Tory Whanau has been elected mayor of Wellington. Video / Mark Mitchell
OPINION:
The lesson of the local elections isn't about left vs right, it's about vision vs status quo.
Auckland saw a shift from a centre-left mayor to a centre-right one, while Wellington saw a shift from a centre-right mayor to a leftwing one – but in both, it was acase of the more engaging, more exciting candidate winning.
In Wellington, Tory Whanau brought energy, vision, and hope, that neither incumbent Andy Foster nor pundits' favourite Paul Eagle could match. While Foster and Eagle offered a dull continuation of the past, Whanau shook it up. And the voters loved it – the first Māori mayor of our capital city won in the biggest landslide in a generation.
In Auckland, Wayne Brown framed himself as the maverick, while Efeso Collins was offering very much a continuation of the staid politics of Phil Goff and Len Brown before him. And the public backed the guy who said he was going to upset the applecart.
I congratulate both Whanau and Brown. They've won by inspiring voters to think change is possible. Now comes the hard part – delivering.
I'm in Spain at the moment, and there's a similar mood here. They are through Covid, but they won't want to go back to the pre-Covid status quo. They want change, they want leaders who will challenge the orthodoxy and bring new solutions to problems like inflation and climate change.
In moments like this, voters look for vision and energy, whether that's coming from the left or the right. It's the boring centrists who are in trouble.
What does this bode for next year's general election?
Let's put aside the trite idea that this is somehow an anti-Labour vote. Labour candidates won throughout the country, running under the Labour banner or with Labour endorsements. The Labour endorsed candidates who lost in Auckland and Wellington lost because they didn't inspire voters. Likewise National's preferred candidate in Auckland, Viv Beck, did so poorly she dropped out before the vote.
No, the lessons for both major parties are they need to unshackle themselves from what's weighing them down and come up with some ideas to excite voters who want change.
Labour has found itself bogged in the Covid hangover and myriad big sector reforms – health, education, water – all of which are important but are uninspiring and have become ripe targets for its opponents to peck away at it. Jacinda Ardern's clear, empathetic communication and crisis leadership has been replaced by government announcements drowning in bureaucratese. Ministers seem to be led by agency work programmes, turning the cogs rather than working to a cohesive vision.
Similarly, National has nothing exciting on offer. National's plan for massive tax cuts for the rich and landlords, with small amounts for the poor and middle class, all funded by cuts to public services, could have been lifted straight out of every National manifesto since the 1990s. Every day, National's complaining about a new problem, but they never have a solution, because that would mean spending money. The decline of Christopher Luxon's popularity below the levels Judith Collins achieved shows voters aren't enthused by him, either.
With Labour and National both polling in the lacklustre mid-30s, it's the Greens and Act who are supplying all the energy. Their combined polling is more than 20 per cent, compared to less than 10 per cent pre-Covid.
The local elections and the changing of the guard across the country shows a mood for change, but not a simple change from left to right. People want new ideas, not the same old same old. They don't want more tax cuts for the rich, nor more shuffling of the deckchairs.
Which major party will be the one to provide it? Labour, wearied by years of guiding the country through the pandemic while also undertaking major reforms, or National, which knows how to complain but seemingly hasn't had a new idea since The Macarena was a hit?
