Can The Kiwis Fly?

New Zealanders go to the polls this year. If our observations there this week are correct, the voters are facing a stark contrast of choices. By Tim James.

It’s always good to know what’s happening “across the ditch,” as they say, and this week the Menzies Research Centre spent two days in New Zealand with its leading think-tank, the New Zealand Initiative.

Australia and New Zealand are strong natural allies and neighbours with shared histories. Menzies himself had a deep regard for New Zealand, made many visits and forged even closer relations by signing the ANZUS treaty in 1951, among other actions. About 650,000 New Zealanders (remarkably around 15 per cent of the New Zealand population) live in Australia. 

New Zealanders will go to the polls on September 19 this year. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced the election date in late January. It’s clear the campaign has commenced, based on our observations and discussions in NZ this week. The land of the long white cloud has a long campaign ahead. 

One of the big clouds hanging over this campaign is whether Winston Peters’ NZ First Party can win enough seats to hand Jacinda Ardern government once again. It’s an understandable question given that her Labour Party won ten fewer seats than the Nationals at the last election (56-46). Winston Peters’ NZ First won just over 7 per cent of the vote and through his deal with Labour he became Deputy Prime Minister. Most people would naturally think that the party that won the most seats has at least a moral majority to form government but NZ First and Labour came together in an unusual, mutually convenient coalition. It’s old news now and NZ has had a Labour-NZ First-Greens government since 2017. 

While PM Arden is popular on the world stage, a widely held perception across NZ today is that her government has over-promised and under-performed. Among the clouds hanging over this Government are integrity issues, indecision, and incompleteness of infrastructure and other projects. It’s a government that has been big on announcements and commitments but short on outcomes and results. NZ simply isn’t reforming, building and growing as it did under the previous Key-English government. The Kiwis are rightly concerned about education, cost of living, housing and the economic health of their community. 

Recent polls still have Ardern well ahead as preferred Prime Minister at 42 per cent to Nationals Leader Simon Bridges at 11 per cent. Yet the Nationals are in a strong position when it comes to forming a government. Three recent polls have the Nationals just ahead of Labour to form a government.

An Auckland taxi driver told the MRC this week that he felt Jacinda Ardern would win because “she’s young, a good talker and smiles a lot”. A low bar indeed! Yet it was a salient reminder of just how much perception can take hold and shape electoral outcomes. Let’s hope NZ voters are smarter than that and will engage in the real issues and policies of the parties to choose the right leader. 

The business and community leaders gathered for the New Zealand Initiative annual summit were most certainly reminded of leadership when Sir John Key spoke and outlined his views on the big challenges faces NZ and the world today. As NZ’s leader, John Key delivered for New Zealand and lifted both its stocks on the world stage and the day-to-day lives of its citizens. By contrast, the apprehensions about PM Ardern are around the ability to decide, deliver and get big things done. 

Nationals Leader Simon Bridges impressed summit attendees with his ideas, energy and plans for New Zealand to get ahead. He’s made the election simple by saying voters need to choose either the Labour-Green-NZ First government or Nationals. Bridges has decisively declared that the Nationals will not deal with NZ First, which crystallises the choice for NZ voters. He told the summit he would make every day count and deliver on his commitments with his team of competent Nationals MPs. 

 Much as we love to beat the Kiwis in cricket and rugby (not that we’ve done much of that in the past decade!), it’s in Australia’s interests for our friends across the Tasman to be well led, strong and successful. New Zealand has a range of global and local public policy challenges which the New Zealand Initiative is helping to address. Let’s hope that NZ voters cast their votes in September based on policy, integrity and the national interest rather than matters of relative youth, eloquence and facial expressions.