Will This Be a One-Term Government?

Republished from System Change Aotearoa

A year on from the 2023 general election, David Seymour responded to the latest One News-Verian poll, showing a 5% lead for the government, by gloating. “The coalition is working so much better than our enemies hoped!” Sad to say, but the ACT leader is not wrong.

On 14 October last year, National, ACT and NZ First swept Labour from power. Weeks later, after extended negotiations, the three parties struck a coalition deal to form the most right-wing government this country has had in decades. One year down, two to go — and hopes on the left that this would be a ‘coalition of chaos’ which would rapidly tear itself apart are starting to look far too optimistic.

The Coalition has retained a solid polling lead. The three parties won last October’s election by a combined margin of 11.2% over Labour, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori. Their lead has remained solid, averaging 7.8% since the Budget was delivered. Labour has not polled ahead of National since mid-2023. Christopher Luxon never polled ahead of Jacinda Ardern in the Preferred Prime Minister ratings, and lagged behind Chris Hipkins on that metric for most of the election campaign; but the advantage the Labour leader once held has since disappeared, and Luxon now leads Hipkins by a decent margin.

This does not necessarily mean that the government’s agenda is popular. Most polls consistently show that a plurality of voters believe the country is headed in the wrong direction. The very same One News poll that gave Seymour cause to gloat found that 40% of eligible voters think the country is in worse shape than it was before the election, with 30% saying it is in better shape, and 26% believing that little has changed. Luxon is no John Key; the incumbent Prime Minister’s popularity does not come close to matching that of his predecessor and mentor, who remained virtually unassailable in the polls for a decade.

Cuts to public services are not popular, especially not cuts to health funding. A staggering 35,000 people in Dunedin, out of a population of 135,000, recently attended a protest against the downgrading of the city’s new hospital project.

However, the widely anticipated civil war between the coalition parties has not emerged in the form of open conflict. After decades of hostility, ACT and NZ First appear to have called a truce. This has surprised some, given that Winston Peters and David Seymour have been throwing insults at each other for years — during the 2020 election campaign for instance, Peters claimed that if he ever faced Seymour in the ring, he’d put him in an ambulance with a single punch. Peters has had an actual altercation with an ACT MP in the past — in 1997, he is alleged to have physically assaulted John Banks. As recently as September last year, Seymour boldly declared that his party was “not going to sit around the Cabinet table with this clown.” Today, both Peters and Seymour seem content to sit at either side of Luxon in Cabinet meetings.

Not only are the coalition parties thus far refusing to publicly tear each other to shreds — on the contrary, they are doing the exact opposite. They are, in fact, working together closely and efficiently to advance their agenda at an alarming pace. The government’s use of parliamentary urgency in its first 100 days in office was unprecedented in the MMP era, as it moved swiftly to scrap many of Labour’s key reforms. The Coalition is fast-tracking its agenda through the House, heedless of opposition.

The so-called ‘coalition of chaos’ currently appears to be more unified, coordinated and ruthless than anyone anticipated. It is crucial for the left to understand why. The right-wing parties, regardless of past animosity, are able to unite so effectively for a reason: these are organisations which are dedicated to representing the interests of the wealthy and powerful, and each of their leaders, ministers and MPs are directly accountable to the same big-money interests as each other.

Graeme Hart, who recently fell to second place on the NBR Rich List after being the richest man in Aotearoa for more than 20 years, is an example of one of the country’s wealthiest citizens supporting all three right-wing parties at once. During the 2023 election campaign, Hart gave a $400,000 donation to the National Party, $200,000 to ACT and $100,000 to NZ First. This $700,000 offering was part of a trend — the last election cycle saw previous records broken for big money donations in NZ politics. These donations overwhelmingly favoured the coalition parties. These huge financial contributions were not charity — the nation’s wealthiest people made their donations for a reason. Business owners wanted the three right-wing parties to work together to advance the interests of their companies and their class.

The direct accountability of the right-wing parties to their super-rich donors creates a clear unity of purpose between them. Coalition negotiations may have taken weeks, but as soon as these talks were concluded, Seymour and Peters were able to cast aside their petty squabbles with ease.

One immediate Coalition priority was to repeal the previous government’s Fair Pay Agreement legislation before its effects were realised. FPAs were designed to strengthen unions, giving workers more bargaining power and threatening to reduce the profits of the top 1% — it is no coincidence that the FPA appeal bill was rushed through before Christmas.

