Labour leader Chris Hipkins reacts to mixed poll results. Video / Herald NOW
Opinion by Matthew Hooton
Matthew Hooton has over 30 years’ experience in political and corporate communications and strategy for clients, including the National and Act parties and the Mayor of Auckland.
Of the dozens of other polls since October 2023, and earlier during that year’scampaign, every one has suggested voters’ only real choice is between the National-Act-NZ First status quo and a leap into a Labour-Green-Te Pāti Māori (TPM) brave new world.
Likewise, almost every poll suggests the closest-possible race. This week’s 1News-Verian poll had National-Act-NZ First winning by a whisker. The RNZ-Reid Research poll gave it to Labour-Green-TPM by the same margin. Average out the two polls, and you get a 60-all hung Parliament, risking a second election late next year.
With the speed of the economic recovery so uncertain, the fiscal outlook so terrible, unemployment expected to stay higher for longer and inflation threatening to return, the coalition may not have quite the good-news story to sell next year that it hoped.
Expect the TPM threat to be the number-one theme of all three governing parties’ campaigns over the next 16 months.
This is not unreasonable. Every campaign strategist knows that while the majority of voters may dislike Act, the Greens or NZ First, TPM is in an unpopularity category all of its own.
Even without a good-news economic story to sell, National strategists believe that fears of TPM should be enough for the crucial voters who swing between the two main parties in places like Te Atatū to overlook their dislike of Christopher Luxon and give him their party vote a second time.
At the same time, the dire outlook enormously constrains Chris Hipkins. If he makes the usual Labour promises of more social spending and handouts without massive new taxes, he’ll lose whatever fiscal credibility he has regained after his role in his Government’s disastrous spending binge in 2022 and 2023 that fuelled the cost-of-living crisis.
But coalition strategists better not underestimate their opposition rivals.
Together, Labour and the Greens can rightly claim to represent more than twice as many Māori as TPM, and also the majority.
Going right back to the first MMP election in 1996, fear campaigns about smaller parties have never resonated with ordinary voters as well as Wellington-based politicos hope.
They can also backfire, as in 2020 when National’s warnings about the Greens and TPM are believed to have prompted some potential blue voters to try to get Jacinda Ardern to 50% as insurance.
Luxon may plan to tell swing voters that the best way to keep TPM out of power is to vote National, but Hipkins can respond by telling them the best way is to give Labour and the Greens a majority without them. And none of this ever counts for anything anyway, compared with concerns about inflation, unemployment, interest rates and health.
Hipkins has already begun putting distance between Labour and TPM, criticising their behaviour in Parliament and lack of attendance.
Labour leader Chris Hipkins has already begun putting distance between Labour and TPM, criticising their behaviour in Parliament and lack of attendance. Photo / Mark Mitchell
More substantively, he has already ruled out their more optimistic constitutional demands. Hipkins believes the Crown and Parliament are sovereign. He is not interested in talk of a Māori Parliament or a bicultural Upper House. The Labour leader thinks that Māori, like everyone else, care more about the economy, health, education and housing than arguments over the fine detail of Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
For evidence, Hipkins can point to more Māori by far voting for Labour than for TPM. Even in the Māori electorates with Labour struggling, TPM won just 30% of party votes in 2023, compared with 44% for Labour. Combined, Labour and the Greens won a 53% majority across the seven Māori seats.
Across all electorates, pollsters say TPM wins only around 25% of voters who identify as Māori, with Labour miles ahead. Together, Labour and the Greens can rightly claim to represent more than twice as many Māori as TPM, and also the majority.
Hipkins can be expected to make this point not just publicly, but also privately in the face of TPM demands. Expect him to rule out Debbie Ngarewa-Packer and Rawiri Waititi, and also the Greens’ Marama Davidson and Chlöe Swarbrick, from being Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Finance or Minister of Foreign Affairs.
Indeed, Labour may contrast Luxon announcing at the beginning of coalition negotiations that he wanted a three-party coalition with Hipkins’ opening position that he prefers a Labour-only Government, backed on confidence votes by the Greens and TPM.
Compromise from that position might be necessary but it would come with clear expectations around Cabinet collective responsibility and acceptance of prime ministerial authority. If the likes of Ngarewa-Packer, Waititi, Davidson and Swarbrick want to serve as ministers, they will have to accept that Hipkins is boss and that they must comply with his standards of ministerial conduct, not their own. In his pitch to get the job a second time, the Labour leader can boast of getting rid of Stuart Nash, Michael Wood and Kiri Allan the first time round.
But Hipkins also has a wild card in NZ First. As part of his campaign to secure his existing vote and pick up more from National and Act, Winston Peters has ruled out supporting Labour as long as Hipkins is leader.
If the current coalition has the numbers for a second term, Peters’ promise can be relied upon. But Peters would be perfectly entitled to take a different view if the coalition fell short. Faced with the choice between a Hipkins-led Labour-NZ First Government, backed by the Greens on confidence votes, or a Labour-Green-TPM alternative, NZ First and Peters may feel obliged to opt for the former. NZ First donors and voters would surely agree.
For Hipkins, the price of Peters remaining Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister would undoubtedly be worth paying to avoid his second Government relying on Ngarewa-Packer, Waititi and TPM.
Few bet that Peters could make things work with Jim Bolger in 1996, Helen Clark in 2005, Ardern in 2017 or even Luxon in 2023, but he did.
This time round, the most senior figures in National know that relations between NZ First and Labour MPs remain much stronger than they appear in public.
A scare campaign about TPM is certainly Luxon’s best route to a second term and perfectly legitimate. But everyone involved knows the options aren’t quite as binary between National-Act-NZ First and Labour-Green-TPM as they appear. National strategists will need to be careful that their planned scare campaign doesn’t ring a bit hollow – and thus desperate in the face of poorer-than-hoped economic numbers.
Disclosure: Matthew Hooton has over 30 years’ experience in political and corporate communications and strategy for clients in Australasia, Asia, Europe and North America, including the National and Act parties and the Mayor of Auckland.
