Janet Wilson is a regular opinion contributor and a freelance journalist who has also worked in communications, including with the National Party.
OPINION: In a world where centrist governments are fighting hard to stay relevant and win the battle for democracy while resisting the rise of angry anti-establishment radicalism, why do New Zealand’s major parties seem hellbent on making themselves as irrelevant as possible to the voters they serve?
Because for different reasons, both National and Labour have unshackled themselves from their identities and what they stand for. Support for both parties at the last election was collectively the lowest in a generation at 64.99%, down from 81% at the 2017 election and 76% in 2020.
Which means that the country’s two main political parties are left as nothing more than hollowed out power elites fighting over an ever-decreasing voter base. Who, in turn, seem more and more comfortable reaching for the political fringes.
Their decline has been marked by a desire for pragmatism over ideology which creates two-sides-of-the-same-coin policy. As well, a top-down party structure with less democracy has weakened their membership, which makes them less connected to the constituencies they claim they represent. That much-like-the-other-party results in less choice.
National, for generations a moderate centre-right party, has under the three-party coalition dropped any pretence of compassion and swapped it for uncaring cruelty.
Rather than attempting to quell the rising rage between the haves and have-nots, they’re busy harnessing it with traffic light systems and sanctions on where beneficiaries can shop if they don’t comply with their obligations. Focus polling, that data-driven balm for policy wonks, may tell them that their voters approve, but in creating those divisions they’re denying themselves access to other voting blocs they once enjoyed – young women and men especially - who now vote elsewhere.
And, in their cynicism towards democracy, they’ve earned themselves a dubious award; halfway through their first term, the coalition Government has passed more bills through Parliament under urgency without a select committee process – 24 in all – than any other since 1987.
Although if you think that’s democracy denied, then consider that it rates only in second place in terms of days spent in urgency - 38 so far this term compared with John Key’s 2008-2011 term, which was 40 days at the same point.
Then there’s the quietly growing perception of Christopher Luxon’s lack of leadership – best exemplified by how David Seymour sneers at him publicly - which yet another poll highlighted this week.
Which brings us to why Labour has become the same kind of ideologically bankrupt empty vessel. The coalition’s pay equity overhaul is the sort of gift that left-leaning oppositions can only dream of. But Labour hasn’t created nearly enough of the kind of alternative pushback a good opposition party should on the issue.
It seems that under Chris Hipkins, Labour is trying to prevent failures of the past (remember the leadership of the Three Daves - Shearer, Parker and Cunliffe?) but instead is busy creating its future problems.
In seeking to create stable leadership, the party is moribund; with less than 18-months until the next election, it’s looking less like a government-in-waiting and more like an opposition-in-stasis. Its parliamentary leader is ensuring that, rather than appearing revived and refreshed, it’s still the same risk-averse critter it was last election, creeping cautiously – again – into suggesting tax reform and endlessly complaining about the Government while not presenting any alternative of its own.
And it has a problem – a 3.9% problem according to the last Taxpayer’s Union/Curia poll – that has the potential to become a growing issue.
Te Pati Māori. With its co-leaders and MP Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke facing an unprecedented punishment for performing the haka in the House, the trio were given a reprieve of sorts when debate on the issue was postponed until today.
This meant that as a party they could attend the Budget debate under urgency, an important part of the parliamentary calendar. Instead, TPM displayed its continuing contempt for democracy with another no-show in the House.
Hipkins gave Luxon a lesson in how to push back against a junior partner on an increasingly fraught issue; he strongly criticised TPM for focusing on itself instead of the pay equity controversy, then definitely ruled out implementing four radical TPM policies.
Has he gone far enough to arrest the doubts that TPM’s separatist policies will wreck on Labour? Not nearly, according to Winston Peters. Peters may have ruled out working with Chris Hipkins in 2026 but it’s really TPM he’s ruled out.
Is it time Hipkins did the same with Te Pāti Māori too, because how can Labour trust them if they don’t turn up?
Rather than exploiting increasing voter anger, these centrist parties will have to address the “why” of that frustration if they are to win back any form of the support they enjoyed of old. That involves listening not only to their membership but to a much wider audience. That means actively listening to what voters want, not what the party believes they deserve.
And it involves both Labour and National developing ideas - hell, an ideology even - that they’re prepared to stand for.
