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Left to right: Greens leader James Shaw, Labour leader Jacinda Ardern, NZ First leader Winston Peters
Left to right: Greens leader James Shaw, Labour leader Jacinda Ardern, NZ First leader Winston Peters

PoliticsSeptember 25, 2017

Four reasons why Labour could be better off in opposition

Left to right: Greens leader James Shaw, Labour leader Jacinda Ardern, NZ First leader Winston Peters
Left to right: Greens leader James Shaw, Labour leader Jacinda Ardern, NZ First leader Winston Peters

Their supporters may not like it, but the smart choice for Labour might be to bow out of coalition negotiations and resign themselves to three more years in opposition. Former National cabinet minister Wayne Mapp explains why. 

It is almost always the case that political parties will want to form a government whenever it is possible. But is it always the right choice?

I recall this debate in 1996 in the National Party caucus, when I had been newly elected as MP for North Shore. Was it actually in the National Party’s interest to form a government with Winston Peters? The majority, after a heated and passionate debate, concluded that it was. Nothing was held back in that debate.

However, the actual experience of being in coalition government from 1996 to 1999 was anything but edifying. There was too much distrust between National and New Zealand First. The expulsion of Winston Peters from National was altogether too fresh in the memory. Jim Bolger tried exceptionally hard to make the coalition work, but this effort proved to be the cause of his downfall, among too many of his colleagues. But the situation only got worse when he was replaced as prime minister. The coalition fell apart and the government became reliant on a group of rebel MPs, including Alamein Kopu, formerly of the Alliance.

It is also arguable that the decision to go into that first coalition government resulted in National being in opposition for nine years from 1999 to 2008. Labour could in fact have benefitted from not being in the first MMP coalition with Winston Peters, because they used their time in opposition to lay a much more secure foundation for a long term government.

Now I assume everyone has learnt a lot in the intervening 20 years. I can’t imagine that a coalition government in 2017 will be anything like that of 1996. Nevertheless the basic question has to be asked: is Labour in a similar position to Labour in 1996, and facing a similar choice?

On election night this time Labour was over 10 percentage points behind National. It is a substantial gap. Even when special votes are counted, this is unlikely to change dramatically. A centre-left government will still require the three parties of Labour, New Zealand First and the Greens. And even then it will only have a one or two seat majority.

Labour leader Jacinda Ardern addresses supporters at the Labour Party Election party in Auckland on Sep 23, 2017. (Photo by Shirley Kwok/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)

So why might Labour conclude that waiting three years to 2020 will be to its advantage?

First, it is highly unlikely that National could win a fifth term. Not impossible, but it has not been done for over 100 years. So Labour could reasonably expect to win in 2020.

Second, Jacinda Ardern will gain kudos by making a principled stand of being in opposition. She will be relentless in holding the government to account. That provides the platform to build on her success to date, and to actually propel Labour ahead of National, or at the minimum, close the gap to much less than 10 percent.

Third, she will be able to build a much more effective team. Labour has gained some talented newcomers. Willow-Jean Prime and Deborah Russell stand out. They could easily be in Cabinet in three years.

Fourth, she can use the time in opposition to sort out Labour’s policies, to present a much more coherent and appealing policy package that will not be vulnerable to National attack, in the way the current policy prescription was.

Labour’s key mentor is Helen Clark. From a historical perspective it seems likely that Helen Clark would recognise that she was able to form a much better government in 1999 than she could have in 1996. She personally benefitted from the three years in opposition. The relatively straight forward coalitions she was able to put together in 1999, 2002 and in 2005 were able to provide reasonably coherent and stable government. This was because Labour was the dominant component of the government and did not have to make bad policy concessions.

Will this lesson of recent Labour history provide a guide, or will the allure of power be so compelling that such historical considerations will be put aside?

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election graph feat2

PoliticsSeptember 24, 2017

A better visual breakdown of the 2017 election results

election graph feat2

The usual way electoral results maps are presented can be deceiving, overemphasising the relative importance of large but sparsely populated rural areas. Stephen Beban shares his map that more accurately reflects last night’s results.

This post was updated on 16 October 2017 to reflect the final vote tallies.

If you watched the results on election night, you may have seen the map of New Zealand’s electorates. Despite the overall party vote, showing a relatively close result (with New Zealand First holding the balance of power), one would be forgiven for thinking a National landslide had occurred based on the amount of blue covering the map of the electorates. For example, TVNZ displayed the following map as part of its coverage:

The Geographic Electorate Map

Credit: TVNZ

The same was true for the 2014 map as well:

The key problem with using a geographically accurate map is that densely-populated urban areas are obscured, whereas vast rural electorates are exaggerated. Each electorate may contain the same amount of people and influence, but visually the former are underemphasised and the latter are overemphasised. For example, the Clutha-Southland electorate could comfortable fit all 30 electorates for the Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch areas combined several times over.

To compensate, maps are given insets, zooming in on the population centers (as seen above). But this only achieves so much; the electorates can be identified, but are still vastly out of proportion.

The Electorate Hexamap

To try and resolve this issue, I developed a map back in 2016 to complement the traditional one. Instead of geographic accuracy, we want to reflect the equal political power of all 71 electorates by displaying them as the same size. This is a particular type of cartogram called a ‘hexamap’ – each electorate is represented by five equally-sized hexagons.

The Electorate Hexamap retains the general shape of the country, and places each electorate as well as possible to remain in as similar position relative to its neighbours. However, it does render some electorates trickier to identify once they have variously expanded or contracted. For example, Auckland has such a large population, it extends as far as where Lake Taupo would otherwise be; similarly West-Cost Tasman shrinks to the North-Western most corner of the South Island. The flipside of this is that we get a much better sense of proportion.

The Electorate Hexamap – Candidate Vote

The first and most obvious way to use the hexamap is to show the winners of the candidate vote in each electorate. Much like in the pre-MMP era, the dominance of the two largest parties is striking. And even when minor parties secure an electorate seat, they struggle to achieve winning margins on par with most major-party candidates.

Electorate Hexamap – Party Vote

However, showing the candidate results carries the unavoidable consequence of presenting a distorted picture as it does not account for the full distribution of political support. So the more striking use of the hexamap is the ability to more clearly visualize the distribution of support for the Government and Opposition parties.

To give a better sense of how the country is balanced in 2017, we can take the votes of all parties that won a seat in Parliament last election (2014), and compare those in the Government (National, Māori, Act, and United Future) versus the Opposition (Labour, Greens, and New Zealand First), relative to the country as a whole.

Whereas Government parties won 52.6% of the vote in 2014; New Zealand gave 47.9% of the vote to Government parties in 2017, and 52.1% to Opposition parties. To stay in power, an Opposition party will need to be persuaded to join the Government. Ōtaki, the most closely-divided electorate, gave 51.6% of its vote to the Opposition, making it marginally Government-leaning (48.4% versus 47.9% nationally, voting 0.57% to the right of the nation).

This reveals that, in 2017, 37 electorates leant more towards the government, whilst 34 leant more towards the Opposition. With a few exceptions; more urban areas and the Māori electorates lean more towards the Opposition, whilst rural areas more towards the Government.

In both instances, the hexamap gives a visual impression far more reflective of how New Zealand votes than what we can achieve with the traditional map alone. It is not a substitute for the geographic map, but a complementary way to better inform readers interested in the political landscape of the country.

Stephen Beban is a Wellington-based policy analyst at a government department. He previously worked for US non-profit FairVote as an electoral analyst.

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