John Key’s speech to National faithful was ‘suicidal’, says NZ First leader.

To rort or not to rort? Enthusiasm for an “overhang strategy” on the political right has been simmering for some time. In recent days, it has tipped unmistakably into the mainstream conversation. 

The approach, which seeks to engineer an overhang in parliament by delivering the National Party more electorate seats than its party vote would otherwise entitle it, first gained traction in response to Te Pāti Māori. At its campaign launch last month, the party explicitly endorsed a “one tick” campaign. Give us your candidate vote, said TPM, give your party vote to Labour or the Greens, and thereby, went the controversial tactic, the left will benefit from a quirk of MMP to boost its seat count.

On the other side of the spectrum, a small but swelling group of people looked at numbers that show how few National list MPs are likely to be elected, given the way the vote is spread, and said why not join them. Tick National for your local candidate, was the call, and tick NZ First or Act for party. 

Former National leader Don Brash, New Zealand First candidate Michael Laws and National and Act donor Nick Mowbray were the highest profile advocates. Dieuwe de Boer, a former New Conservatives candidate and Reality Check Radio host, set up a website to promote the tactic. In the Post on Saturday, Henry Cooke reported that Harry Mowbray – father of toy empire co-founder Nick – had been working hard to get a proper overhang campaign going.

Yesterday, the overhang strategy, typically something discussed by electoral nerds only, was on the stage again, this time in a speech from John Key. Addressing hundreds of National volunteers, the former prime minister said for National supporters to buy into the overhang thinking and split their vote would be “the opposite of clever”. It would mean, he stressed, “some of National’s most talented ministers would be replaced by someone you have never heard of from a minor party”. 

National had already distributed in parts of the country a flyer urging, in all caps, “The party vote is the key vote”, explaining why “the only safe strategic vote is to party vote National”. 

Now the chatter was considered enough of a threat to mobilise the single most influential living figure in the National Party to send the message.

Another politician with a bit of experience was out of the traps in response this morning. “That speech was a suicidal speech, electorally speaking,” said Winston Peters of John Key’s appearance. He told Ryan Bridge Today: “I’m asking people who know about politics, who know about the numbers, to do an assessment and say to themselves: why would someone who has some experience about politics make a speech like that to a largely empty hall.” He said: “When the other side are using certain tactics to skew the results you’re going to have to react. You don’t just carry on with previous ways as if it doesn’t matter.”

That other side was his focus on TVNZ Breakfast, too. “When the other side are using manipulative tactics,” Peters said, “there’s got to be a response from our side.”

He is referring, of course, to the Te Pāti Māori tactic. In the speech notes for a campaign address on September 6, the New Zealand First leader chided TPM for “actively campaigning against people giving their party vote to the Māori Party”. He said: “They are wanting to manipulate the Māori vote by telling people to party-vote for some other party on the left.” That was the text of the speech; when it came to delivering it, Peters skipped that part. 

Whether people are playing close enough attention to absorb this strategy is hard to say – let alone whether they’d want to execute if they did. Then there’s a further question: if it were to play out, if it did work, what would it mean for the future of MMP – a system designed expressly to ensure that seats in parliament are apportioned fairly?