Some on the left believed that NZ First may act as a ‘moderating influence’ on the Coalition, whilst others see National as the party most committed to remaining in the ‘centre ground.’ All acknowledge ACT as the most right-wing element in this government. Yet it is NZ First deputy leader Shane Jones who stands shoulder-to-shoulder with National’s Chris Bishop and Simeon Brown to announce the 149 projects that have been approved thanks to their hugely controversial Fast-track Bill. 12 of these projects involved companies and shareholders responsible for more than $500,000 in political donations to the three coalition parties and their candidates. In May, Jones held an undisclosed dinner with mining companies seeking to get their projects fast-tracked.

Meanwhile another NZ First Minister, Casey Costello, is blatantly disregarding calls from public health experts to abandon planned tax cuts on heated tobacco products. Leaked documents from 2017 published by RNZ show that tobacco giant Phillip Morris specifically targeted their lobbying at NZ First, as well as the Taxpayers’ Union — which Costello used to be the chairperson of. The corruption of NZ First, and of the Coalition it is part of, is on display for all to see.

Workers’ rights, indigenous rights and environmental protections are being bulldozed out of the way to clear a path for corporations to plunder Aotearoa, intensifying the exploitation of its people and resources. Te Tiriti o Waitangi is under attack because it presents a barrier to this agenda driven by corporate greed. ACT’s Treaty Principles Bill is the most egregious of the government’s many attacks on Te Tiriti, though National and NZ First have committed to oppose the bill after first reading; the comprehensive review of all Treaty of Waitangi provisions in existing legislation, part of NZ First’s coalition deal, could do far more real damage.

At the same time, the profits of multinational corporations are being prioritised over the future of humanity. In the midst of the global climate crisis, the fossil fuel industry is being given the green light to expand drilling across our land and oceans while the planet boils.

We already had a crisis of inequality in this country — it is about to get worse still. Workers’ rights are under attack, public services are being decimated, and tax cuts are being handed out to the top 1%. The rich are getting even richer while everyone else suffers.

Advancing the interests of capitalist corporations and shareholders binds together this government with the strength of industrial-grade superglue. To wait for the governing parties to suddenly fall out with each other, for chaos to take hold and for the Coalition to be swept from office, is to let them completely off the hook. The richest and most powerful people in Aotearoa are benefitting handsomely from the radical restructuring of our society, and will continue to apply constant pressure to ministers and MPs to keep in line, keep the profits flowing, and stay united.

It is not internal disunity that will bring this Coalition crashing down. It is external pressure. Their biggest weakness is obvious: serving the interests of the top 1% above all else goes directly against the interests of the vast majority of society. The capitalist class and its political representatives must therefore constantly work hard to keep the 99% divided, because a united working class fighting for an alternative, for an economic system that operates in the interests of everyone, could bring capitalism crashing down.

The strategy of “divide-and-conquer” has always been central to capitalist governance. A united working class is unstoppable; but if the ruling class successfully sows division, turning white workers against working class people of colour, men against women, straight people against queer and transgender people, then the corporate elite can continue to rule.

This need for the ruling class to sow division amongst the 99% is especially acute during times of recession, austerity and general economic crisis. Support for the capitalist domination of society is always at its weakest when the system is directly making life noticeably worse for the vast majority of people. Right now, with the NZ economy in a deep malaise, unemployment rising and the Coalition implementing savage austerity policies, is the perfect time for the left to organise and fight back. That is why the super-rich and the right-wing parties that represent their interests have gone into overdrive in an attempt to divide Aotearoa.

The ruling class must create false solidarity between itself and sections of the working class. Pākehā elites must convince white working class people that they have more in common with wealthy white people than they do with Māori workers — when in reality, the precise opposite is true. That is why the coalition parties have made anti-Māori racism central to their political project.

Right-Wing Populism in Aotearoa — a 20-Year Project

The Hollow Men, a documentary based on Nicky Hager’s bestselling 2006 book of the same name, points to the origins of the current-day Coalition’s strategy of divide-and-rule. The book and film chronicle the rise and fall of Don Brash as leader of the National Party between 2003 and 2006.

Brash began his tenure as Leader of the Opposition focused on advancing the free market economic policies he championed in his previous job as Governor of the Reserve Bank. These free market policies — abolishing the minimum wage, slashing taxes for the rich, privatising all remaining publicly owned assets — were deeply unpopular. Brash’s team concluded that he would never become Prime Minister if he based his campaign on arguing for reforms that would benefit nobody except corporations and the super-rich. Aotearoa was still reeling from the explosion of inequality that was caused by the neoliberal revolution of 1984-1993, and had elected Helen Clark’s Labour Government in 1999 on the promise that poverty and inequality would be reduced.

