Kia ora!
Idiot / Savant has written a lovely meta-narrative about the election in New Zealand, giving you the structure of the plot, the girl meets girl or boy, and what will happen next. But when I read a novel, I’m always fascinated by character. So here’s my take on some parts of the story. Not that Idiot / Savant’s version isn’t true. I’m just filling in some of the detail.
Helen Clark, formidable leader of the Labour party for the last thirteen years, and Prime Minister for the last nine, announced the election date last Friday. Canny politician that she is, she called a press conference for 12.30pm, and presumably sent her staffers to spread the word that she was about to announce the election. All the press turned up, and the major television channels carried the announcement live, as did National Radio. Clark gave a speech recounting the achievements of the Labour government, and forced them to carry every word of it. 10 minutes worth of party political broadcast, before she announced the date.
Clark has set the election up as a battle over who you can trust – Labour, or National?
But there’s the rub. Clark is vulnerable when it comes to issues of trust and honesty. As Idiot / Savant said, in the last term Labour has led a minority government which has enough votes for confidence and supply in virtue of agreements with Peter Dunne’s United Future, and Winston Peters’ New Zealand First. Dunne is reliable, responsible and dependable. Yes, those are three adjectives saying virtually the same thing, but that’s the guts of it. Peters, however, is charismatic and charming. He has long held himself out as the champion of integrity, refusing, he says, to take donations from big business, being in politics for the little guy, the ordinary people, the elderly.
Except that in recent months, it has turned out that all along, he has been accepting donations from big business, even from people closely associated with one of the portfolios he holds. It’s not clear whether the donations were for Peters’ party, or for Peters himself, to cover his legal fees. However it does seem that they haven’t been declared, either as part of political parties’ annual returns to the Electoral Commission, or to the tax department. They might all even be legal, in a hair splitting, pin dancing way. There are three separate investigations into his affairs, one by the Privileges Committee, one by the Serious Fraud Office, and one by the police, and no doubt in time the truth will out. In the meantime, the stench of hypocrisy hangs around Peters.
The Labour party and Clark herself have not been all that honest in recent years. Notably, in the previous election, they used parliamentary funds for party electioneering purposes, according to the Auditor-General. At the time, one of New Zealand’s leading political commentators described it as “courageous corruption,” Labour getting its hands dirty in order to be sure that they would be in power, because they knew that they would do the right thing (and National would not) by the poor and disregarded.
To date, Helen Clark has not sacked Peters as a minister (although this could possibly happen soon, even today, depending on the latest Privileges Committee hearing), and she has not ruled out working with him again, should the Labour party gain enough seats to form the government, in coalition with other parties. She is prepared to embrace Peters as the price of gaining power, and at the same time, she has set the campaign up as being about trust and honesty. That’s some chutzpah.
As for National, Clark says they can’t be trusted, because they have attacked every policy her government has put in place. Of course, that’s what oppositions are supposed to do, but never mind. Importantly, she’s asking the electorate to consider whether all the policy changes that the Labour government has put in place, mostly to the benefit of lower income New Zealanders, will remain in place under a National government. The subtext? Don’t put it all at risk. You can’t trust National not to sell you out. It’s a message that Labour used to great effect in the 2005 election. But since then National has changed its leader, to the new man John Key. It’s hard to have a clear view of the character of National and its leader – Key is very new, but his front bench is little changed from the 90s, when they wreaked havoc on NZ’s social infrastructure, in the name of market purity. Key however, and his deputy Bill English, both seem to be centrist and pragmatic, and English in particular seems to be an old school compassionate conservative.
As far as the leaders go, it’s age and cunning against youth and ambition. Metaphorically, of course – there’s only 11 years between Clark and Key in age. But Clark has been in parliament for 27 years now, 15 of them as leader of the Labour party, and Key has been there for six, just two as leader, and he has never fought an election as leader. In a presidential-style election where the character of the leaders seems to be at stake, Clark’s manifest strength and hard won political nous could be what makes the difference.
