Heather du Plessis-Allan: Support for Greens drops, rises for Māori Party in Roy Morgan poll

Māori Party co-leaders Debbie Ngarewa-Packer and Rawiri Waititi. The party is ready to hoover up unhappy Green voters, says Heather du Plessis-Allan. Photo / Marty Melville

OPINION

You should expect the Māori Party to be one of election night’s success stories.

This week’s Roy Morgan poll had Te Pāti Māori (TPM) at 7 per cent, the highest they’ve ever registered. They probably won’t hold that level of support. The Roy Morgan has been known to register big spikes for parties that later evaporate.

But if they did beat the odds and they hold 7 per cent, that would give TPM nine seats. Four is more plausible but even that would be a success. They would double their current number of MPs.

But the really interesting number in the poll is how TPM got to 7 per cent. The Roy Morgan registers a 2.5 per cent drop in support for the Green Party and a 2.5 per cent increase for TPM. That’s a straight movement of voters.

It makes sense. For the first time, unhappy Green voters have somewhere more radical to go without wasting votes.

Up to now, Green voters have been trapped. Even if the party’s co-leader was foolish enough to give nearly $12 million to a “green” private school despite his party opposing private schools, where else could disillusioned voters go?

Many couldn’t shift more to the centre. The Labour Party would be too compromised and unprincipled for them. None could shift to the left. There was no party to the left.

Until now.

Now TPM sits to the left of the Greens, ready to hoover up unhappy voters.

And unhappiness there will be.

The Greens are almost shameless in their hunger for power. They took a $50,000 donation from James Cameron despite saying they wanted other political parties to be limited to donations of no more than $35,000.

They’ve watered down their wealth policy to be almost acceptable to the majority of voters. Hardly radical.

They have absolutely no bottom lines whatsoever, lest those principles get between them and the Cabinet table.

And they’ve done hardly anything with their influence on government. Climate Change Minister James Shaw hasn’t forced the farmers into the ETS. Associate Housing Minister Marama Davidson has done bugger all to speak of.

And they even let Labour put the world’s most inoffensive policy - the Container Recycling Scheme - on the policy bonfire. Ninety-eight per cent of respondents to the submissions process supported it.

Green voters are notoriously principled, to the point of it being a political problem. Many won’t accept these compromises.

And those will be the ones hightailing it to TPM, who have basically exactly the same kaupapa, but with the radicalism of old-school Greens.

Te Pāti Māori is about climate change, fixing poverty, restoring Māori rights. They want a 2 per cent tax on ghost houses and a tax on the wealthy. They tried to ban seabed mining. They called out the Government for climate inaction. They believe iwi own water.

That, right there, is the new home for the real leftie radical in NZ. Forget the Greens. By TPM standards, they’ve sold out. TPM is where it’s at for the wokesters.

It doesn’t matter that they’ve done little more than publicity stunts like Facebook live rants in apparent support of the Mongrel Mob’s Ōpōtiki tangi and complaining about wearing neckties in the House. They understand stunts are actually more important than Question Time because publicity is the juice that fuels politics.

The bad news for TPM’s only remaining coalition partners is that they make a left-wing government less likely. If 7 per cent of voters like them, 93 per cent don’t. Their kaupapa scares the pants off mainstream NZ. The prospect of needing TPM for government could cost Labour almost a third of their voters, which they can’t afford to lose.

So they will almost definitely be one of election night’s success stories, but probably at the expense of their bloc.

Heather du Plessis-Allan Drive, Newstalk ZB, 4pm-7pm, weekdays.