Simon Wilson: The 2023 election is a choice between the best Government yet, and the worst

OPINION:

The scaffolding has been erected in the town square and there they are, lining the streets, banging their timbrels, blowing their vuvuzelas, in thrall to their own frenzied sound and fury. The champions of our toxic media, baying for the one great prize they now believe is close: Death to the hated queen.

Not, for almost all of them, that they mean it literally. But it is election year and, from the dungeons of social media to the ramparts of talkback radio, they can smell political blood on the wind.

They could be disappointed. There are many things we can be confident about this election but a big win to either side is not one of them.

On the contrary, after the outlier result of 2020, the polls suggest the country is reverting to the norm. That is, as in other MMP elections, it will be a close-run fight between the centre-left and the centre-right.

And it may, or may not, be complicated by parties that are not part of one bloc or the other.

In 2017, only 41,000 votes separated Labour and the Greens from National and Act.

In 2008, the previous time the Government changed hands, National and Act won 50 per cent of the vote, seemingly well ahead of the combined 42 per cent for Labour, the Greens and Jim Anderton’s Progressive Party. But even that margin comprised only 167,000 voters.

That’s 7 per cent of the turnout that year; only about 5 per cent of all eligible voters. Elections are close.

This summer I’ve sat with people in the deep south of the country who can’t believe that anyone will vote for “that Aden woman, or Adern or whatever she’s called”. They’d been listening to those vuvuzelas, perhaps even helping to hammer the scaffold together. It was Groundswell central.

Groundswell protests have a hit-and-miss relationship with reality. Photo / NZME

But there are large groups of voters in other parts of the country where the reverse is true. It never pays to believe your own echo chamber, even if it is noisier than everyone else’s.

(As for refusing to learn the names of people you don’t like, that’s just one of the ways in which you can abuse them. John “Keys” used to have it slung at him, too.)

This election is hard to predict for other reasons. The world is volatile now.

Economists don’t like to say it, but month after month and year after year, Covid has confounded their expectations, especially for inflation and house prices. We might as well be at a carnival watching them spin the wheel of fortune. At least there’d be candy floss.

What will happen in the ever-unfolding trauma of the Covid pandemic? That’s a public health question but it also leaches into everything else, including unmanageable staff shortages in shops, on buses, in airport security queues. And, far worse, the harm being done to young people disconnected from school.

Will we blame the Government for all that? Will we think the Opposition would do better?

What will happen in Ukraine? How will the war and the pandemic undermine global security, humanitarian efforts and our supply chains?

Which parts of the world will be devastated by floods, droughts, heatwaves, hurricanes and firestorms? Coromandel and the East Coast have already copped it this year: Who’s next?

And, gulp, where on the wheel of political fortune will Ian Foster be pinned?

I know, the world is always volatile and it doesn’t always make much difference to New Zealand elections. But I’d argue Covid, Ukraine and the climate have changed that. We’ve learned to expect really big shocks.

You want to predict the election? It’s way too soon.

Besides, despite all the anti-Jacinda clamour, there’s something far more important about this election. We face a choice between what could be the most progressive Government in our lifetimes, or the most reactionary.

To put that another way, the best Government yet, or the worst. You can decide which is which.

This is new.

It’s not because of the two major parties, both of which seem uncertain about how to proceed. It’s because, confounding expectations, both the Greens and Act have spent the past five years growing stronger.

While National and Labour have both ridden an at-times wild roller coaster, these two have held firm. Their values seem relatively clear, their leadership is experienced and competent and their poll support is up.

Unlike Te Pāti Māori, which has also held firm, the Greens and Act are both keen to go into Government. They’re ready to rumble.

Policy platforms have not yet been announced. But the Greens are likely to renew their call for higher taxes on the wealthiest, more support for the poorest and a raft of better, faster actions on climate and the environment.

My guess: The party will also stand clearly with nurses, teachers and others in the health and education sectors who still struggle to have their demands over pay and conditions taken seriously enough.

In many respects, the Greens advocate the things Labour itself said it would do, in 2017 and 2020, but has not delivered as substantially as expected.

As for Act, it will want more than lower taxes, fewer regulations and an extremely punitive approach to crime and justice.

Its targets will likely be climate action, a higher-wage economy and wraparound social services for the traumatised and vulnerable. And smaller public-sector budgets. This will not help nurses.

Act has been consistent in most of this since it was founded by Roger Douglas and Derek Quigley in 1994, but has never had the strength in Government to make it happen. That could finally be about to change.

It’s a big choice. The progress you thought you’d get with Jacinda Ardern, finally delivered at the insistence of the Greens? Or the progress in a very different direction that Act’s David Seymour advocates?

It’s a big election. Far too big to be swallowed up by anti-Jacinda hysteria.

And yet that could happen.

Tragically, there will be no “Prime Minister’s breakfast” at Waitangi this year. Previously, after the dawn ceremonies, the PM and many other members of the Government served barbecue and scrambled eggs to the crowds on the Waitangi lawn.

It was informal, a bit chaotic and everyone had a good time.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern at the barbecue on Waitangi Day 2018. Photo / Michael Cunningham

It was also highly policed, because Waitangi has always been a place of heightened political drama. Long before anyone had heard of Covid or Voices for Freedom or New Zealand having its own Nuremburg Trials, Waitangi was the place where politicians got attacked.

Mud was thrown, and a dildo. A Prime Minister was reduced to tears.

And yet, for four of the past five years, that barbecue happened. A spirit of positive engagement prevailed. Now, the police have decided the risk to the safety of our political leaders is too great.

Too many people in this country want the democratic processes to fail and will be using this election to try to make that happen. Last year, small but very angry screaming groups disrupted many political events.

There’s talk of no more walkabouts in shopping malls. School fairs, sports events, high streets and other large public gatherings will also be affected.

This will bring an enormous change to the way we conduct our politics and it directly undermines the kind of people we like to think we are.

Who’s going to call this out? All party leaders, I hope. And all those beating their drums and blowing their horns at the prospect of the fall of Jacinda Ardern.

You don’t have to like her. But that’s a world away from tolerating the hatred. If you hold some sway over the angriest among us, in the media and everywhere else, please help them dial it back. Let’s have a good election.