*****
Many thanks for asking me to blog the NZ election here, Mark et al. It’s a privilege to be writing for this frighteningly erudite and informed blog community. By way of introduction, I’m a new Australian, a New Zealander recently arrived in the West Island, for a second time, ‘though perhaps this time it will be for good. Emotionally, socially, and politically, I am still a Kiwi; it takes a long time to emigrate.
Great to have you on board, Deborah, and an excellent post!
That’s the trouble with us taking so little notice of the place. I thought I’d read that Winston had already resigned. He’s still hanging on?
Good post, Deborah.
He is indeed still there.
Sorry – gotta go to work now, so I will catch up on comments in the late afternoon.
Public opinion seems to have turned decisively against NZ Labour, rather as it did for the conservatives in Australia before 2007 (and for Keating before 1996). NZ Labour is probably in a better position to make up some ground but still a Labour victory looks very unlikely. Why did labor support slump so noticeably, was the government seen as too socially liberal/culturally left?
Great to have you on board, Deborah!
Hey Deborah, I’m a kiwi too (technically – I’ve lived in Australia all my life). I hope you’re surviving all the sheep jokes!
Yes… ‘though that may not lead to electoral defeat. If you look at Curiablog’s average poll calculator [link], then although National is getting just under 50% of the party vote (the critical vote that determines the proportions in parliament), the only other right wing party, Act, is getting just 1.8%. The centre parties (NZ First, United Future, and the Maori party) are getting about 5% of the vote between them. The remaining 43% is split between Labour (36.3%) and the Greens (5.7%). So there’s not a huge difference between the overall levels of support for left and right.
I think the full impact of the Peters affair on Labour is yet to be felt, so they could fall further, but their votes could well go to the Greens rather than to National. On the other hand, Helen Clark is a very, very good campaigner, and she could well pull Labour back into contention over the next few weeks, despite Peters.
At the Privileges Committee hearing today, it became blindingly clear that Peters and his lawyer are shifting stories as fast as they can, for everyone except Helen Clark, it seems [link]. So yes, he’s still there, pin dancing away.
He’s no longer acting as a Minister, but he has not yet resigned his warrants, and he still getting his ministerial salary. Helen Clark is acting in his roles (Minister of Foreign Affairs, Minister for Racing).
Good post – pretty much sums it all up. I still don’t get why anyone is surprised by Winston Peters’ fall from grace, and I am horrified that Clark would even consider snuggling up to him again. But then it gets so cold in a minority government…
Also half Kiwi (Auswi rather than Kausi), Deborah could you please give your impressions about Labours performance in government (scandals aside) for the past nine years. I’ve been out of range and would like to hear an informed commentary.
Thanks for blogging here, Deborah. I’ve been in Aus for over ten years after living in NZ for nearly 50 years, so I hear you about the difficulty of emigrating. I’ll be following along here.
gee, i thought only in AUSTRALIA would a bloke be minister for foreign affairs AND RACING; makes sir les patterson look like a renaissance man
Hmm… that’s a biggie. Maybe in a post over the weekend? Unless I/S does one first.
Unless I/S does one first.
I was goign to wait a few more days for something to happen.
A bit slow? An eight week campaign seems extraordinary. (Except by US standards I suppose)…
Great explanation, Deborah.
In answer to this:
“Why did labor support slump so noticeably, was the government seen as too socially liberal/culturally left?”
It’s hard to point to one particular thing. But I think one important factor is the losses sustained by older “mum and dad” investors. Our housing bubble has been collapsing for months. Lots of finance companies, who are the only game in town for retail fixed interest better than a bank, have gone belly-up as a result. The pain is felt among all small investors. That hasn’t been helping, I would think.
Mark: A bit slow? An eight week campaign seems extraordinary.
While the date has been announced, they’re not realy campaigning yet, and parliament is still sitting until the end of this week.