A lazy Australian’s guide to the New Zealand election

New Zealand is just days away from a general election that could upset those Aussies who have for the past six years enjoyed wistfully asking “Why can’t we be more like New Zealand?”, often as they cradled a craft beer in a laneway built last century by free prison labour.

Centre-left NZ Labour came to power in 2017, five weeks after Jacinda Ardern had been handed the reins of a party that was not projected to win. But she did win and the rest has been sometimes fittingly mythologised. Ardern resigned in January after leading the country through the Christchurch mosque massacres, several natural disasters, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Such was Ardern’s international popularity that there were shockwaves upon her resignation. Not so much locally. 

Before the pandemic it would have been entirely reasonable to assume Labour would comfortably get a third term, but the pandemic permanently curdled some New Zealanders’ appetite to be governed. Similarly to Melbourne, people got tired of the government because it played such an outsized role in their lives over three years, and detecting the odour of discontent, various flavours of far-right extremists and conspiracy grifters showed up like flies to a barbecue. 

Entering stage right of this barbecue is Christopher Luxon, leader of the centre-right New Zealand National Party since November 2021. Luxon, perhaps taking a page from the Scott Morrison playbook, pitches himself as an affable, slightly daggy everyman. He isn’t. He is extremely wealthy, having been until recently on CEO wages of more than NZ$4 million a year, owns seven houses, doesn’t drink and recently gave up Diet Coke. As one newsroom colleague opined: “He’s one of the least relatable people in the country.”   

Luxon’s performance over the campaign hasn’t been sterling. In a one-on-one TV interview where he was repeatedly asked to release or explain the party’s financial modelling for its economic platforms, he chuckled and sweated but wouldn’t clarify the modelling. Weeks later, one of the party’s major policies — putting money back into the pockets of middle- to low-income New Zealanders — was found to have been wildly misrepresented and the number who would actually get money was only 3,000 households. 

Until as late as last weekend when deputy leader Nicola Willis was shown the footage on live TV, this spurious claim remained on the party’s social media posts.

Despite its fundamental inability to coherently explain its financial projections, a week or so ago the party was still polling strongly enough to form a two-party coalition with the local libertarian outfit, ACT New Zealand. 

There isn’t enough space here to explain ACT other than to say it has for many years consisted mostly of just one person, David Seymour, the person Ardern called an arrogant prick on a hot mic in Parliament.

But now this cosy coalition of two may fail to launch, not because Labour has done anything effective during the campaign but because for the entire year Luxon has ignored the advice of both his political elders, opponents and horror movie lore. He looked in the mirror and said “Winston” three times. 

Winston Peters is 78 in human years. In political years that’s about 356. His party, NZ First, was for most of this year out of the running and polling below the 5% threshold needed to get a single seat in Parliament, but as soon as Luxon vaguely mentioned he’d entertain a three-way coalition with National, ACT and NZ First, Peters was back into the race with a fresh wave of media coverage, and is now polling above 5%. Peters duly celebrated in his traditional manner by threatening several journalists.

But more embarrassingly, the increased good fortunes of Peters caused highly public panic among National Party powers, and the past few days have seen senior figures openly raising the prospect of a hung Parliament or a second election if National and ACT come up short and are unable to govern alone. 

This has given Labour — which has openly stated it would not work with NZ First and Peters — a nice, crisp chance to demonstrate it actually knows how to run a government. 

Labour’s Finance Minister Grant Robertson promptly got the boot in over the weekend and said the panic over a hung Parliament or second election is a sign National’s campaign is “falling apart”. 

“They have introduced chaos into the last week of the campaign by saying they could force a second election rather than work with New Zealand First — after saying for weeks they would work with New Zealand First,” he said.

The latest polls show Labour polling slightly higher but still not enough to secure a third term.

The question going into the weekend’s election is has the National Party’s bungling registered with voters? New Zealanders — like Australians — are suffering a cost-of-living crisis, and while Labour hasn’t offered any significant solutions to this during its campaign, it also hasn’t built its entire election run on fudged figures.