Mike Williams: Support for Ardern turned HB red

Jacinda Ardern walks up to deliver her victoy speech to Labour party supporters at the Auckland Town Hall after romping home in the 2020 election. Photo / File

I made a short visit to Hawke's Bay last week to keep up with the Howard League's driver's licence programme in the region.

I avoided the cloudburst which hit Napier and enjoyed the kind of glorious weather that I associate with a delightful childhood in the Bay.

It was in Hawke's Bay that the programme originated and where it was refined to the point that it is now running in 17 locations and has produced driver's licences for more than 6000 ex-prisoners and other offenders.

Over the past six years more than 750 offenders referred by Hastings, Napier and Flaxmere probation officers have benefited from the programme and research has demonstrated that over half of our clients get jobs in the year after passing their licences, a sure sign of the reduced re-offending which has been a driver of our reducing our prison population.

I will take this opportunity to thank all those Hawke's Bay Probation Officers who pioneered this programme with patience and determination.

Landing in Hawke's Bay from Auckland underlined for me just what a political upheaval there had been on election day 2020, with the three seats of East Coast, Tukituki and Wairarapa joining Napier and the Maori electorate of Ikaroa Rawhiti as Labour held electorates.

This year's general election will be seen as historic and may well ultimately secure Jacinda Ardern as one of our truly great Prime Ministers with the stature of a Seddon or Savage.

After the special votes were counted Ardern's Labour Party secured 50 per cent of the party vote, a feat which has eluded all the MMP prime ministers so far and has been only equalled twice in the past 100 years.

As with the Labour Party victory of 1938 - the other occasion that Labour exceeded half of the votes cast - there will be much enlightened debate about the drivers of this outcome, but with only a small amount of hindsight, some reasons are plain.

Prime Minister Ardern has achieved levels of support which are unprecedented, and she has developed cross-party appeal.

Since the election, I have repeatedly encountered people who supported the Labour Party for the first time. The reason has usually been admiration for the Prime Minister and her handling of the pandemic.

The Covid-19 pandemic and the Government's handling of it amounts to the second reason for the election result. Research shows that many voters were aware of New Zealand's almost unique "normality" in the face of the virus and gave the Government credit for that situation.

Finance Minister and the now Deputy Prime Minister, Grant Robertson, earned points for his sure-footed management of an economy in crisis as a result of the pandemic.

The perceived wisdom that the National Party is a better manager of New Zealand's economy than the Labour Party has been turned on its head under Robertson's direction.

He won the support of the business community and mitigated the negative effects of a nationwide lockdown with economic measures that were untested and unprecedented.

The Labour Party's superior organisation contributed to excellent local rests.

While Jacinda Ardern's popularity and the Government's response to the pandemic explains the Labour Party's historically high party vote, its candidates also did well in the electorate votes.

Mike Williams

Before the October election, the National Party dominated the electorate vote in provincial New Zealand but after the votes were counted this situation had been reversed as reflected by the outcome in East Coast, Tukituki and Wairarapa.

Anna Lorck's win in Tukituki amounts to a major achievement. Kiri Allen in the East Coast electorate and Kieran McAnulty in the Wairarapa were both established as list MPs and were contesting seats left vacant by the retirement of sitting National Party MPs.

Lorck had neither of those advantages but still won a seat that in recent elections was regarded as safe for National.

It is telling that one of Jacinda Ardern's first chosen events after the final results were declared was a surprise appearance at a prize-giving in New Plymouth.

To survive as a long-term government, Labour will need to cement in provincial electorates like New Plymouth and the local seats of Tukituki, East Coast and Wairarapa. Jacinda Ardern is obviously well aware of this electoral necessity.

When picking over the bones of the 2020 general election, it is impossible to overlook the parlous state of the National Party.

Almost nothing went right for National starting with the panicked replacement of Simon Bridges as party leader with the short-lived Todd Muller.

Judith Collins was the best choice of leader under the circumstances but voters had a long look and said no thank you.

National's leadership woes were compounded by a campaign that can be classed as a shambles.

We will not see another political year like 2020. It will cast a long shadow.

Mike Williams grew up in Hawke's Bay. He is CEO of the NZ Howard League and a former Labour Party president.