How can the opposition lose?

It's easier than you may think.

First, I’d like to let you know about my column on public housing in this month’s North & South. NZ presently has about the same number of state rentals as it had back in 1991 thanks to National selling them and Labour building too slowly, and yet the country’s population has increased by nearly 50 percent over that period. There were 69,900 in 1991, and 70,649 including community housing in March 2023. No wonder we now have a critical shortage. Successive governments have failed dismally in social housing supply since the 1990 election, compared with the (mostly) steady rise in state house numbers from 1937 to 1990. If we could do it back then, we can do it now. This ought to be a hot election issue.

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Now, they say oppositions don’t win: governments lose. But sometimes oppositions lose elections that could’ve gone their way, for example in 2005.

In early 2004, National had shot ahead in the polls following the infamous Orewa speech by its leader Don Brash in which he aired concerns about policies based on ‘race’ – and was accused in return of racism.

Labour regained the lead in most polls for a while. But, as the 2005 election approached, the two parties were switching places, varying around the high 30s and low 40s. Two polls immediately before the election had National on 43–44 and Labour on 37–38%.

National thought they had it in the bag. The election results, however, were: Labour 41.1, National 39.1.

The upshot was a Labour minority government in coalition with Jim Anderton’s Progressive Party, with confidence and supply support from New Zealand First and United Future. It was a cliffhanger election, and Labour’s lead can partly be put down to strong turnout, which typically favours the left.

National had screwed up on three fronts, however:

• Dirty tactics

• Weak leadership

• Leftover policy.

Mysterious pamphlets attacking the Labour government and the Green Party were distributed in early September 2005. It emerged that they’d been produced by the ultra-conservative Christian sect the Exclusive Brethren, who don’t normally vote but were eager to see a change of government. National must have looked to them like the lesser of two evils.

Don Brash denied that National had had anything to do with them, but later admitted that the Brethren had told him all about their campaign. Brash felt pressured to say ‘I am not a liar’ just over a week before polling day. No credible political leader should have to say that.

To describe National’s dirty tactics in 2005 as Machiavellian is an insult to Machiavelli, who was much smarter than that.

This brings us to weak leadership. Brash wasn’t a match for Helen Clark in head-to-head debates. When asked why he’d failed to take his opponent on, Brash said that he was too much of a gentleman to attack a woman, which came across as patronising – or actually was patronising. National had been behind among women voters in particular, and this didn’t help.

The National Party put a lot of thought into the dark arts, but on policy they were lazy: they just copied and pasted from election manifestos past. Their 2005 policy headlines were tax-cuts, tough on crime, reduced welfare rolls, and repeal of references to the Treaty of Waitangi from legislation. (Sound familiar?) They were gazumped, however, by Labour’s last-minute offer to make student loans interest-free. In contrast, National were offering magnanimously to make the interest payments tax-deductible. Some have argued that Labour’s ‘bribe’ to students and graduates was the decisive factor.

National did well in 2005 when compared with their disaster in 2002 (a dismal 20.9%). Even if they’d finished ahead of Labour, though, they’d still have had to form a government, needing NZ First’s seven seats, ACT’s two, and United Future’s three.

ACT is now poised as National’s ‘natural’ coalition partner, if the numbers fall that way this time. So there’s less doubt about who’ll support them in office than there was in 2005. Indeed, ACT is doing rather too well for National’s liking.

So could National screw up in similar ways in this election?

As far as I know, National are running a technically ‘clean’ campaign this year, although it’s relentlessly negative. Minister Kiri Allan was last week’s target. Who’ll be next? Individual cabinet ministers could be seen as fair game, but attacks can backfire on the attackers.

Christopher Luxon is presenting himself with a strong voice, as unveiled at National’s annual conference. Doubts will linger, however, around his moral conservatism and his being out of touch with people who don’t own that many homes with Teslas in their garages. And it remains to be seen how he’ll perform in debates with Hipkins. Luxon’s unlikely to mess up in the way that Brash did – but there can be only one Dr Don Brash, who’s sometimes described as the Mr Magoo of New Zealand politics.

As for policy, National have done another copy and paste: law ’n’ order; trim public spending; cut income taxes. To fight inflation they promise heroically to repeal one phrase from the Reserve Bank Act 2021: the economic objective of ‘supporting maximum sustainable employment’ – which was added by Labour to balance the orthodox monetarist aim of ‘stability in the general level of prices’.

But no matter who’s in the Beehive, the Reserve Bank sets the official cash rate independently of the government, and its main lever for controlling inflation is to raise rates – which hits household budgets. To control the price of your groceries, the Bank makes you pay more for your home. By cutting taxes, moreover, a National government will have less for public schools and hospitals; but that’s no worry, as well-heeled National voters can afford private schools and health insurance. Or some of them can.

A tax cut may feel good to you in the short term, but the boost in consumer demand could fuel inflation further down the track, unless it’s balanced by reduced government spending.

As a conservative party, National is programmed to look back and conserve, and to protect the interests of property. They talk as if the world hasn’t changed since the glory days of the Key administration, apart from voters being fooled twice by tax-crazy Labourites, and they rely on their self-styled reputation as ‘economic managers’.

Not thinking ahead (to a world of climate emergency, AI, etc.) puts National at risk of another gazumping if Labour come out with an unexpected promise. National are relying on people just being fed up with Labour (as so many clearly are!), but they don’t have much to offer aside from the usual cold cuts.

Thrift, thrift, Horatio! the funeral baked meats
Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.

I threw the Bard in there just to show that I did a BA.

Last week, tertiary education funding was a big issue, with universities reporting sizeable deficits and initiating redundancy processes. The government’s late input of $128 million funding over two years won’t fill many gaps – and, on its own, won’t bring students back into the arts courses that are under threat. Luxon sees the return of international students as a solution, but that won’t help those arts courses either, as very few international students do them. And ‘export education’ is a risky boom-and-bust industry, as we know from experience.

In any case, I’ve never seen National back the value of a BA. When he was minister, National’s Steven Joyce ran arts and social sciences down, on the grounds that graduates in those subjects earn less than lawyers and surgeons. So it was astonishing to learn that Waikato University has paid Joyce’s advisory firm nearly $1 million lately. Next they’ll be hiring Darth Vader.

It looks like the universities will carry on with redundancies. And, for all I know, they could spend their new cash injection on ads for their MBAs. (Declaration of interests: I teach BA courses in politics – with declining enrolments.)

A lot of workers throughout the education sector must be wondering where to vote this year. Neither Labour nor National looks like their friend, let alone ACT. The Greens last week parroted their policy on student allowances, fishing for votes but saying nothing about the institutions from which students graduate.

No one is talking about building better universities. Is it because, as in social housing, governments now lack the courage and foresight to invest?

Footnote: The deep connections between National and the Exclusive Brethren, beginning in early 2005, were revealed in Nicky Hager’s book The Hollow Men (2006). Nicky deserves that ONZM.

I had the foresight, back in the day, to take this photo: