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The Christmas poll rush. Image: Jason Stretch
The Christmas poll rush. Image: Jason Stretch

OPINIONPoliticsJuly 11, 2022

David Seymour’s 100-day gauntlet and the return of devil-beast politics

The Christmas poll rush. Image: Jason Stretch
The Christmas poll rush. Image: Jason Stretch

The major parties will soon talk less about each other, and more about each other’s putative coalition partners.

If MMP elections are a cocktail bar, 2023 is likely to offer one of the simplest menus New Zealand has seen. Pick your drink: National or Labour. If you want it stronger, choose a shot of Act or Green. 

There are other variables, to be sure. Te Pāti Māori could end up with the shaker in its hands; another party could gatecrash the place. But – for now at least – the electoral moonshine of New Zealand First is off the shelf, and the options are sharpening in focus.

It’s untypical for Act and the Greens to both be sitting comfortably above the 5% threshold in polls at this point in an electoral cycle. And it’s highly unlikely either National or Labour will take power at the end of next year without negotiating a formal coalition with a partner that is big enough to command senior roles and a bunch of seats around the cabinet table. 

Against this backdrop David Seymour rolled up to Act’s conference yesterday and laid out his “plan for the first 100 days of government”. Top of the party leader’s list was a Royal Commission of Inquiry into New Zealand’s Covid response. Whatever the quibbles about the form, scope and composition of an inquiry, it’s clearly a good and necessary idea. Clever politics on the part of Act to make it a headline demand, perhaps, but I’d be surprised if every party doesn’t go into the election promising something similar, albeit without Seymour’s gonzo demand for a “glasnost” probe.

The pricklier pledge was as much about National as it was Labour. “We won’t allow National to lazily roll over Labour’s policies like it has in governments gone by,” said Seymour. “National will need to learn how to share with a larger and more powerful coalition partner than it’s had before.” 

The 100-day list will hardly alarm National partisans. Repeal of three waters, of the Māori Health authority, of the offshore oil and gas ban, of the so-called “ute tax” and of the highest tax bracket are all National policy already. They, too, oppose fair pay agreements and like the idea of charter schools – Christopher Luxon was lavishing praise on them in London just the other day. As for “Stop the Public Interest Journalism Fund”, that will be pretty much done and dusted by the election and there’s little sense that Labour, let alone National, has any appetite to renew it. 

But it will nevertheless give National strategists pause. Act has essentially set the agenda, enumerated the question lines to be put to Luxon in the days and weeks to come. David Seymour has demanded that the Zero Carbon Act is repealed within 100 days, Mr Luxon. Are you on board? Do you also want to bin Oranga Tamariki’s requirement to prioritise whānau for tamariki Māori? And so it will go, through to the election. You do need to learn how to share. 

National’s approach in the last two or three months has evinced the energy of a small-target-strategy – encouraged by Labor’s success in the Australian election, they’ve sought to avoid the opposition dangers of barking at every passing car, taking positions on all and sundry, making grand pledges and declamations. Instead, with the electorate focused more than anything on mortgages, rents, bills and the price of cheese, you don’t stray far from the economy. You don’t, for example, want your backbench MPs posting love hearts all over Facebook at a US Supreme Court ruling. 

While you can stare down a caucus member with an appeal to discipline, unity and the greater good of the party, however, you can’t control the statements of a future coalition partner. It’s all very well carefully installing a small target if someone else is bouncing dart boards around the place. 

National leader Christopher Luxon and Act leader David Seymour (Photos: Getty Images)

This is not exclusive to the right side of the spectrum. When the Green Party stages its AGM in a fortnight, almost every promise and ambition will be seized on by National to weld to the Labour platform. The only question, really, is whether Labour will start warning in foreboding tones about the dangers of an Act-National government before National does the same about Green-Labour. 

A campaign in which rivals take aim at each other’s outriggers is not, of course, new. Bottom lines and rulings-out are stock elements of a proportional system. In 2013, John Key attacked the Labour-Green alternative as a “devil-beast”. While Key’s National managed repeatedly to govern without forming a coalition (but with ministers outside cabinet), that didn’t stop his opponents cautioning that the coat-tails of Epsom could hold him to ransom.

One of the reasons the dynamic suddenly feels more pronounced is the absence – for now, certainly – of New Zealand First, an acquired taste, but one ready for mixing with any drink. And because the idea of coalitions barely figured in 2020. That election very obviously was freakish, a majority government returned by an exceptional response to an exceptional crisis amplified by an opposition party in an exceptional spiral of self-destruction. 

In the months ahead, as long as the polling remains in roughly similar territory, there may be an incentive on both sides to spike their rivals’ guns. After leading Labour to a crushing defeat in 2014, David Cunliffe said he regretted snubbing an offer from the Greens in the campaign to work together. In 2016, the parties did precisely that, issuing a public memorandum on “working together” for the election the next year. 

The pact had limited force – as witnessed in the leadup to Metiria Turei’s resignation – but it will nevertheless be on the minds of all four parties today. Because it’s clear already that if you vote Labour or if you vote Green you’re voting for a blend of the two; and it's the same for National and Act. Given that, the argument goes, why not quietly coordinate your efforts? At the very least, strive not to furnish your opponents with political ammunition. The counterpoint: you've got to demonstrate conviction, be impassioned, crisp and different. Who wants to vote for an appendage? 

David Seymour was attempting to navigate all that yesterday. It was for the most part a pledge to pump yellow steroids into a blue body. He didn’t bother with the phony electoral rhetoric of pretending Act could be “the government”. He said, “Act is on track to play a powerful role in the next government,” and polling shows that’s no hyperbole. It's a remarkable truth that none of New Zealand's nine MMP elections has landed Act or the Greens in a formal governing coalition with permanent places around the cabinet table. One of them is almost sure to break that drought next year, and that knowledge will profoundly inform the months to come.


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Image: Archi Banal
Image: Archi Banal

OPINIONPoliticsJuly 8, 2022

Should councils be responsible for running their own elections?

Image: Archi Banal
Image: Archi Banal

While there’s an independent body in charge of the general election, local councils are tasked with managing their own. How they choose to do so can have a significant impact on who takes part, argues Jonny Osborne.

Voting in our local elections is easy. You get sent your voting papers in the mail, fill them out and send them back. Simple. Job done.

But what happens if you don’t get sent your papers? Say you’re a student, swapping mouldy flats each year, and you forgot to update your details with the Electoral Commission. Or you’re one of the many who can’t afford to buy a house and face the grim instability of New Zealand’s rental market. Maybe you don’t have a home at all. 

Well, you can cast what’s called a special vote. Don’t let the name fool you: it’s not that special and it’s not that easy to do. 

Special votes are a way that eligible voters can participate in an election despite not having – or having completed – the requisite paperwork. Processing special votes is more expensive as it takes time – and someone – to check the vote can be legally cast. In our general elections you can cast a special vote at any polling station in the country. In our local elections, not so much. 

(File photo – Radio NZ)

Returning to our student from above. Let’s say she’s based in Wellington, and imagine she’s shifted to the depths of Karori, forgotten to leave a forwarding address at her old flat in Island Bay, and in the turmoil of sorting out the bond, the power bill and the new bus routes, she’s forgotten to update her details with the Electoral Commission. But she’s keen as to vote. 

So what can she do? If it’s not yet August 12, she can update her details with the Electoral Commission. Our student then simply waits for her postal ballot before voting to her heart’s content. Easy peasy. 

What if our student’s love of local democracy blooms on August 13? Then it becomes a little trickier. Our student has to trek into town, find the one and only “special voting station” in the city and cast her vote. That’s right: in Wellington, the heart of New Zealand’s democracy, there will be one polling booth for voters that don’t have a postal ballot.

In this regard Wellington does appear to be somewhat of an outlier. If our student lived in Christchurch she could cast a special vote in one of nine locations. In Hamilton that number is eight and Dunedin has several booths planned. Auckland has seven locations for special voting and plans to once again provide “one-stop shop” mobile booths at markets, marae and campuses, an initiative credited with a 50% rise in special votes in 2019. 

Sure, if our student’s keen to vote, she will find a way to do so. But you have to wonder if it couldn’t be just a little easier to take part in our local democracies. 

It’s no secret that turnout in our local elections is poor. Woeful even. In 2019 less than 50% of eligible voters cast a vote in a mayoral election, usually the contest that generates the most coverage and comment. In our major urban centres that number drops further, with turnout in the low 40s or high 30s. If participation is the key indicator of democracy’s success, New Zealand’s local elections would be awarded a “not achieved”. 

The Electoral Commission’s Orange Guy and Pup (Photo: Electoral Commission)

In parliamentary elections, the Electoral Commission controls every aspect. When it comes to local elections, however, the commission is responsible only for maintaining up-to-date electoral rolls and encouraging people to enrol in time to vote. Local councils are in charge of everything else. 

Perhaps it’s time to reassess who is responsible for running our local elections. This is not to cast aspersions on our councillors, who mostly are good people trying to make good choices for their community. But it doesn’t require a great stretch of the imagination to see that mayors and councillors voted in by a small section of their community might feel threatened if the pool of voters suddenly grew. 

Maybe an independent operator would be more willing to identify the flaws with postal voting. Or conclude that special voting booths should be more widely spread. Or decide that local elections are just as important as general elections and so should be afforded the same level of resource. Or maybe, just maybe, it might conclude that one special voting booth in a city the size of Wellington just isn’t right. 

An independent body running our local elections is unlikely to be a panacea that suddenly sees voter participation rise to match the levels of our general election. Engaging and informative media coverage of inspiring candidates remains the surest path to increasing our turnout. But in the absence of that, an independent body might just be worth a try. 

You can check your details are correct or enrol to vote here.

Disclaimer: The writer has voluntarily helped Tory Whanau’s campaign for the Wellington mayoralty, which is how he became aware of this issue. These views are his own. 

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