Election 2023: Steven Joyce: Two choices this election - that lot or that lot

Labour's Chris Hipkins and National's Christopher Luxon are vying to become the next Prime Minister of New Zealand. Photo / NZME

OPINION

We are now well into the befuddled stage of the election campaign. For weeks, we have all been bombarded with competing views of the world and competing lists of lollies we will receive if we vote for this or that party.

Voters can be excused for feeling punch-drunk.

Some candidates are clearly punch-drunk. Candidates have been having unseemly squabbles and besmirching everybody else’s reputations on pretty much a daily basis.

So far, so normal you might think — but the obsessive way in which the governing party is constantly bagging the leading opposition party is unusual, and suggests they are not in any way comfortable campaigning on their record. Labour’s Grant Robertson, for example, has dialled up his now almost traditional campaign hyperbole even further to describe his opponent’s policies as “a scam” and “a lie”, presumably on the basis that if you make enough outrageous claims with a straight face, some of the mud will stick.

He can’t be far from his infamous “affront to democracy” line from the 2017 campaign.

We have a bumper number of political parties on offer for the electorate to choose from. This time around there are 19, although only 17 are contesting the list. Back in 2011, the number was 13.

The cacophony of different-coloured signage around the country is the most visual illustration of all this “variety”. Undoubtedly, the number of extra parties at least partly results from the “divide and rule” mentality the Government took during the Covid years.

The requirement to give time to small parties and their leaders during the campaign period often has the effect of shrinking the vote of National and Labour in opinion polls in the middle of the campaign.

This year is no exception. Labour’s polling was already weak and has got weaker, while National appears to be off its highs of a couple of weeks ago.

We are stuck with a very confusing picture, which won’t be helped by the remaining opinion polls. Voting has been under way for five days, and people who tend to vote early are those who have made up their minds the earliest.

Lots of people vote so they can stop engaging with the process, which they are heartily sick of. Many of these are unlikely to participate further in opinion polls, which could mean the remaining polls are more representative of people still making up their minds than anything else.

The one thing everyone seems to agree on is that the election is tight. Parties are arguing for all sorts of tactical reasons why a vote for them will help form, moderate or prevent a particular positive or scary governing combination.

We each have only one vote that has any impact on the outcome of the election, the party vote. In nearly all cases it is that vote alone that contributes to the make-up of Parliament.

So we can be as clever and tactical as we like, but we are likely to be doing the proverbial into the wind come election day.

It might help at this time to try to simplify things a little. At its most basic level, this election is about continuing with some version of the status quo, or reverting to a version of the policy settings that existed before the last six years.

If you like the current direction of travel, then your choices are broadly three: Labour, the Greens or Te Pāti Māori. This combination believes the state is the solution to most problems, is broadly in favour of increased taxation and greater public debt, supports more co-governance, and has a questionable commitment to improving public services. This last point is based on the Labour/Greens record in government, where centralisation and growing the state service have taken priority over delivering better services.

One of those parties or another may take exception at my broad characterisation. Labour, for example, may say that it doesn’t want to increase taxes, having ruled out a wealth tax. However, that was a “captain’s call” only begrudgingly supported by many if not most of their MPs.

Further, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori have “bottom line” policies to increase taxation. It would be a brave voter who would bet against this combination increasing their taxes.

If you want change, or to borrow National’s slogan, “to get back on track”, your choices are two: National or Act.

Again, both parties offer different shades of change, but both broadly emphasise growing the economy by providing more opportunity for businesses, shrinking the size of the state, providing tax relief in response to the cost-of-living crisis, rolling back co-governance and centralisation, delivering infrastructure, and focusing public services primarily on what they deliver to people.

That is broadly your choice. The status quo or a change back to pre-2017 times, updated for six years on.

There is of course more nuance within that, but when you look back in three years, you will have had one or the other.

There are of course the 11 or so tiny parties you could vote for, but at this stage it is highly unlikely that any of those will get into Parliament.

One would need to have been polling around 3 to 4 per cent by now to have a chance, and that hasn’t happened.

A vote for the 11 will result in a “wasted vote”, which is split more or less equally between the two factions I have described. It is, in effect, the same as not voting.

Your final option is to contract out your decision to Winston Peters.

NZ First has risen in the polls in recent weeks as it tends to do when one of the major parties weakens. There are many centrist Labour voters currently not happy with their party who will vote NZ First in preference to swapping over to National or Act.

There are also voters who want change, but perhaps not the exact combination of National and Act that might otherwise turn up.

These people are taking Winston at his word, that he won’t return a Labour-led Government. However our old friend Mr Peters is a past master at saying one thing before an election and another thing afterwards, so at best they are voting for a crapshoot.

Are we really believing Peters wouldn’t hold a Dutch auction after the election if he holds the balance of power? How would he secure the baubles he wants without seeking the highest bidder?

When all the noise clears, the choice this election is clear. Vote for more of the same (Labour, Greens or Te Pāti Māori) or change (National or Act). Or contract your vote out.

Whatever your decision, I’ll see you on the other side. Good luck to all of us!

- Steven Joyce is a former National Party Minister of Finance and Minister of Transport. He is director at Joyce Advisory, and the author of the recently-published book on his time in office, On The Record.