Author: Gary Hawke

“It’s Time” sums up the New Zealand election result. The echo of Australia in 1972 is not only that Helen Clark’s government was swept from office in a widespread feeling that it had lost touch with the electorate but also that John Key’s anxiety to be in office so as to attend the APEC Leaders’ Meeting must have led him to think about the executive consisting of only Gough Whitlam and Lance Barnard.

Normal processes will probably suffice. Legal changes after Muldoon’s resistance to a quick change of power in 1984 mean that the effective constraint on government formation is the political planning for a secure coalition, one which could persist beyond the 2011 election. It would be disruptive to form a cabinet and then have to adjust its membership once arrangements were made with coalition partners.

The victory of the National Party was sweeping.

The Mixed-Member Proportional electoral system moderates the impact of the electoral swing on representation in Parliament. New Zealand does not have exit polls, but a survey organized by Professor Nigel Roberts and a team at Victoria University of Wellington found that a slightly larger number of voters “generally identify” with National than with Labour – a big change since the peak for Labour in 2002 – and a larger majority of voters thought that of all parties, National policies were closer to their preferences on whatever issue most concerned them. Worries persist about “right-wing hidden agendas”, benefit reductions and job losses, despite repeated assurances that worry economists by creating barriers to sensible policy initiatives, but John Key’s government starts with strong electoral support.

It also begins with a simpler parliament. Winston Peters and New Zealand First lost all parliamentary representation, winning 4.2% of the party vote against a threshold of 5%. Populism for the aged has lost its impact and crusading against corporates must be free from an appearance of hypocrisy. The Greens did poorer than the polls suggested. Perhaps voters saw through the clever advertising – “Vote for me” and a small child on the edge of a pristine lake – and realized that the the interests of future generations are not served by contemporary Puritanism and left-wing sentimentality, but probably voters preferred to try to rescue Labour directly. ACT leader, Rodney Hide, won Epsom and the party secured 5 seats, enough to be influential but not decisive. Its immediate point of difference is on the emissions trading scheme, and we might hope that policy analysis focuses on international agreements on global warming and turns away from blind acceptance of European mechanisms. Indeed, we might hope for more discussion of policy and less concentration on political deals generally. The Maori Party won 5 constituency seats; it does not hold a balance of power but must be part of planning for post-2011 and it further reduces the bargaining power of ACT.

The MMP electoral system delivered change. Pressure for its revision will be reduced. Political activists will notice that an alternative “Supplementary Member” system which provides proportionality only among list seats and accepts constituency results unmodified would have given National a clear majority. Even elimination of the rule that any party winning a constituency gets list seats without reaching the 5% threshold would, in effect, have delivered a majority. (Voters respond to electoral systems but would probably not have changed sufficiently to upset those conjectures.) There will be a lot of fiddling, but ironically the result sets back recognition of the fundamental tension, that MMP depends on a difference between electing a parliament and choosing a government while the media and public opinion think in terms of choosing leaders. We might even think that the tension is between MMP assuming reflective government while the trend has been towards instinctive reactions. It is more important to adapt the processes for developing policy choices to a parliament in which ministers have to attract cross-party support than it is to fiddle with the electoral system.

It is tempting to relate the New Zealand result to Rudd’s election in Australia and Obama’s victory in the US and suggest “All Change” might be as appropriate as “It’s time”. The Great Depression of the 1930s produced not a general swing to the left as New Zealanders (and Americans) tend to think but a displacement of whoever was the incumbent government. Perhaps voters are better informed than we think about international economic trends? Fortunately, Canada’s return of an incumbent government precludes any such simplicity, and it is unlikely that New Zealand voters had more than a general sense that they would do better with a government not relying on tired ideas.

That Key regards attendance at APEC as so important is interesting. He has shown little specific concern with foreign affairs or trade, but he knows that international financial networks are important and that New Zealand’s biggest issues lie abroad. The National-led government will want to distinguish itself from its predecessor most of all by enhancing the importance of wealth-creation relative to distribution while preserving social cohesion. New Zealand’s place in the world is a good starting point.

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2. New Zealand trade policy
3. China’s involvement in Fiji and Australia and New Zealand’s position
4. Will the DPJ win a majority?: a survey of the 2009 general election

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2. Decapitating the bureaucracy in Japan
3. Vietnam’s banks under scrutiny

This entry was posted on Friday, November 14th, 2008 at 3:00 am and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.