In this excerpt from Back on Track? The New Zealand General Election 2023, edited by Stephen Levine, Luke Oldfield looks at the populism, starting with the protest at parliament in 2022. This excerpt is an abridged version.

Parliament protests

The Waitangi public holiday lands in the middle of New Zealand’s summer, encouraging many Kiwis to venture off with family for a trip to the beach. On that day in 2022, however, a different sort of trip started from opposite ends of the country, developing into a convoy that would reach the nation’s capital three days later. These converging protest groups would become the genesis of an occupation of parliament grounds, marking the largest and most sustained resistance to the country’s Covid-19 response and to recently imposed vaccine mandates. Upon arriving in Wellington the protesters vowed to remain at parliament until their demands were heard, leading to the development of a campsite. Attendees constructed makeshift toilets and showers, their vehicles occupying adjacent streets. The development of a seemingly permanent presence by the protesters caught police off guard; they had assumed, perhaps, that the crowd would disperse after airing their grievances. 

Estimated to be about 1,000 to 1,500-strong at its peak, the crowd of parliament protesters was anything but a homogenous group. Christian fundamentalists from the fringe right were in attendance alongside people who, a decade or two earlier, might have found themselves more closely aligned with the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand. Some protesters also had known links to white supremacist groups and carried with them signage and flags in support of former US President Donald Trump. The gathering was, however, far from monocultural. Some attendees were Māori, adorning the campsite with Tino Rangatiratanga (Māori Sovereignty) and He Whakaputanga (Independence) flags in an attempt to frame opposition to vaccine mandates in terms of Indigenous rights. 

The diversity within the group, and a reluctance to nominate a spokesperson, meant the protesters lacked any coherent approach to engaging with media, police or the wider public. The level of ferociousness among protesters, while also evident, was far from uniform. Some were vocal about their desire to harm prime minister Jacinda Ardern and senior public servants, while others distanced themselves from such statements, preferring a less aggressive course of action. Despite little public support for protesters, polling did suggest that around a quarter of voters were opposed to the government’s vaccine mandates. 

The protests encouraged a degree of political opportunism from those ousted from Parliament at the election 18 months earlier. The most high profile to show their face was Winston Peters, despite having been deputy prime minister when Covid-19 lockdowns were first initiated. Matt King, former National Party MP for Northland, also made an appearance in support of the protest. However, no MPs from parties represented in the 53rd Parliament were willing to meet with the protesters on Parliament grounds. Prime Minister Ardern and her Cabinet refused to engage, citing the protesters’ inflammatory rhetoric, urging them to pack up and return home. 

A combination of factors in the first three months of 2022 – including the successful immunisation of more than 90% of the population and the presence of less deadly variants of the disease – meant that the government was able to provide a road map for when the vaccine mandates would end. While the road map was announced during the peak of the occupation, protesters were not appeased. The Ardern government also made clear that it would not be responding to protesters’ demands for an immediate end to mandates, opting instead to phase them out only when it was deemed safe to do so.

Despite attempts to move the protesters along, including a relentless looping of selected songs through parliament’s sound system (‘Hey Macarena’ by Los Del Rio being among them), the camp lasted 23 days. Police finally drove the protesters from parliament grounds on 2 March, disbanding it and its makeshift structures. The final clear-out attracted international attention as some protesters resorted to arson and violence in their retreat. By its end, the protest had attracted a considerable level of media commentary from pundits, assessing everything from its causes and longevity to the broader social and political ramifications. 

Democracy in danger?

The rise of populism globally was cited as one of the causal explanations for the protests, an exclusionary populism brought into the country via unregulated social media and messaging services. The observance of Trump flags and slogans with origins in the United States featured as evidence that the protest had its origins in Trumpism’s reactionary politics. In the aftermath of the protest, one commentator claimed that hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders were now tuning in to fringe social media channels, the sorts of numbers which, if continuing on in such a trajectory, would lead to a very different electoral landscape in the 2023 election. 

By the time the election campaign rolled around, however, it was evident that none of the so-called populist parties on the political fringe would be successful. The results on election night were consistent with polling, which had suggested that each of these parties would fail to cobble together a sufficient level of support. According to the final results published on the Electoral Commission website, even the most successful of the fringe parties – New Zealand Loyal (NZL), a party started by former television broadcaster turned conspiracy theorist Liz Gunn – fell well short of the 5% representation threshold. NZL campaigned on a 1% tax and a range of health liberty arguments, but it only managed about 1% of the party vote. Other parties on the fringe were unable to achieve even that much. Christian fundamentalist Brian Tamaki assembled a freedom umbrella group with lawyer turned anti-vaccine activist Sue Grey, but won less than 0.5% of the vote. A new party, DemocracyNZ, started by Matt King, won less than 0.25% of the vote.

