Will Ilam give the Opportunities Party a chance?
And what happens if Raf Manji wins that electorate?
It’s not easy getting a new party into the New Zealand parliament, even with proportional representation. In the past, some wealthy individuals have generously funded start-ups, but blown their money after winning no seats. The good news is that money alone doesn’t buy seats in the House. The bad news is that it’s tough for innovators to break in. If opinion polls show that a party is running below the 5% threshold, it discourages potential supporters who don’t want to ‘waste’ their vote.
The alternative route is to win one local electorate. Then the party gets a proportion of seats, based on the party vote, even though it may still be below 5%. Numerous political parties have benefited from that ‘coat-tailing’ rule in the past.
If the Opportunities Party (TOP) can win the seat of Ilam in October, they could end up with one or two seats from their party list as well.
TOP is a policy-driven party. As it says on the label, it’s about a fairer society that provides better opportunities for all. But leadership matters. In the past, TOP was let down by the rather combative style of its founder Gareth Morgan.
The present leader, Raf Manji, gives TOP a professional and new look, however. And he’ll contest the seat of Ilam in Christchurch.
Ilam is an affluent electorate, encompassing the university campus. It was held, on big margins, by the National Party’s Gerry Brownlee from 1996 … until he lost. One of the main upsets in 2020 was the formerly ‘safe’ National seat of Ilam falling to the Labour candidate, Sarah Pallett.
Brownlee isn’t contesting Ilam this time around, and National’s new candidate is Hamish Campbell.
If we regard Ilam as now a three-way contest between the National, Labour and TOP candidates, does the TOP leader, Raf Manji, look like a contender? Will the people of Ilam give TOP the big opportunity?
Manji was a Christchurch City councillor from 2013 to 2019 and has a strong track-record in business and community service. He ran for the Ilam electorate as an independent candidate in 2017 and came second. Sure, he got about half as many votes as Brownlee, but I’d rate his chances more highly this time for three reasons: Brownlee’s out of the race, Raf Manji now has a party to back him, and the Labour candidate can’t repeat 2020. The contest could split wide open between three candidates.
Don’t pay attention to any opinion polls for the electorate, as they’re grossly inaccurate at that local level.
So TOP has a shot at gaining more than one seat in this coming election. If NZ First are also back in (see my earlier post on this), then all bets are off regarding government formation. Based on past opinion polls, the pundits have been assuming that it’s either a National/ACT or a Labour/Green coalition, with the Māori Party possibly playing a ‘kingmaker’ role, in a five-party parliament. There could, however, be six or seven parties in the mix, and hence a different set of possible arrangements.
They say that politics is the art of compromise. It’s also the art of dealing with uncertainty. My gut instinct says TOP probably won’t take Ilam. But I’ve been wrong before, and my prudent mind says, ‘Expect the unexpected.’
Jacinda Ardern’s last day as MP for Mt Albert is 15 April. In November 2021, the Labour Party changed its rules for electing a new leader, giving me occasion to write:
“The tough decisions taken by Ardern to deal effectively with the pandemic are compromising her social democratic ideals and her ethics of kindness, empathy and inclusiveness. As the emotional and financial costs and the social divisions mount up daily in people’s lives, many turn their anger and frustration on the country’s leader.”
It was a surprise on the day when she announced her resignation as PM, but we needn’t have been completely taken by surprise either. The rule-change alluded to above expedited the hand-over to Chris Hipkins.
If you haven’t seen it, I wrote a column for the Conversation, published the morning before Jacinda’s valedictory address to the House. There were some points in her speech that would’ve made me alter that, but my overall assessment of her government stands.