The penultimate week of the campaign and the first week of advance voting was characterised by more squabbling over costings and fiscal plans, a train-wreck interview with Winston Peters – even by his already dire standards – a Prime Minister with Covid, a spy scandal and allegations of harassment and violence towards politicians.
Friday
Companies, political parties and government departments tend to release bad news on a Friday afternoon, when media engagement declines. And so at 1.30pm, National released its fiscal plan. The question of whether it can credibly fund its tax and transfer package has been its greatest liability during the campaign period, and the party still maintains that it would raise enough money through stamp duty on foreign buyers of residential property to afford its campaign promises and return the country to surplus in 2027.
Leader Christopher Luxon and deputy Nicola Willis have pledged to resign if they don’t deliver their tax cuts. But it is now likely that they would need New Zealand First to be able to form a government. NZF leader Winston Peters has expressed doubt over repealing the foreign buyer ban, and he’ll probably be an expensive coalition partner. Labour has a similar plan – it claims it would return to surplus the same year as National. But neither of these plans can survive coalition negotiations.
Sunday
British politician Enoch Powell once remarked that “politicians who complain about the media are like sailors who complain about the sea”. Winston Peters has thunderously denounced the news media for the entire 44 years of his political career. This reached a nadir on Sunday during TVNZ 1′s Q+A, when the host Jack Tame attempted to ask the New Zealand First leader elementary questions about his party’s policies and donors, which Peters – sometimes literally shaking with rage – was unable to answer. Instead, he accused Tame and his “masters” of corruption and suggested he might seek the broadcasting portfolio after the election.
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins tested positive for Covid and declared he’d be self-isolating for at least five days, hosting election events via Zoom. On the same day, the New Zealand Herald reported that his predecessor, Dame Jacinda Ardern, had attended a gala event in New York City hosted by George and Amal Clooney, featuring a galaxy of world leaders and celebrities.
National released its manifesto for its first 100 days. It’s a lot. It would repeal the fuel tax, bring back 90-day trial periods, ban gang patches and give police expanded search powers, repeal Three Waters and halt progress on the Lake Onslow power scheme, and withdraw central government funding from Let’s Get Wellington Moving. It would also ban cell phones in schools, abolish Te Aka Whai Ora – the Māori Health Authority, and start building a third medical school at the University of Waikato.
Christopher Luxon has indicated he would extend Parliament’s sitting hours to achieve all this – but he would also need significant engagement from the public service, which he’d simultaneously be cutting back rather drastically, and public servants are not known for their blinding operational speed at the best of times.
Monday
Advance voting starts today. New Zealand’s voter turnout declined steadily from the mid-1980s to the mid-2010s, but this trend has reversed over the past two elections, probably because you’ve got two weeks to cast your vote rather than 10 hours on election day.
This campaign has been characterised by a downcast mood and air of cynicism towards the main parties, and these conditions usually reduce voter participation. So far, the advance voting statistics indicate a lower turnout than 2020. Many politicians and party supporters like to imagine something extraordinary will happen during the final stages of a campaign: they’ll defy the polls, outperform all expectations, sweep to power. This fantasy is harder to sustain during the advance voting period in which a steadily increasing proportion of the vote is already locked in.
Tuesday
National and Labour spent a lot of time this week squabbling about the Press leaders’ debate. Hipkins couldn’t attend at the pre-arranged time because he has Covid, and Luxon refused to reschedule, so Health Minister Ayesha Verrall tweeted a picture of Luxon dressed up as a chicken. Labour offered to let Luxon debate with Grant Robertson – a considerably more formidable opponent. National counter-offered to let Kelvin Davis debate Nicola Willis. In the end, the Press held a “power-broker” debate with the minor parties.
Wednesday
RNZ National broke an extraordinary story today. The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) has quietly developed its own intelligence capability, building a spy agency with 115 staff and a budget of $11 million a year. It has a focus on national security and intelligence – which is exactly what the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service (SIS), the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) and the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet’s National Assessment Bureau are for. The difference is that these agencies are subject to scrutiny and oversight, but the new MBIE agency is not.
The RNZ story notes that, despite this extensive new intelligence capability, MBIE seemed oblivious to the recent scandals around mass exploitation of migrant workers.
This kind of empire building is referred to in the public service as a land grab: officials in empire-building mode establish competing agencies or departments to try to draw funding away from agencies run by their rivals and enemies. It is hard to swallow the Labour government’s insistence that public-service cuts will be devastating to the delivery of frontline services when ministries are developing their own stand-alone, multi-million-dollar intelligence agencies.
The 1News-Verian Poll was the only public poll this week, and it showed little change: a National-Act-NZ First government, with Act’s support declining slightly. The Greens look set to deliver their best result ever. Minor parties in government – James Shaw and Marama Davidson are ministers outside Cabinet under a co-operation agreement with Labour – are almost always punished by voters. But by remaining peripheral to the running of the country while still delivering on their core areas, they’ve escaped MMP’s minor-party curse.
Thursday
National’s fiscal disaster deepens. The Council of Trade Unions has been a more implacable foe to the party during the campaign than Labour, and today it released figures demonstrating that only 3000 households would be eligible for the full amount of $250 a week of tax and transfers that National has been campaigning on. Nicola Willis has conceded the figure, but rejects claims her party has misled voters.
There have been various allegations of violence and harassment of politicians this week. Labour MP Angela Roberts was reportedly slapped at a campaign event; National released a list of alleged threats and attacks against candidates and campaign staff, implying that they were being targeted by the Mongrel Mob and other gangs. But the most troubling are the allegations made by Te Pāti Māori and its Hauraki-Waikato candidate Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke, who has described a sustained campaign of harassment and intimidation in which her fence was ram-raided and her home was repeatedly invaded and vandalised, with a threatening letter left behind.
Last night, police allegedly trespassed a man whom Te Pāti Māori identified as an elderly Pākehā neighbour of Maipi-Clarke, who is “anti-Māori, anti-tiriti”, and an avid National Party supporter.
