Labour eyes swift return to Government – Matthew Hooton

A Labour-NZ First Government would be much more to Labour’s liking – and voters.

It’s difficult to fully express how unlikely this would have seemed in 2020.

Even before Covid, Jacinda Ardern’s Labour and Winston Peters’ NZ First despised each other.

The Greens’ James Shaw’s thoughts about NZ First risked conflicting with his party’s Kumbaya image.

Appearances were maintained and the coalition continued. NZ First needed to demonstrate it could remain part of a Government without controversy for a full term. Until Covid, Ardern always risked being a one-term Prime Minister.

That fate now haunts Christopher Luxon.

There are always rogue polls, and statistical theory concedes one in 20 polls will be outside a reasonable margin of error. But when they all line up in one direction, only the most swivel-eyed partisans living in social-media bubbles deny their veracity.

National strategists remain committed to Luxon’s new “growth, growth, growth” message outlined three weeks ago.

They say this week’s shenanigans with Land Rovers, letters on behalf of murder suspects and Luxon and Act leader David Seymour calling each other “ill-advised” haven’t preoccupied them as much as media coverage suggests.

As Luxon said publicly: “I don’t think too deeply about David Seymour”.

The Beehive’s top floors say the plan continues to be pushing the things that they believe – and which polls confirm – matter most to voters. This week’s big announcement was confirmation of Luxon’s global investment summit for March 13-14.

Strategists say the priority is to publicly link issues like attracting high-value tourists and investment, fast-tracking infrastructure and signing trade deals with people’s bank accounts and their kids wanting to stay in New Zealand.

National remains scathing of Labour’s record in Government and argues its assumed coalition partners, the Greens and TPM, are opposed to the very idea of economic growth.

Ardern’s Government, National points out, also tried to play down the importance of GDP, replacing it with wellbeing metrics which it also failed to deliver.

Chris Hipkins is somewhat inoculated from such criticism. If voters remember him at all, it will be of his “bonfire” of Ardern’s legacy, and his more practical sausage-roll and Coke Zero persona.

As Helen Clark said of her future Deputy Prime Minister Jim Anderton, Hipkins hasn’t come this far in politics to go down in a hail of gunfire with TPM.

His instincts, like Clark’s and Key’s, are with the median voters he represents in Remutaka, whose income structure almost perfectly maps the New Zealand average.

After the bad blood with Labour in 2020, Peters took the unusual step during the 2023 election campaign of appearing to rule out dealing with them.

NZ First will never be an appendage on the extreme the way Act is for National and the Greens and TPM are for Labour.

Its electoral appeal and negotiating power have always included it being able to deal with both sides and allegedly “keep them honest”. So it will be in 2026.

Labour’s renewed willingness to begin flirting with NZ First will appal its Grey Lynn liberals, the Greens and TPM. But unless any of them is prepared to give National another look, they have nowhere else to go.

Hipkins has the option of forming a Government with NZ First alone, enabling Peters to remain Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, and Shane Jones in charge of regional development, resources and fisheries.

He could then tell the Greens and, if necessary, any remaining TPM MPs, that it’s either that or have National and Act back again.

That’s how Jim Bolger and Jenny Shipley managed Act from 1996-1999, and Clark and Ardern the Greens from 2005-2008 and 2017-2020.

It worked to get the numbers in Parliament, both for the initial coalition deals and for each measure as they were decided. It may be how Luxon wishes he had managed Act in 2023.

Had he done so, what could Seymour have done about it? Reject a National-NZ First coalition and instead make Act responsible for a Labour-Green-TPM one instead?

The narrowing polls create other opportunities for Labour and risks for National.

Luxon’s pro-investment messages usually include trashing Labour, arguing that only under his leadership is New Zealand “open for business again”.

But, in the context of his coalition being behind in the polls, if that’s the message he delivers to the 100 global investors at his summit next month, they’ll get on the next plane home and never return.

If he wants them to invest in New Zealand and make his summit economically and politically successful, Luxon must deliver a bipartisan message, emphasising general policy stability since the 1984-1993 reform era, which would continue even if the Government changes next year.

If his summit is a fiasco, Luxon will not live long enough as Prime Minister even to see the Budget delivered in May.

Labour strategists have quietly begun preparing for an early election, even while considering it unlikely. Their strong preference is for Luxon to remain Prime Minister and for his coalition to come tumbling down later this year.

The closing polls have secured Hipkins’ leadership, at least until they turn again. Even those Labour MPs who disagreed with the softly-softly strategy he outlined after the election now concede it has worked.

The possibility Labour may be back sooner rather than later has led to business and community leaders and their lobbyists re-establishing relations with senior Opposition MPs.

Hipkins is believed to be determined the next Labour Government, whenever it occurs, will not repeat the mistakes of the Key, Ardern and Luxon regimes of being elected without any clear idea of what they’d then do.

It should be more in the mould of the Clark, Lange, Kirk and Savage Governments of being elected having done the work in Opposition to implement a clear programme. Based on the Clark Government, Hipkins wants it to make deliverable promises and then over-deliver.

There’s a long road ahead, and perceived arrogance would kill Labour’s chances after its fiscal and economic wreckage in 2022 and 2023.

But it underlines Luxon’s extraordinary unpopularity that Hipkins now has a reasonable chance of being the first Prime Minister since National’s legendary Keith Holyoake to be thrown out by voters, only to be returned three years later.