Minor parties take centre-stage
NZ First, Greens and Te Pāti Māori filled the politics columns on the weekend
Minor parties in New Zealand have led the news in the last week.
The NZ First party conference hinted at how their election campaign will work next year. Winston Peters made dismissive comments about both of the major parties’ leaders. In the 2023 election campaign, Labour’s Chris Hipkins was “a guy with a sausage roll” and National’s Christopher Luxon was “eating ice cream most of the time”. Both claimed they could “fix it”, but neither could see how bad things really were, Peters claimed, nor how long it would take to turn the country around.
He was hardly talking up the performance of the coalition government in which he’s a cabinet minister. That suggests that he’ll aim for the balance of power, and hence try to play the kingmaker again, if he can, after the next election.
Peters was predicting “a massive political victory” for NZ First. Was that just the usual hyperbole?
NZ First’s polling has been averaging around 8 percent (ranging from 7 to above 9) which is better than their 2023 election result of 6 percent. In the past, when NZ First has supported a government (whether Labour- or National-led), they’ve been punished for it in the polls and at the subsequent election. They barely hung on in 1999, and were tossed out into the political wilderness in 2008 (after supporting the Clark government) and again in 2020 (after the coalition with Ardern). In 2011 and 2023, they came back, however, after trailing below 5 percent in polls up until close to the election. So NZ First’s current polling is relatively strong, compared to past performance, despite being a party in a coalition government that’s not the most popular overall.
NZ First is looking like a party of the recycled, however. Leader Winston Peters (ex-National) and deputy leader Shane Jones (ex-Labour) were happy to invite a couple of other divorcees to address their conference. Stuart Nash (ex-Labour) and Harete Hipango (ex-National) were casting for candidacies at the next election. Again, this hints that Peters may place a bob each way, keeping it open as to which side he’ll work with in government: Labour or National, whichever way the wind blows.
Peters will have noticed the successes of Trump and the UK’s Nigel Farage, and so he predictably played the immigration and gender themes. He said that all new immigrants will have to
“sign up first to our Kiwi values document, giving a commitment to respect our country and our culture, or don’t come here”.
And he attacked the parties of the left for their “woke ideology”. He’ll fight against the use of puberty blockers in children, for instance.
There was a public dust-up between Peters and Hipkins back in March. How, then, would Peters pass off any post-electoral coalition talks with Labour? – if the next election were to go that way, and if Labour would agree to talk. (Most opinion polls since late May have put Labour slightly ahead of National.) He’d sell it as “common sense”, as a “handbrake” on the “Marxist” left, and as saving the country from ideas that “divide our country”. I won’t volunteer to write the speech, but his style is predictable, after so many rodeos.
Green MP Benjamin Doyle has resigned from parliament citing concerns for their safety and wellbeing. There have been threats against them, and police have issued formal warnings to four individuals for breaches of the Harmful Digital Communications Act 2015, as reported on Stuff.
Such threats against anyone are unacceptable, regardless of who the target is or what they’ve done. Cowardly threats against public figures are harming the target individuals themselves and harming the political culture. They undermine equitable representation and they cause politicians to be less accessible to the public.
Back in March, Winston Peters revealed that private social media posts of Doyle had used the term “bussy”, and one included an image of Doyle’s child. Green co-leader Chloe Swarbrick had defended Doyle’s “bussy” posts on the grounds that they were intended “with irreverence and absurdity” or “in a flippant way”.
But the inclusion of a child wasn’t defensible, regardless of the gender or sexual orientation of the adult. If the intention had been “flippant”, then that one missed the mark by involving a child. Doyle’s post, Peters’s revelation of the post, and the hateful attacks that resulted were all below par. But the death threats are actually illegal.
When questioned about his role in amplifying this, Peters just blamed the media. Why hadn’t they investigated it first?
It’s unedifying on all fronts.
Meanwhile, the Greens lose another MP. That’s four lost to scandals since 2023, counting Elizabeth Kerekere. Their polling has trended downwards after former co-leader James Shaw resigned (scandal-free in his case) in January 2024. In six polls between the election and Shaw’s resignation, the Greens averaged 12.9 percent. In the most recent six, they’ve averaged 11.1 percent. They’re not yet the party with “the values, the policies and the boldness to actually lead the left”, as Swarbrick promised a year ago.
At present, it’s hard to see the Greens improving on their last election result (11.6%), but they still have time to turn things around.
Te Pāti Māori retained the seat of Tāmaki Makaurau in a by-election and they have a new MP. Oriini Kaipara won 6,031 votes against Labour’s Peeni Henare on 3,093, giving her a majority of 2,938. Only 9,377 ballots were cast, however. Enrolments were 43,796 as at 31 August, so that’s a turnout of only 21.4 percent.
Given that it was a very close result in 2023 (only a 42-vote margin), Labour supporters were less likely to turn out than TPM supporters for the by-election. Waatea News saw the abstensions as “strategic”:
“By sitting out, many Labour-aligned whānau effectively allowed Te Pāti Māori to retain Tāmaki Makaurau, preserving six kaupapa Māori voices in the House.”
The Labour candidate retains his list seat, even though he lost the by-election. If he had won the electorate seat, the next person in line on the Labour Party list is also Māori. Just how many Labour-aligned whānau strategically chose not to vote is anyone’s guess, but that must have have been a factor.
By-elections generally get lower turnouts (though not normally as low as this one), and they sometimes cause upsets. They can’t be read as barometers for the next general election. But the fallout from the by-election contest has raised questions about how well, if at all, TPM and Labour could work together in government. On that matter, read Lloyd Burr on Stuff, and note Hipkins’s comment on RNZ that it could be “very difficult for Labour to work with” TPM, unless “they embrace a more inclusive approach”.
The assumption that the alternative government to the present one is a Labour/Green/TPM coalition is, for the time being, nothing more than an assumption.
The current assumptions about two three-party coalitions, as if they were the only options, could be loosened up a little.
Winston Peters is preparing our minds for a switch to the left by NZ First, if the numbers should fall that way in 2026.
