Manawatu Column - December 2011

After each election Stephen Levine, Professor of Political Science at Victoria University, invites many of the main political players and commentators to contribute to a book about the campaign. The last one was titled ‘Key to Victory’ and its predecessor, ‘The Baubles of Office. I wonder what title he will offer up for the account of the 2011 election. Something to do with a cup of tea, no doubt.

If there is one thing political junkies like more than being immersed in campaigning itself, it is predicting and analysing the results. There will be many different versions of the post-election story, depending on the spin applied. What follows is just one.

The 2011 election was a resounding success for John Key’s National Party (aka the John Key Party, as National MP Jo Goodhew referred to it recently in an enlightening slip-of-the tongue) and a devastating loss for Labour. The Greens and New Zealand First will be very happy with their parties’ results. The ACT, Maori and Mana parties will be disappointed and Peter Dunne simply relieved.

It is deceptively simplistic, however, to interpret the gap between Labour and National as a ringing endorsement of the Government or its policies.

The previous National-Act-Maori-United Future Government held 69 seats in Parliament. Assuming those four parties all participate in the new Government, that number will reduce to 64 and the gap between the Government and Opposition will reduce from 16 seats to just 7.

Although voters showed less enthusiasm for Labour, they still gave more support to those parties that oppose National’s policies than they did in 2008.

At least, that’s what those who actually voted did. Just 68.8% of eligible voters actually took advantage of their right to determine the make up of parliament. When factored in to the results, ‘none-of-the-above’ turns out to be a significant voting block: National still wins with 33%. No-vote comes in second with 31.2%, followed by Labour on 18.5% and the Greens on 7%.

Now, that result is no cause to claim that National has no mandate to sell assets. The evidence to back that claim is that the combined number of seats attained by the two parties that actually campaigned for asset sales is less than half of the seats in parliament.

What the non-vote does tell us is that political parties and individual politicians have a mammoth task on our hands. We must rebuild a connection with New Zealanders, particularly young people.

Note that it is the responsibility of parties and politicians to address low voter turnout. It is not Parliament’s responsibility and conducting any inquiry into peoples’ reluctance to vote as though there were some well-funded conspiracy to keep people at home is an unmitigated waste of resources.

Further analysis of the non-voting population will more than likely show that it is the Labour Party that has the most work to do – and the most to gain from giving those disenfranchised kiwis the attention they deserve.

It would be naïve to think Labour’s task ends there. Labour could once rely on a base of people labelled ‘workers’ to consistently support the party. This is no longer the case. The challenge that confronts both Labour and the unions is to move with the times and articulate the aspirations of modern working New Zealanders, acknowledging that not all workers are employees, while remaining true to our Social Democratic values.

Therein lies the challenge for Labour’s next leader. The answer will not be found, as some commentators would have it, in abandoning centre-left policy and becoming National-lite. While it would be foolish for Labour not to review the policies offered up this year, it would be equally foolish to discard them in totality in some effort to look and sound more like our opponents.

The answer is to show people Labour is on their side. As close as the election result was, the centre-right won that battle this time and the right to govern for the next three years is theirs.

The mission for the centre-left is to convince New Zealand it can form a government that can lead our nation, confront the economic, social and environmental challenges we face and give people hope that they can achieve their aspirations.

Within that mission, Labour’s task is to show that it is capable of leading the centre-left, of being the dominant party while having a truly collaborative relationship with our natural partners.

What will Stephen Levine’s review of the 2014 election be titled? Who knows but it could very well be shaped by each political party’s ability to connect with modern New Zealand.