Labour's chance to distance itself from Te Pāti Māori

NZ Herald

3 days ago

Massey University's GDPLive is also trending back towards zero. The brain drain is worse than ever.
As highlighted by Herald Business Editor at Large Liam Dann, this matches BusinessNZ's latest data suggesting both manufacturing and services went backwards in May and June, with services continuing its decline since February.
The overall economy doing so poorly is especially alarming given the agricultural boom.
Westpac observes that households' after-tax disposable incomes increased just 0.9% over the past year despite the tax cuts, while consumer prices increased 2.5%.
Stats NZ reported yesterday that food prices were up 4.6% over the last year, and ASB thinks overall inflation is already back above 3%.
Local and international inflation fears suggest just one more cut to the Official Cash Rate this cycle, although households moving off fixed mortgages before the election will benefit from earlier cuts.
Bond markets remain worried about New Zealand's creditworthiness, with yields on 10-year bonds still stuck around 4.6%, nearly 7% higher than the 4.3% Nicola Willis' debt-servicing estimates assume.
Westpac thinks yields will increase to nearly 5% over the next two years, suggesting Willis must find around another $1.5 billion a year for debt servicing alone. Assuming health, education, law and order and defence aren't cut, there's no prospect of a balanced budget this decade.
While even the most pessimistic forecasts indicate that 2026 will feel better for voters than 2025, that'll be off the back of two recessions in two years, not quite what National promised in 2023.
Nor would two recessions be evidence, to use Christopher Luxon's words, of his Government 'turning the joint around', however much 'blimmin' hard work' he says he's doing.
New Zealand's results certainly compare unfavourably with Argentina, where President Javier Milei and Finance Minister Luis Caputo inherited a complete basket case from their left-wing predecessors at the same time as Luxon and Willis.
After the kind of urgent and robust fiscal and regulatory reforms Luxon and Willis say aren't viable in New Zealand, Argentina's economy is booming at nearly 6% a year.
Its books are in surplus, inflation has been subdued, exports are growing, private-sector wages are rising faster than prices, Milei's favourability rating is touching 50%, well ahead of poor Luxon on around 30%, and his Libertad Avanza Party is set to win this October's parliamentary elections.
National, Act and NZ First supporters will never know what might have been had Luxon and Willis rejected the politics-first incrementalism recommended by their mentors Sir John Key and Sir Bill English and quickly implemented Milei-style reforms instead.
That's all speculation. The relevance to the byelection is that, without an economic boom, National relies even more heavily on its scare campaign against TPM.
Sadly for Labour, TPM seems to be doing everything it can to help National, with its co-leader Rawiri Waititi now revealing his political hero is Burkina Faso's Marxist military dictator Ibrahim Traore, who opposes democracy, seized power in a coup, butchered civilians, criminalised homosexuality, cracked down on public dissent and freedom of the press, and removed civil liberties generally.
Labour must win the byelection decisively to demonstrate electoral power over TPM. At least as important, it must campaign hard in doing so, belying Luxon's suggestion the byelection could be a mere 'pillow-fight' between two allies and differentiating itself not just temperamentally but ideologically from its radical opponent.
Among major party activists, there's sometimes a tendency to concede the moral high ground to smaller allies. Labour or National activists can be caught saying that, of course, they really agree with the Greens or Act, but – unlike them – they must sound more moderate to not scare off median voters.
That's exactly the wrong way for Labour and National activists to think of their parties. They should instead define themselves positively for what they stand for, not just position themselves as paler and more cynical versions of the real thing.
It doesn't help Labour when Willie Jackson – its fifth-ranked MP – declares that he 'loves' TPM but that 'a little bit of compromise could help the situation'. To win back the 60,000 swing voters from National it needs, Labour must demonstrate that it's not just TPM's tactics it opposes but its objectives.
That shouldn't be too difficult even for Jackson. He sent his kids to Te Kōhanga Reo for primary school and then King's College for secondary school so they would be deeply immersed in both sides of the Treaty partnership. You won't hear any Labour MP express admiration for a butcher like Traore.
Labour strategists say the issues concerning Tāmaki Makaurau voters are the same as those worrying everyone else: jobs, health, homes and the cost of living – the very things at risk from Luxon's failure to get the economy booming as promised.
They point to their candidate, Peeni Henare, being very much a traditional Labour man, with a strong whakapapa to the Māori Battalion and even the National Party and its Reform Party parent, as well as to a number of Ngāpuhi iwi plus Whakatōhea, Ngāti Kahungunu and Rongowhakaata.
The strategists say Henare speaks better te reo than anyone in TPM but thinks a roof over the head, food on the kids' plates and a decent local primary school are more important than academics' latest theories about the 1840 translations of kawanatanga and tino rangatiratanga.
While Henare supported TPM's parliamentary haka against the Treaty Principles Bill, he also saw that it breached Parliament's tikanga and had the mana to apologise.
Insiders say the former Minister of Defence, ACC, Tourism and Forestry would be a senior minister in a new Labour Cabinet, to which Hipkins prefers to appoint only Labour ministers rather than add-ons from the Greens and TPM.
Strategists point out that a Henare win would also bring Labour's 39-year-old Georgie Dansey into Parliament, whose whakapapa includes not just Ngāti Tūwharetoa but also the Māori Battalion and Māori All Blacks.
With the economy in trouble, a fierce battle between Labour and TPM rather than Luxon's pillow-fight would undermine the second of National's re-election pillars. Henare has a major opportunity to prove his worth to his leader and party.