Why were these parties unsuccessful? There are a couple of explanatory factors. The first is how New Zealand’s MMP electoral system functions. MMP sets a relatively high bar for electoral success compared to other democracies with proportional representation. Because of this, we are yet to see an aspiring political actor or actors successfully enter parliament under the banner of a new party unless that party has broken away from another. An umbrella grouping, such as that arranged by Tamaki and Grey, was touted as a means to give supporters a viable option around which to coalesce. To follow this logic, a collection of smaller parties could unite under a single banner and surpass the 5% party vote threshold.

Successful implementation of an umbrella strategy requires a greater degree of cooperation and agreement than some aspiring political actors might assume. What we know from the 2020 New Zealand Election Study is that there was a lack of ideological conformity among those who had previously voted for these fringe parties (such as Advance New Zealand and the New Conservatives), or who were at least sympathetic to their messaging. For example, despite a majority of those who had opted out of Jacinda Ardern’s “team of five million” (uniting against Covid) indicating that they put a high priority on economic freedoms, many others espoused social democratic attitudes. Some had authoritarian positions on key issues, others did not.

Another explanatory factor is the firewall of Winston Peters and New Zealand First. For decades Peters has been an insider speaking to the outsider demographic, building support for his party from disaffected voters, many of whom had not voted for his party before. New Zealand’s dance with populism is fairly tepid when compared to that of other liberal democracies. Long before the nation’s preeminent populist, Winston Peters, positioned himself near the political centre, a lineage of populist leaders preceded him, including prime ministers Richard Seddon (Liberals), Michael Joseph Savage (Labour) and Robert Muldoon (National). Populism is an integral part of New Zealand’s political culture, and electorally viable political parties and their leaders from across the political spectrum have laid claim to the popular liberalism of New Zealand’s early colonial governments. 

Peters’ populism has focused on elites – politicians, bureaucrats, high-profile business people – as having impeded the “people” in maintaining a first-world democracy. By championing the role of the state in helping secure a basic standard of living, Peters and his New Zealand First party have fed off a narrative that politicians have lost sight of the primary concerns of the “people”. This brand of nationalistic, and sometimes exclusionary populism has been the hallmark of Peters and his party since its formation. 

As part of his 2023 campaign to return to parliament, Peters was wily enough to show his face at the parliament protest without necessarily endorsing its messaging. In a further appeal to the anti-vaccine lobby and its voters, New Zealand First placed lawyer and Voices for Freedom (an anti-vaccine advocacy group) contributor Kirsten Murfitt at number 11 on its party list. These efforts allowed New Zealand First to emerge as the most viable option for at least some anti-mandate protest voters, due also to its electability, encouraging such voters to choose the party despite (in some cases) having a preference for parties with a more radical anti-establishment tone.

To the mainstream

Te Pāti Māori leader Rawiri Waititi also struck a populist tone in 2023, chiding the government for its lack of action on income inequality, advocating for a tax system where “ordinary people don’t have to subsidise the extravagant lifestyles of the rich”. Although most party leaders within the mainstream of New Zealand politics harnessed a populist style, Waititi was an exception among party leaders on the left. Closer to the centre, Winston Peters promised in stump speeches to “take the country back”; on the right, Act leader David Seymour promised to end “wasteful spending” and “the racial divide”. Despite drawing upon a similar populist approach, an ideological divergence meant New Zealand First and Act would likely appeal to different demographics. New Zealand First’s populism was attached to the popular liberalism that had long been a feature of the party; Act promulgated a market populism that touted further deregulation of the economy in a manner more closely aligned with its classic liberal underpinnings. 

There were clear policy overlaps nonetheless. Both New Zealand First and Act promised to wind back policies that enhanced the ability of those identifying as Māori to more effectively participate in the decision-making processes of central and local government. Both parties sought to roll back newly formed bureaucratic structures, such as Te Aka Whai Ora, the Māori Health Authority, as well as legislation that had blocked local governments from holding referendums on establishing Māori wards. Both also advanced “tough on crime” approaches to the electorate in a manner the academic community refer to as “penal populism”, including a promise to re-establish disciplinary-style camps for youth to address “ram raid” style burglaries. In a move that seemed at odds with calls for fiscal restraint, both parties also supported a return to interest deductibility for investment properties, a policy now predicted to cost $2.9 billion over four years.

The populism of both New Zealand First and Act fused together economic and cultural concerns, making each party a contrast with the modern cosmopolitan outlook of the Labour majority-government. Programmes to reverse initiatives empowering Māori representation, reinstating market conditions favouring property investors and calling for tough on crime policies were messages also consistent with those of the National Party, which similarly offered to “get the country back on track”. 

National also led a populist response (shared by Act and New Zealand First) to Three Waters legislation, characterising the government’s attempt to consolidate the country’s large number of water bureaucracies (and introduce shared governance arrangements with Māori) as “undemocratic” and an “asset grab”. Such alignments meant “getting back on track” might best be interpreted as returning to policies that favoured the Pākehā middle class, particularly homeowners and those with investment properties, and the protection of their property rights more broadly. Comparisons could also be made with the populism-lite politics of the former John Key-led National government, where the party leadership promoted a homeowner and small business friendly image, suggesting that such aspirations were those of ‘ordinary’ New Zealanders.