Brash’s team contacted right-wing political consultants overseas, one of whom was Karl Rove, George W. Bush’s key election strategist. Rove’s advice, which Brash followed closely, was to pivot the National Party’s public-facing campaigning away from unpopular economic policies, and to focus instead on “wedge issues.” This meant leading with slogans about being “tough on crime” and believing in “family values” and “One Law for All.” These slogans were thinly-veiled dog-whistles telling socially conservative voters that National intended to reverse policies which favoured Māori and the LGBT community. The objective was to weaponise racism and homophobia to build a voter coalition who would vote National in spite of the fact that the only section of this voter base whose interests Brash truly represented were the top 1%, a tiny minority.

In January 2004, Brash delivered an address at the Orewa Rotary Club which remains infamous to this day. The message of the speech Brash gave was simple: Māori have “special privileges” in Aotearoa, and those privileges needed to be removed, and replaced by the doctrine of “One Law for All.” Never mind that every statistic, then as now, showed that Māori are disadvantaged in terms of housing, healthcare, wages, wealth, incarceration rates and life expectancy. Never mind that Brash’s entire political project was to protect the “special privileges” of the super-rich — a group in which Pākehā have always been disproportionately represented. Brash instead placed the blame for the ills of society — the very free market society he had helped engineer at the Reserve Bank — squarely at the feet of Māori.

In the wake of the Orewa speech, National recorded an unprecedented surge in its polling. Having suffered its worst ever election result in 2002, when National won just 20.9% of the vote, the party had recovered slightly, but nowhere near enough to challenge for victory in 2005. At the end of 2003, National was polling at 28%, seventeen points behind Labour. In the first One News poll after the Orewa speech, National suddenly surged up to 45% — seven points ahead of Labour. Heavily assisted by the corporate media, Brash’s race-baiting proved to be hugely popular — far more than his economic policies ever were.

National ultimately failed to win the 2005 election. Even so, Brash did succeed in nearly doubling the party’s vote share, bringing National back up to 39.1% — only two points behind Labour. More importantly for the long term, Brash succeeded in spearheading a racist anti-Māori turn in Aotearoa’s politics. In this, he was actively helped by the Clark Government, who passed the Foreshore and Seabed Act in late 2004, despite ferocious opposition from Māori.

The forthcoming publication of The Hollow Men was seen by many to be the catalyst for Brash to resign as National Party leader in 2006. The leaked emails to be revealed in the book were so damaging that Brash originally took out a High Court injunction to prevent the emails being published — but he relented after his resignation, and Hager’s book was released to the public. Brash was succeeded by John Key, who subsequently won the 2008 election.

The tactic of ‘divide-and-rule’ has been around since the beginning of political history. The specific form of divisive rhetoric which dominates the political landscape of Aotearoa in 2024 has its origins in the US Republican Party of the 1990s, and was taken up across the western world by mainstream conservatives such as Bush and Brash in the early 2000s.

In the decades since however, it has been the radical right that has benefitted overwhelmingly from this increasingly extreme scapegoating of minorities, not the mainstream centre-right. Establishment conservatives who employed this rhetoric paved the way for the rise of ‘right-wing populism’ in country after country in the wake of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, with demagogues such as Donald Trump and Nigel Farage taking advantage in the US and the UK, and outright fascists like France’s Marine Le Pen and Italy’s Giorgia Meloni gaining ground across Europe at an alarming rate.

Once-mainstream parties have survived by cynically moving to the populist right in order to take advantage. An example of this is the UK Conservative Party, which has been on a constant rightward trajectory since the 2016 Brexit Referendum. For many on the centre-right, it has become a question of whether to adapt to more extreme right-wing politics, or fade into irrelevance.

In his tenure as Prime Minister from 2008 to 2016, John Key governed with the support of Te Pāti Māori. The National Party moved away from Don Brash and “One Law For All,” bucking the 2010s trend of right-wing radicalisation, and remaining a moderate centre-right party for the time being. The Government of Key and Bill English even made enough progress on upholding Te Tiriti o Waitangi that Te Pāti Māori were satisfied — even if many Māori voters were not. No significant right-wing populist challenge emerged in that era to apply pressure on National to move rightwards.

In the 2020s however, Aotearoa has not proven to be immune to the rise of right-wing populism. The anti-lockdown movement and campaigns against Co-Governance fuelled a radicalisation on the New Zealand right. Brash played a pivotal role in this rightward shift — after a brief failed stint as ACT Party leader in 2011, he went on in 2016 to found Hobson’s Pledge, an extreme right-wing lobby group which has been heavily influential in campaigns to nullify Te Tiriti o Waitangi. Brash, like Johnson, has embraced his role as a populist demagogue.

