The new Auckland is not like the old Auckland, as Labour has found to its cost.
OPINION
Auckland lurched away from Labour on Saturday. Took its chance and ran for the hills. Labour lost seven Auckland electorates and now has only six of the 21. It’s easily the bluest metropolitan centre in the country.
There are lots of reasons for this, but they add up to a stark reality: Auckland is not the city it’s usually described as.
It’s always been divided, but when it comes to politics, we often fall back on traditional explanations. Homeowners, especially the wealthier ones in the eastern suburbs and on the Shore, tend to vote National. The poor, the young, Māori and Pasifika, immigrant communities and urban liberals are more likely to vote Labour.
Some big factors confounded this on election night.
First, we’re an immigrant city now. Especially, an Asian immigrant city. National appears to understand this better than Labour.
Take Mt Roskill. In this formerly safe Labour seat, 48.5 per cent of the population identifies as Asian - the most of any electorate in the country.
Back in the day, the local Labour MP Phil Goff used to pride himself on his connections to local immigrant groups. His successor Michael Wood maintained those links, but they mean less now.
Most voters in Mt Roskill are wage earners, which largely explains the traditional Labour skew. But the electorate is also full of retailers and other small businesses. Every ram raid and every burglary to one is an assault on them all.
It’s stupid that we debate retail crime as if the choice is between boot camps and social work. If you’re standing behind the counter in a dairy, afraid that today will be the day, that’s not the debate you want to hear.
You’re aware the authorities probably know the names of the kids coming at you with a knife or driving a stolen car through your door. In a sophisticated welfare state, you want to know why they cannot keep you safe.
It should not be too hard to build a multi-agency response to this that includes intensive intervention, whānau-based wrap-around services and supportive residential care for the most difficult offenders.
Labour did not lose Mt Roskill or any other electorate because it dislikes boot camps and longer prison sentences. It lost because it did not know how to respond meaningfully to people who feared for their lives.
And in Mt Roskill, Wood was replaced by Carlos Cheung, a Chinese New Zealander “no one had ever heard of”. That is, if you define “no one” as “no one in the largely Pākehā political establishment”.
Cheung is actually a mainstream Aucklander: born overseas, schooled at Auckland Grammar and then the University of Auckland, where he gained a PhD in biology. His wife, Fiona Lai, is deputy chair of the local board.
Wood’s failure as a minister to keep his own financial affairs in order was undoubtedly a factor in his defeat. But Mt Roskill’s swing from Labour to National was mirrored in the neighbouring electorates of New Lynn, Te Atatū and Mt Albert. This suggests Wood’s own problems were not the defining factor.
All those electorates have large immigrant populations under pressure from fast-rising house prices and likely to be disgusted at Labour’s approach to crime. And in all of them, National put up a “new” New Zealander against Labour’s Pākehā incumbent.
New Lynn’s Deborah Russell is being replaced by Paulo Garcia, a Filipino New Zealander. Te Ātatu’s Phil Twyford has lost, albeit only by 30 votes and pending the special votes, to Angee Nicholas, a Cook Islands New Zealander. And in Mt Albert, Helen White almost lost to Melissa Lee, a Korean New Zealander.
The swing also showed up in electorates with fast population growth. Takanini, in the south, Labour last time, gave a 7000-vote majority to National. Upper Harbour in the booming northwest was regained by National with twice as many votes as Labour.
Welcome to the new Auckland. Politically, it has more in common with provincial New Zealand than Jafa haters south of the Bombays may like to think.
Compounding all this, it will not have escaped many sceptical voters in the big city that the MP chosen by Labour as the new PM used to be the Covid-19 Minister.
I suggested yesterday that the social harm done by Covid had been under-appreciated. Nowhere has this been truer than in Auckland, home to the extra-long lockdown, with hospitals on their knees, schools not recovered, and restaurateurs warning they are on the brink of collapse.
The elevation of Chris Hipkins must have felt to some voters like a personal slap in the face.
Again, the issue isn’t whether Labour was right or wrong at every point in its Covid strategy. It’s that many Aucklanders did not believe Labour cared enough about those who were suffering.
They felt betrayed. Labour didn’t seem to understand this, which doubled the sense of betrayal.
All over the city, voters were struggling with rents and mortgages, stuck in traffic and fearful of what would happen if they needed to visit a hospital ED. Labour lost its reputation as the party that cared.
So Labour voters stayed home, even in the party’s heartland.
In the Māngere electorate, 32,000 people voted in 2020. Last weekend, it was only 19,000. In Manurewa, 31,000 voters became 20,000. Labour won the seats, but not with the colossal majorities it was used to.
Māngere is 39 per cent Pasifika, 29 per cent Asian, 25 per cent Māori and only 23 per cent Pākehā. There’s a colossal task in front of Labour now, to re-engage with those stay-at-home voters.
Closer to the city centre, voters seemed disillusioned with both major parties. They didn’t stay home, though, they party-hopped. Green MP Chlöe Swarbrick doubled her 2020 majority in Auckland Central and her colleague Ricardo Menendez-Marsh won a creditable 6000 votes in Mt Albert.
Act’s David Seymour crushed National’s Paul Goldsmith in Epsom by 7000 votes, despite Goldsmith running a two-ticks campaign. Seymour’s colleague Brooke van Velden swept National MP Simon O’Connor aside with a 4500 majority in Tāmaki.
It was odd, at some of the debates in the eastern suburbs, listening to wealthy people complaining about the cost of living. But that’s Auckland too. Everyone feels they deserve more.
Party-hopping was also prevalent in the Māori seats, three of which include parts of Auckland. Although Tāmaki Makaurau covers most of the city, Te Tai Tokerau includes the Shore and Hauraki-Waikato takes in Pukekohe. Te Pāti Māori won the latter and almost won the other two.
What now for Auckland? National promises motorway expansion and more housing sprawl. Its policies are likely to push up the property market and make life harder for renters. The minimum wage will be frozen, fair pay deals abandoned, worker protections reduced and benefits restricted.
None of this will help people on low wages, a lot of whom are immigrants and/or former Labour voters who stayed home. More people will feel alienated from society and may therefore turn to crime. Driving will be encouraged, so there will be more congestion on the roads and more emissions.
And there is no sign Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown’s key demands will be met. As he declared in his open letter on Sunday, he wants more decision-making autonomy for the city and – this is “the main thing” – control of some tax income.
He also wants his transport plan adopted and he’s opposed to the removal of the regional fuel tax unless it can be replaced with some other form of road-user charging.
National has never supported any of these things. Nor has it expressed a view on any of Brown’s ideas for the port, nor revealed how Watercare is supposed to manage the increasing demands on its ageing infrastructure.
Brown plans to get all 40 or so Auckland MPs in a room, very soon, and ask them “to bury their party differences and be a team for Auckland”. That will include the PM and many of his senior colleagues, Act’s leader and deputy and some of the senior MPs from Labour and the Greens.
No harm in trying, I suppose. But which Auckland will they be a team for?
Simon Wilson is an award-winning senior writer covering politics, the climate crisis, transport, housing, urban design and social issues, with a focus on Auckland. He joined the Herald in 2018.
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