The pre-electoral game in which political leaders state which other parties they would, or would not, work with in government is well under way in New Zealand, in anticipation of the October election.
A pre-electoral coalition is when two or more parties openly agree that they’ll coordinate their campaigns, and reduce competition, with an eye towards maximising votes at the election and office-sharing afterwards. There are no publicly announced formal pre-electoral coalitions in NZ politics at the moment, but we’ve seen them in the past. The Alliance (which no longer exists) was originally a pre-electoral coalition among five parties – and later just four parties after the Greens exited in 1997.
National and ACT have a limited pre-electoral coalition: National’s candidate in Epsom doesn’t campaign for that seat, and allows the ACT candidate to win it instead, thus keeping a potential coalition partner in parliament. This is done with a nod and a wink, not a written agreement, traditionally over a cup of tea. Readers may recall the scandal that arose from this in 2011.
An epic failure of a pre-electoral coalition was between the Mana Movement and the Internet Party in 2014. They were ideologically incompatible, and people could see the opportunistic character of their arrangement. Internet/Mana got 1.42% of the party vote, and Mana’s leader Hone Harawira narrowly lost his seat, Te Tai Tokerau.
What’s more common in NZ politics are informal public statements about who will work with whom (or not). Making such a statement shows a party’s pathway as a contender for office if, along with others, they get the numbers to form a government. But it can also backfire if it deters too many voters who don’t like the prospective coalition.
Sometimes parties pre-emptively rule one another out as coalition partners, as the Greens have done to National. And Winston Peters this time around has declared that he won’t help Labour regain office, so that a vote for NZ First would appear to be a vote for change.
The Māori Party hope to be ‘kingmaker’ after the October election. John Tamihere has gone so far as to say: ‘We get to determine who the prime minister is going to be’ (in NZ Herald, 12 April 2023). He’s assuming that they’ll hold the balance of power after the election, just like NZ First did in 2017, and that they can negotiate deals and work with either Labour or National. After all, the Māori Party supported National with confidence-and-supply agreements from 2008 to 2017, and they got ministerial portfolios (outside of Cabinet) as a result.
National’s leader Christopher Luxon has said, however, that he doesn’t approve of the Māori Party’s new direction and that it’s ‘highly unlikely’ that those two parties would be able to work together after this election. National probably won’t get the numbers to form a government without the larger ACT Party, and ACT openly oppose many of the Māori Party’s policies.
But National will surely talk with both parties after the election, if necessary, even though neither National nor ACT could easily accommodate Māori Party policy. Some people on the right may even be hoping that NZ First comes back (maybe by winning Northland) to prevent the Māori Party from filling its dance card before anyone else does.
On the left, the Greens want to work with Labour in a formal coalition around the Cabinet table. Realistically, the Māori Party will have few options after the election, other than supporting that coalition, if the outcome is ‘hung’ – unless they’re willing to make significant compromises with National.
No one gets to form a government without making some concessions anyway. But the fewer seats you hold, the bigger the concessions you’ll have to make.
See my earlier posts on NZ First and TOP – both of which could be involved. Yes it’s complicated, and no one should be counting their chickens.