KEY POINTS:
The size and magnitude of Labour's defeat has not sunk in. The highest electorate swing against Labour was nearly 30 per cent but MMP proportional representation cushioned this effect.
In 1996, Labour got a lower vote than in 1990 when we got booted out, the lowest vote since the 1920s. Yet Labour was back in government in three years.
Labour's big job now is to analyse what happened and why. Why, when for a decade, the global economy enjoyed its best growth ever?
Unemployment was low, large spending was directed at health and education. But there was a feeling that, while the leadership had mastered the necessary economic themes, there was little substance to back up the "spin".
New Zealand endured a series of publicity-savvy cliches like the "knowledge wave". Then we were going to make billions out of climate change that later would cost billions.
And red tape-cutting initiatives were laughed at because they often made matters worse.
Then there was "closing the gap", another worthy goal, which was quickly forgotten. Last-minute, opportunistic law and order suggestions to ban gangs were counter-productive.
Good policies to get families cheaper prescriptions and doctor visits were lost because the "systemic problems" in our hospitals went unaddressed.
National's promise to uncap doctors' fees was not exposed. It was 70 years since Labour had established a good socialist system of public funds for people to go to local doctors, who owned their own businesses (the best of a mixed social economy).
The battle between the state and government has been simple. Labour would say, "We want to give another $10 subsidy for kids, or the elderly, to go to the doctor. Doctors, please pass that money on." The doctors would say, "We won't accept socialist control." Labour successfully navigated this.
But Labour's present decline goes deeper. They became so unified, so good at politics and paying off sector groups in good economic times that they missed out on the basic values of working New Zealanders.
Their attacks on National's John Key as a "rich prick" missed the mark. Working people, the battlers who want their own homes, the lawnmowing democracy, a holiday in Sydney, want their kids to do better, don't despise success. They want part of it.
For generations, class envy went upwards: poor people looking at the rich and thinking they weren't getting their fair go. That was true, especially in the closed economy days when businesses were subsidised and protected.
Class envy now doesn't just go upwards, it goes downwards. Battlers, who do everything right, feel they pay too much for sector groups who get handouts, benefits, special considerations they didn't get.
I suspect the biggest swing from Labour to National was in the normally reliable migrant and ethnic vote. The largest meeting of the election cycle was a mass Asian protest against crime in South Auckland.
Immigrants who had nothing when they came to New Zealand and worked hard, started a business, sent their kids to universities to be our doctors, lawyers and accountants ask, "Why do people who aren't prepared to work keep getting handouts and cultural exceptions?"
Labour, for generations, was the natural liberal home for migrants. National was seen to be unsympathetic, even hostile.
Our greatest Labour leader, Peter Fraser, understood this. He said how he hated slackers, and they should be put in a tank of water and be forced to hand-pump the water, and drown if they didn't pull their weight.
But during the most recent times wherever there was a social problem, there was a TV campaign and a well-meaning commission whose values often jarred. People groaned when the Children's Commissioner said we had to balance the artistic needs of suburban kids and property rights of homeowners, driving the graffiti debate.
A battler who has taken a second job so he can afford to to build a fence should vote for that? This was a "values" election as much as a general election.
Labour believes in merit, a fair go, regardless of race, gender, geography, income, or accident of birth. But that is not how it's seen now.
In Phil Goff and Annette King, Labour has leaders who understand this. They also have 13 new MPs, and they can win sooner than people think.
But they have to turn the page. People didn't vote for National because they wanted new faces on the same policies.
I hope National thinks that. However, it will be the global economic situation and the response to this challenge that will decide the next election.
Mike Moore is a former Prime Minister, and former Director-General of the World Trade Organisation
