sides of politics.”

Leftwing columnist Verity Johnson has also written recently about the political despair amongst the public, predicting an extremely low voter turnout: “I’ve lost count of the people I’ve spoken to this week (smart, articulate and historically politically engaged people) who aren’t planning on voting in October. What’s the point, they shrug, there’s no one to vote for.”

Johnson says that the rising fury in New Zealand society is very tangible: “if you go into the suburbs and listen closely, you can hear an ominous hiss of fury rising up like a gas leak.” She suggests that this disenchantment is rational, and that there’s now little hope that politics can fix the problems of New Zealand: “Whatever happens on October 14, it feels like there’s just gonna be another 3 years of muddling, myopic, middle management politics where we have our head up our ass and our ecosystem on fire.”

Is politics in New Zealand broken?

Given the declining trust and participation in politics and the electoral process, this might signal that something is wrong in New Zealand’s democracy. Of course, this is a problem all over the world at the moment, with rising dissatisfaction and a sense that elites and vested interests dominate. There is a huge mood of change everywhere.

Writing this week, Chris Trotter says that most politicians haven’t caught up with the new Zeitgeist. He reports on a new book exploring the decline of politics, written by former British Tory Cabinet Minister Rory Stewart, which reflects on how the political system has hollowed out. Here’s the key quote that Trotter cites from the book, suggesting it could well come from a minister in the current New Zealand Government: “I had discovered how grotesquely unqualified so many of us, including myself, were for the offices we were given… It was a culture that prized campaigning over careful governing, opinion polls over detailed policy debates, announcements over implementation.”

Similarly, writing about how dire the current election campaign is, Matthew Hooton says New Zealand’s political system is effectively broken because the parties simply aren’t serious vehicles for political change anymore. He argues that they have been captured by careerists, consultants and lobbyists seeking power: “That is, they are not concerned with achieving power to make anything better. They are focussed merely on achieving office, to enjoy the status and perks. This is why they feel no need to do real work between elections, before which they release pseudo-policies, written the night before, often by external lobbyists or consultants, that they can’t and won’t deliver – and which they don’t care whether or not are delivered anyway.”

Empty election debates

Could tonight’s leaders’ debate on TVNZ1 be as dire as the campaign so far? Expectations aren’t very high for an illuminating contest of ideas. Expert more hollow and negative posturing.

Sure, there is a fair deal of anticipation on whether Hipkins can easily beat Luxon, or whether Luxon can rise above the low expectations about his debating skills or charisma. This question of who will “win” will be of some interest, but of little real consequence in a campaign in which everyone is surely getting election fatigue.

Therefore, even if 1.2 million New Zealanders tune in at 7pm (as they did for the first leaders debates in 2017 and 2020), they’re unlikely to last the full 90 minutes. As with the overall election campaign, viewers will probably turn off fairly quickly. So, although it is likely to be the single biggest TV event of the campaign, don’t be surprised if the real winner of the debate is actually Shortland Street on TV2 at the same time.