Danyl McLauchlan analyses the past week in politics in an online exclusive story.
Monday
There are still some meaningful differences between the major parties, and one of them is transport. Labour still sort of believes in denser walkable cities with public transport and bike paths, whereas National vigorously believes in roads, with a little public transport on top as a treat. National’s transport policy – “Transport for the Future” – was released today. It’s a $24 billion package, and to put that in perspective: New Zealand’s GDP (the total value of all the goods and services across the entire economy) in 2022 was around $400 billion.
The package mostly consists of roads. Not just roads, but Roads of National Significance, a policy brand from the John Key era when the government upgraded much of the nation’s roading infrastructure. It also contains buses for Auckland and rail improvements for the lower North Island. But the most controversial announcements were National’s intention to scrap the plans for light rail in Auckland, currently costed by Treasury as between $7.3 and 29 billion, and Let’s Get Wellington Moving (LGWM), a $7.4 billion initiative to fix the capital’s dire transport problems.
During the 2017 election campaign, Labour’s Jacinda Ardern promised to deliver rail from central Auckland to Mt Roskill by 2021 and the airport by 2027. Six years later, the project still does not have a business case. And in its eight years, LGWM has built a pedestrian crossing and begun work on a roundabout, but it still lacks business cases for an additional tunnel through Mt Victoria and a mass rapid-transport system. Between them, these projects have cost hundreds of millions of dollars and accomplished close to nothing. They deserve to be shut down, and some form of political sanction looks likely – the government has been very vague about how committed it is to these programmes in their current forms.
But their failure is a bleak admission that New Zealand can’t seem to build the more ambitious, sophisticated, lower-carbon infrastructure projects that other OECD nations deploy to grow and modernise their cities. We can build roads, so that’s what we’ll get.
Labour released its ranked party list on Monday. The most notable declines from its list for the 2020 election are Michael Wood (23 to 45) and Phil Twyford (4 to 49), both former senior ministers. The first disgraced himself with a conflict-of-interest scandal over shares he failed to declare; the second failed to deliver in the high-profile housing and transport portfolios. Both hold safe seats so they’re unlikely to be voted out of Parliament, but low rankings are often a signal from the leadership: a not very gentle suggestion that perhaps you should do something else with your life?
The biggest promotion goes to Barbara Edmonds (49 to 18), a former parliamentary staffer – a caste of people who increasingly dominate our politics no matter which party is in government.
Tuesday
Fiscal hole. Not a pretty phrase, is it? Every election year, the parties squabble about whether their numbers add up, and for decades the voting public seemed to ignore them. But in 2017, then-Finance Minister Steven Joyce claimed to find an $11.7 billion hole in Labour’s budget. The alleged number was so vast that it forced everyone to pay attention. It was also dismissed as an implausible fabrication by nearly every economic commentator in the nation. This didn’t trouble National, which spent the entire campaign warning the public that Labour’s fiscal hole would destroy the economy.
There was an actual fiscal hole in National’s 2020 budget. Its finance spokesperson Paul Goldsmith released an alternative budget with accounting errors adding up to $4 billion. Goldsmith admitted the errors and apologised. Today, the government claimed there was a $10 billion hole in National’s transport budget, and the Council of Trade Unions generously costed National’s budget commitments and alleged they were overspending by $3.3 to $5.2 billion.
After the 2017 election – when the battle of the holes began in earnest – Labour and the Greens wanted to create a new Officer of Parliament entity that would provide independent costings for political parties. This would – hopefully – put an end to all this hole nonsense. But it required the consent of the opposition, which National’s leader at the time – Simon Bridges – refused to grant. When Nicola Willis became National’s finance spokesperson, she reopened discussion with Labour about the proposal, but it was blocked by the Speaker at the time, Trevor Mallard. So, we’re still in the hole.
Wednesday
Another MP has been referred to Parliament’s Privileges Committee. National’s Tim van de Molen (me neither) has been accused of standing over Labour MP Shanan Halbert and intimidating him during a select committee meeting.
The Privileges Committee functions as Parliament’s court. It’s often referred to as “the powerful Privileges Committee” because if it finds you in contempt of Parliament, it can fine or even jail you with no recourse to the court system (this has never happened in New Zealand). It can suspend you from Parliament, but it can’t throw you out. So far this year, the committee has dealt with Labour MP Michael Wood and his share disclosures, Labour MP Jan Tinetti for misleading the House over truancy statistics and Act MP Simon Court for breaching select committee confidentiality. You’d expect the Greens and Te Pati Māori to be the most transgressive, but they’re the only parties who haven’t been in trouble. Yet.
The government has accepted the results of binding arbitration with secondary teachers in a $4.4 billion package. Real wages for public-sector workers have actually declined over the past six years and that would be a very poor legacy for a Labour government. Teachers are the single largest category of public-sector workers, so this should help correct that. Maybe they’ll break even.
Thursday
Two new polls this week. Both show a decline for Labour and a narrow victory for an National-Act coalition. And both show New Zealand First trending up, with the Roy Morgan Poll putting it on 5%. National’s Christopher Luxon still refuses to rule out forming a government with Winston Peters, so Act’s David Seymour has done this for him, announcing that he won’t work with New Zealand First. We’re seeing a lot of tails-wagging-dogs this election: as the smaller parties rise in the polls, they’re getting more aggressive at dictating what the post-election strategic environment will look like.
That all assumes a right-wing victory. Some commentators believe that this is inevitable: the government is in a nosedive, the election unwinnable. This might be true. Labour’s caucus might spend the campaign throwing excrement at their own constituents: this would not be out of character. But Labour still has a very effective machine. The party’s leaders are clever, experienced and ruthless, while National’s leader is inexperienced and neither popular nor trusted by the electorate. Labour is likely to exploit this asymmetry mercilessly. The official campaign period doesn’t even begin until September 10. And Labour have barely begun to fight.
