NZ Herald journalists Claire Trevett, Shayne Currie and Liam Dann interview Christopher Luxon on why he should get the Prime Minister of New Zealand job.
Video / NZHerald
OPINION
A likely outcome of the election is another election. Overseas, MMP elections often result in a hung Parliament that cannot form a stable government. To elect its present government, Israel held five elections in four years.
A National/Act coalition is the only election outcome that is capable of forminga stable government. If the polls are right, it is looking less likely.
Coalitions of three are inherently less stable. Two combine against one. In the Roman Republic, every triumvirate ended in civil war. The challenge of forming a tri-party government is that the minor party has fundamental policy differences with both major parties.
The two parties with the greatest policy overlap are Labour and National. After his policy U-turns, Chris Hipkins could be a National MP. And Christopher Luxon is yet to see a Labour policy he does not want to fund.
Both major parties have pledged to return the Government books to balance by 2027 by exercising a degree of fiscal discipline not seen since Ruth Richardson. Labour and National’s history of spending indicates such discipline is unlikely. In coalition with any of the minor parties, apart from Act, it is impossible.
The Green and Te Pāti Māori manifestos can be summarised by Karl Marx’s maxim: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” The party leaders in the debates stated that their goal is redistribution.
As Labour/Green/Te Pāti Māori have no chance of winning, commentators have not focused on whether that coalition is workable. Labour is not a communist party.
Commentators have instead focused on whether a coalition between National/Act and New Zealand First is viable.
Luxon has said he does not know Winston Peters. If so, he is like the referee who is the only person who cannot see an obvious offside. All Luxon needs to do is to read New Zealand First’s policies on their website.
New Zealand First’s manifesto is a fantasy. It begins by saying New Zealand First will limit government spending and return the books to balance, without saying how. What follows is a shopping list of expensive promises.
The long list of promises includes: Gold Card holders getting a 50 per cent rates rebate; immediately providing 2000 aged-care beds; student loan relief; $1.3 billion for new medicines; etc, etc. Government revenue is slashed by promising to make the first $14,000 of income tax-free and indexing all tax thresholds. New Zealand First’s manifesto cannot be funded.
Labour's Chris Hipkins (left) and National's Christopher Luxon are vying to become New Zealand Prime Minister.
Demonstrating that Winston Peters’ promises are reckless will not deter New Zealand First voters. They know Peters is a wrecker. Labour extending the Covid mandates long after they served any useful purpose has left a segment of society with a grievance.
The Australian Prime Minister took the extraordinary step of publicly warning New Zealand that the Delta variant could not be stopped by lockdowns. But Labour went ahead with the futile four-week lockdown of Auckland.
My daughter died of cancer in Auckland during that lockdown. We could not visit, hold a funeral or grieve together as a family. We do not even have the comfort of knowing the lockdown served a purpose.
Neither of the Chrises gives an indication that they appreciate how Government overreach has hurt many people. The excesses during the Parliamentary protest have enabled any dissenters to be labelled as anti-science conspiracy nutcases. The mother I know who was separated by MIQ from her 11-year-old daughter for years is not a nutcase. Nor are a generation of mainly Māori and Pasifika pupils who have missed out on an education.
There are many people who want to cast a protest vote. They want to poke in the eye a smug, self-congratulating establishment. What better bomb-thrower than Peters?
The more the politicians point out how destructive New Zealand First is, the more attractive Peters appears to the protest vote.
This election, the two major parties will receive their lowest shares of the vote ever.
The party leaders are saying that democracy demands they try to make whatever the electorate elects work. They will phone Peters.
This is true, but just changing one Chris for another will not address the serious economic issues we face. A coalition with New Zealand First would result in even more reckless scenarios of “spend, borrow and bust”.
Both Chrises must reserve the right to refuse to form an unstable government and the right to ask us to vote again.
But the polls could be wrong. Pollsters cannot measure who will not vote, because respondents always say they will. As of Sunday, there were 549,954 fewer votes than at the same stage in the last election. There are going to be three-quarters of a million fewer votes than last election. It is former Labour voters who are staying home.
The non-vote will be decisive. And it is the non-vote that may enable National and Act supporters, who are determined to vote, to elect a stable government.
Richard Prebble is a former leader of the Act Party and a former member of the Labour Party.
