National-Act new government: Special votes won’t change a thing - Mike Hosking

OPINION

For the record, I am not 100 per cent convinced the special votes will go the same way as previous elections.

We saw a mass rejection of the Labour Party a couple of Saturdays back, and I would argue there is little reason to believe that trend won’t continue with specials.

Perhaps not to the same extent, but it would be most unusual to see one thing happen with regular votes, and something completely different with specials.

Part of the belief stems from offshore votes which, as it turns out, are a tiny part of the overall special votes.

There is a lesson in the numbers.

There are about 1 million ex-pats, of which about 750,000 are eligible to vote.

Of those, only about 80,000 did, so the idea that you stay attached enough to your birthplace to want to keep participating in the democratic process from offshore clearly isn’t true.

So that means close to half a million special votes came from people like me.

Of our voting-age family, only one person voted normally.

Two are overseas, one is voting outside the electorate, and two more are on the unpublished roll ... all special votes.

We didn’t vote differently just because we are special voters, so the idea of a trend based on something that happened in another election seems odd.

Also, almost two weeks post-vote, I am increasingly coming - by the day - to the conclusion that we need to tidy up our system.

I get that special votes allow you to enrol on the day, and therefore that potentially increases participation, and yet the numbers tell us fewer people turned up this time than last time.

So just because you make it easier, whether it be enrolment on the day or early voting, doesn’t mean people do it.

So waiting three weeks seems absurd.

Germany sorts it on the night - why aren’t we more like Germany?

There is a lesson in the numbers, says Mike Hosking.

Part of the lower turnout will most likely be due to Labour’s inability to convince all their supporters to come out and participate.

People don’t like to - or can’t be bothered to - support a party they know is going to lose, and lose Labour did, in spectacular fashion.

Once again for the record, you may remember in this column that we saw this result coming for at least a year, if not longer.

We also predicted a two-party government. As we sit here today, that prediction is still accurate.

Given the theme, let me predict National will be in government for at least two terms.

Firstly, because history suggests that’s broadly what happens to new governments, and secondly, Labour is in such disarray, National and their mates would have to be pretty spectacularly bad for them not to be favourites in 2026.

Which brings us to the vanquished and what to do.

What they need to work out is whether they are retail politicians or conviction politicians.

Anthony Albanese is the latter - he said so the other day when he was trying to explain what a dismal failure his Voice campaign had been.

That is the problem with conviction politicians in a democracy. You actually need to have the people on your side.

He never managed that; he never came close. A lot of people told him he was never going to.

The same applies to Labour here.

If we are about to see some sort of bloodletting between factions as the realists like Chris Hipkins square off against the theorists like David Parker and Grant Robertson, the National Government will be more than happy to sit back and watch the whole thing implode.

Labour’s problems are many and varied: the inability to get anything done, a lack of talent, a lack of charisma, and the ideological split over things like tax.

To wealth tax or not to wealth tax, that is their question.

The answer is obviously not to, but in that lies their dilemma.

Parker and Robertson, not to mention Ingrid Leary and Ibrahim Omer, who stepped out of their lane in the campaign and wished aloud for more progressive days, are the sort of group that will deem their party unelectable for longer.

Love an idea all you want, but you have to be able to sell it.

You have to be a realist. If you are not, you tend to find the people desert you.

Twenty-six per cent is the message ... you can’t hide from that reality.

The trick for them now is whether they take the hint, learn the lesson and reform into something electable, or continue operating the way they have for the past three years, believing they are right and we are Luddites who just don’t get it.