The stage is set at Stade de France for a big weekend of Rugby World Cup action, Prime Minister elect Chris Luxon says he's in soft-talks with both Act and New Zealand First and Infometrics has revised its expectations, now predicting year-end growth at 0.9 per cent. Video / NZ Herald
Opinion by Audrey Young
Audrey Young, Senior Political Correspondent at the New Zealand Herald based at Parliament, specialises in writing about politics and power.
This is a transcript of Audrey Young’s subscriber-only Premium Politics newsletter. To sign up, click on your profile at nzherald.co.nz and select ‘Newsletters’. For a step-by-step guide, click here.
Welcome to the Politics Briefing with two long weeks to go until special votes are known and thefinal election result is declared. There are some very nervous National candidates both in electorates and on the list. And there is a good reason for that. It is extremely finely balanced and could get very tricky.
In short, National’s list has fallen victim to its unexpected success in the electorates.
At present, National has 50 seats. Because it won many more electorate seats than expected, a massive 45 of them are electorate seats and only five are from the list - Nicola Willis, Paul Goldsmith, Melissa Lee, Gerry Brownlee and Andrew Bayly. The next five waiting on the list are (in this order): Nancy Lu, Agnes Loheni, Emma Chatterton, James Christmas and Dale Stephens.
At the same time, National has some very close electorate contests in which specials could tip them either way, all held by candidates with such low list placings that it’s winning the seat or nothing: National holds Te Atatū by 30, Nelson by 54, Banks Peninsula by 83 and, incredibly, Labour holds Mt Albert by only 106 votes after Labour list MP Helen White just pulled ahead of National list MP Melissa Lee.
So the first big question is how many seats will National lose overall on the specials (the party vote) - National traditionally does not pick up seats on specials - and then how many will be made up of electorates and how many by the list.
If the party ends up being entitled to only 47 seats instead of 50 and it loses its three most marginal seats, the current list as elected from last Saturday would stay as is - and after Andrew Bayly wins the Port Waikato byelection in late November due to the death of the Act candidate, Nancy Lu would replace him on the National list.
But there are many other scenarios, including plausible ones in which senior MP and father of the House Gerry Brownlee would find it hard to get back. If National is entitled to, say, 48 seats but National holds onto its three marginal seats, with 45 electorates, it could have only three people from the list: Willis, Goldsmith and Lee. Brownlee would not get back in after Bayly won the Port Waikato byelection because Bayly would not have been on the list to begin with.
Even if Lee won Mt Albert, it would make no difference to Brownlee. It would just reduce the number of list MPs to two: Willis and Goldsmith.
Under another, more improbable scenario, if National keeps its party vote entitlement to 50 seats, but loses the three marginal electorates, taking it from 45 to 42 electorates, Lu, Loheni and Chatteron would immediately be elected as list MPs to get to eight list MPs, and after Bayly won the Port Waikato byelection, James Christmas would replace him as a list candidate.
The failure to get lawyer James Christmas elected with certainty on the party list will be a blow to Luxon because it was widely known and confirmed by Luxon during the campaign that he was earmarked to go straight into Cabinet with Treaty Negotiations and Attorney-General.
Among the stories below, I’ve again included the Herald’s interactive graphic on the election result (fourth down). If you opt for a grid view and order the seats according to tightness, you’ll get the most marginal seats in the country at the top - Te Atatū, Nelson and Banks Peninsula - working down to the safest seats - East Coast Bays, Selwyn and Whangaparāoa.
Quote unquote
“Thoughts and prayers” - Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson on what advice she would give Christopher Luxon and David Seymour on dealing with Winston Peters in a three-way government.
Te Pāti Māori’s Tākuta Ferris beat Rino Tirikatene in the southern Māori seat of Te Tai Tonga. Who was the last Māori Party candidate to win the seat and when? Answer below.
Brickbat
Labour MP and Mt Albert candidate Helen White: “I didn’t do badly. I did really, really well.” Photo / George Heard
To Labour MP Helen White, who has taken Mt Albert from the biggest majority in the country - 21,246 under Jacinda Ardern in 2020 - to 106 last weekend and rejected the notion she hadn’t done a good job: “I didn’t do badly. I did really, really well,” she told reporters this week.
Bouquet
Goes to one of Labour’s best, Andrew Little, who has decided to retire from politics rather than go into Opposition. He has never been one to muck around.
Audrey Young is the New Zealand Herald’s senior political correspondent. She was named Political Journalist of the Year at the Voyager Media Awards in 2023, 2020 and 2018.
For more political news and views, listen to On the Campaign, the Herald’s politics podcast.