In 2023 a significantly larger demographic voted for parties on the right, as evidenced by National’s electorate success in suburban Auckland: the sort of electorate seats with high proportions of lower-middle class, working poor and/or migrant and refugee families. Two factors are presumed to have played a key role in the swing toward National in Auckland’s suburbs. The first was a lingering resentment of the extended lockdown period in Auckland, which kept young families indoors, businesses and schools mostly shuttered and government departments (including immigration) providing only minimal services. Such issues would have been acutely felt in suburban Auckland, though it is possible that for many such resentments had subsided by the time of the 2023 election. A second and perhaps more likely factor was the ongoing cost-of-living crisis, the Labour government having made only piecemeal attempts to relieve pressures on working families. Only days before the 14 October election, the Consumer Price Index recorded a further 5.6% year-to-year increase, with unleaded fuel in Auckland costing as much as $3.30 per litre at petrol pumps across the city.

Labour the anti-populist?

More than 1,430,000 voters propelled the New Zealand Labour Party to victory in 2020, a success rooted in its inclusive messaging during the Covid-19 pandemic. Once the threat of Covid-19 subsided, opposition parties ramped up economic and cultural concerns to voters. As trust in those leading the Team of Five Million eroded, the government seemed unable to articulate a convincing policy response to temper its critics and also abandoned the possibility of more direct intervention over the economy, favouring modest increases in support for lower and middle income families. 

The government set out a ten-points plan as the cost-of-living crisis worsened, including statements about creating jobs, building energy infrastructure and managing inflation (the latter of which it had struggled to contain over the preceding 18-month period). Finance minister Grant Robertson also sought to blame a suite of international factors for the rapid rise in food prices, an acute problem for a government which failed to make significant progress introducing competition into the grocery sector. A promise to remove the goods and services tax from fruit and vegetables (a notably ineffective policy intervention to address cost-of-living pressures) was widely panned by economists. Such ad hoc, ill-conceived policy announcements might have reflected the government’s difficulty in providing greater support to struggling constituents, particularly after ruling out alternative revenue-generating options such as taxes on wealth and capital gains. 

A more populist response from Labour might have been to highlight just how well New Zealand’s Australian-owned banks and supermarkets had performed during the Covid era, and how they should contribute financially to the nation’s economic recovery. Supermarkets and banks had been attracting increasing disdain from voters, perhaps due to lack of competition and a highly profitable post-Covid environment. Revenue taxes (i.e., super profit taxes), even if only for the short term, could have provided the government with a variety of fiscal levers to offset inflationary pressures.

The consequence of not doing more, and not identifying the sectors who ought to pay for it, was (in effect) to offer relief that would have seemed similar to that on offer from opposition parties. Those same parties could simultaneously attack the government for allowing the cost-of-living crisis to escalate while reiterating their credentials as better economic managers (a pitch made by the Key-led government over successive election cycles). The government seemed unwilling or unable to respond to the opposition parties’ populist messaging, facing, by mid-2023, a populist revolt against their record as economic managers and their role in engineering a more inclusive politics, involving enhanced Māori representation in decision-making. 

Labour’s strategic failures were inevitably a factor in Winston Peters’ return to parliament. Despite being reliably populist, Peters has continued to exhibit respect for core democratic conventions in a way that would place him at the less extreme end of (exclusionary) populist political actors around the world. As odious as his politics can be at times, especially in contrast to Labour’s cosmopolitan liberalism and National’s business-friendly liberalism, Peters and New Zealand First continue to sit comfortably within the mainstream of New Zealand politics. 

Conclusion

Populist messaging around socio-cultural issues was likely to have played into the anxieties of lower-middle class New Zealanders, especially Pākehā. Such anxieties festered as the government offered little to improve the material well-being of this demographic or, indeed, of anyone else. An ability to inspire “the people” seemed lost on a government unwilling to pivot away from its technocratic approach to policy making during the Covid-19 pandemic. Despite its success only three years earlier, Labour seemed unable to leverage a more inclusive message during the 2023 election campaign.

Some caution was required before assuming that the 2022 parliament protests would propel New Zealand toward a new type of electoral politics. As jarring as the protests were, a lack of ideological conformity contributed to attendees and associated political actors proving unable to coalesce around an electorally viable party. New Zealand First was a likely benefactor, taking a more sympathetic view of those opposing vaccine mandates than parties in the 53rd New Zealand parliament. 

A lingering question is whether a fringe populism, one operating outside the political mainstream, poses a future risk to New Zealand’s liberal democracy. The 2023 election result suggests that it is unlikely to be a concern in the short to medium term. Irrespective of the political ramifications of fringe movements and their electability, there does remain an obvious need to monitor what drives individuals to call for the prime minister or senior bureaucrats to be harmed.

Back on Track? The New Zealand General Election of 2023, edited by Stephen Levine ($50, Te Herenga Waka University Press), is available to purchase from Unity Books.