OPINION
Labour still has the rump of a minimally credible Government. Its wise heads – or, more accurately, its not completely incompetent heads – have an obligation to keep it that way, at least until it’s clear Christopher Luxon’s coalition will make it through three years.
Chris Hipkins, while decisively defeated, still secured 27 per cent of the party vote, just one point less than Helen Clark in 1996, three years before leading Labour to nine years in power.
It was nothing like Sir Bill English’s 21 per cent in 2002, but closer to Judith Collins’ 26 per cent in 2020, enough for National to regain office three years later.
Even more encouraging for Labour’s optimists, Luxon was hardly elected enthusiastically. His 38 per cent was just three points more than Jim Bolger’s 35 per cent in 1993, after cutting benefits, putting cash registers in public hospitals and breaking solemn promises to superannuitants.
Nor is there a Luxon honeymoon. National’s polls suggest that were an election held now, it would come down to four seats.
Especially given the tensions between Act and NZ First – not to mention a National backbench still sceptical of whether their leader and his inner circle truly know enough about New Zealand and government to do their jobs – Labour has a better chance of returning to power in under three years than most new oppositions.
Voters appalled by the previous Government’s incompetence won’t want to hear it.
Does the median voter not know, they’ll ask, that Labour was so insanely profligate that government spending increased from $81 billion in 2017/18, to a perhaps understandable $108b in 2020/21 during Covid, to the ridiculous $140b forecast for 2023/24?
Don’t they see that almost nothing was achieved for the money, except higher inflation and house prices, with infrastructure still crumbling, poverty not improving and inequality widening?
Haven’t they read the Auditor-General’s report that Labour shovelled billions of borrowed dollars out the door without proper financial controls, with officials to this day not knowing where it all went?
Do Labour voters not understand that, despite talking tough about China and realigning New Zealand with Australia and Nato, Labour let the armed forces fall into such disrepair that it cannot put ships to sea, reliably fly servicemen and women to global hotspots – or the Prime Minister to Sydney – or provide army personnel to assist with two natural disasters in our region at once?
Do they not see that one reason was Labour’s over-vigorous Covid response, with young soldiers who had signed up to protect New Zealand instead patrolling fenced-off MIQ facilities in their own country to stop Kiwi families from trying to escape?
How can they not understand that Labour’s failure to order the vaccine on time, which caused the otherwise unnecessary 2021 Auckland lockdown, has worsened the mental health crisis and contributed to the collapse in education standards, including – most alarmingly – language development in under-5-year-olds?
Surely Labour voters accept that even Dame Jacinda Ardern’s finest hour – her response to the March 15 terrorist attack – was undermined by the gun buy-back serving mainly to transfer semi-automatic weapons from perhaps odd but harmless collectors to the gangs and other organised crime?
Sadly, the answer to all these questions is no – and memories will fade further before the next election, even if that is this winter.
If Labour is undeservedly in with a reasonable chance, it at least owes us to remain able to form a minimally competent administration if needed by spring.
For those who want the next Labour Government to achieve more than the last – or anything at all – it will need people with experience in Cabinet and some idea of how to operate the levers of power.
It would have been better for Labour had Grant Robertson become Prime Minister when Ardern retired, not Hipkins.
That wasn’t possible because Robertson had back trouble in late 2022 and so couldn’t sit down or fly. But Robertson and his late-innings ally David Parker would have proceeded with the wealth tax, funding a $20 per week tax cut for everyone, a more likely election winner than pathetic offerings like GST-free fruit.
Robertson, an extrovert, would then have campaigned better than the introverted Hipkins.
But that’s all in the past. Hipkins and Carmel Sepuloni were chosen, and didn’t do too badly given the economy was in recession, per capita GDP was falling, their Transport Minister failed to follow repeated instructions to sell his airport shares and their Justice Minister was arrested.
Thirty-eight-year-old list MP Kieran McAnulty is on manoeuvres, with speculation list MP Ginny Andersen would make a good running mate. Both served briefly as ministers in the last year of the defeated regime.
McAnulty, while assuring Labour activists he is well to the left of Ardern on economics and tax, has built a blokey non-woke brand based on driving a ute and liking a beer and a bet.
He’s certainly more in tune with today’s post-Covid, recessionary New Zealand than anyone from Grey Lynn.
But, if McAnulty’s brand is the one Labour needs, then Hutt-boy Hipkins, Taranaki-born West Aucklander Sepuloni and beer-drinking former rugby No 8 Robertson can play it too, but backed by six years each as senior ministers.
Labour’s number four, Megan Woods, also with six years as a minister, likes a scrap and is Labour’s campaign boss.
If McAnulty is the answer, why not former South Auckland union organiser, businessman and shock-jock Willie Jackson, also with six years as a minister – in his case, relatively successful – and now Labour’s number five?
Along with Ayesha Verrall, McAnulty, Andersen, Barbara Edmonds, Peeni Henare, Damien O’Connor and Parker, this would be the most experienced incoming senior team of the MMP era.
If Luxon’s coalition were to fail, it would be a better Labour offering than putting up yet another carefully constructed but untested brand, this time McAnulty’s. Surely Labour has learned from its Ardern experiment – and, it remains to be seen, from National’s with Luxon – that knowing enough about the levers of power to do the job is as important as being able to get it?
Who knows, an experienced government, even if it failed the first time, might at least have learned enough to make a better fist of delivering its vision than the first time around.
First, though, Labour must understand it has some apologies to make, for everything from fiscal irresponsibility to unwittingly arming the gangs. Until the whole party is prepared to say sorry and mean it, none of its MPs ought to be taken seriously.
Matthew Hooton has over 30 years’ experience in political and corporate communications and strategy for clients in Australasia, Asia, Europe and North America, including the National and Act parties and the Mayor of Auckland.
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