ACT was originally founded as a libertarian party. Roger Douglas, the chief architect of neoliberalism in Aotearoa, was one of the co-founders — he sought to advance his “unfinished” free market transformation of the country, but held to a thin veneer of progressivism on social issues. Throughout the 2010s, ACT looked to be a party on death’s door, holding on to its sole seat in Parliament across the 2011, 2014 and 2017 elections only thanks to strategic voting by National supporters in Epsom.

David Seymour has revived the ACT Party through his embrace of right-wing populism. In the 2020 election, the party came roaring back to life, winning a record 10 seats, followed three years later by 11 seats and its first ever coalition deal. Anti-Treaty rhetoric is now central to ACT’s platform, and this plays a dual purpose: through the Treaty Principles Bill, ACT both appeals to anti-Māori racism through the language of “One Law For All,” whilst at the same time taking aim at the threat Te Tiriti poses to its economic agenda as a barrier to further privatisation and deregulation.

Winston Peters was the “kingmaker” who held the balance of power following the 2017 election, and after negotiating with both parties, chose to make Ardern Prime Minister. This meant that Peters was Ardern’s Deputy when the Labour-NZ First Coalition created the Covid guidelines in 2020. In the election later that year, NZ First was unceremoniously booted out of Parliament, receiving its lowest ever share of the vote.

Peters has gone through many political reinventions in his decades-long career, but his latest transformation has been the most significant to date. NZ First has pivoted to hard-right stances on the Treaty and on trans rights, and has made hay campaigning against the very Covid policies it helped create. NZ First has always been a nationalistic, populist, socially conservative party; but its economic nationalism traditionally led the party to support for some left-of-centre economic policies. Peters was kingmaker thrice between 1996 and 2017, and opted to govern with Labour two times out of three. He always claimed to act as a ‘moderating influence’ on governments led by either party.

But Peters has survived for so long in politics by always knowing which way the wind is blowing. His post-2020 transformation has pivoted the party he leads firmly away from any semblance of holding to the ‘centre ground,’ and towards right-wing populism. There is a reason why #3 on the party’s 2023 election list was the former chairperson of the free market Taxpayers Union; Casey Costello represents the new breed of radical right-wing MPs who now make up the NZ First caucus. Costello also happens to be a former spokesperson for none other than Hobson’s Pledge.

The animosity between NZ First and ACT in previous decades arose not only from personal dislike, but from clear ideological differences between the parties. NZ First was socially conservative, but protectionist on economic policy; ACT had liberal positions on some social issues, but was committed first and foremost to a globalised free market economy. NZ First sought to appeal to disaffected working class voters and retirees, particularly in the regions; the base of the ACT Party has always been small business owners and the wealthiest sections of the middle class.

Perhaps an explanation for why the two parties are now able to work together so effectively is that both are now more committed to right-wing populism than they are to their foundational philosophies. NZ First has embraced the free market agenda of big-money donors, whilst ACT has embraced authoritarianism and cast aside much of its always-shaky commitment to social liberalism. Peters and Seymour can now stand side-by-side in an unholy-if-uneasy alliance within the Coalition.

The Luxon-era National Party remains the largest and most moderate force within the Coalition. Nonetheless, it has adopted right-wing populist elements in its rhetoric and policies. National led its 2023 campaign with law-and-order dog-whistles about being “tough on crime” — and the government is already matching this rhetoric with action, with prison expansions included in the list of projects to be fast-tracked. The colonial carceral system imprisons Māori at a hugely disproportionate rate — we know that more prisons means more Māori behind bars.

Another key populist element in National’s programme has been its opposition to the very Co-Governance policies embraced by the Key Government. Christopher Finlayson, who was Minister for Treaty Negotiations from 2008 to 2017, has been fiercely critical of populist misrepresentations of Co-Governance that his party has since embraced.

The Coalition has scrapped the Māori Health Authority, and is reverting Te Reo names for government agencies back to English. Just two more of the many examples of the Coalition leading a backlash against decades of hard-won gains for Māori. Luxon has allowed ACT and NZ First to drag his party well to the right of where National stood in the 2010s; the Prime Minister is directly complicit in his government’s populist turn.

20 years after the Orewa speech, right-wing populism has come to dominate the New Zealand right. Likewise, Brash’s free market economic agenda has been embraced by the Coalition. The Key Government’s economic policies, like its social policies, were fairly moderate. Yes, benefit sanctions were imposed, services were underfunded, state assets were partially privatised, tax cuts were handed out to the rich, and the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) was signed. But the austerity imposed by Finance Minister Bill English was mild compared to the National Government of the 1990s, let alone to the savage cuts being implemented across Europe at that time.

Today, Nicola Willis is imposing harsh austerity measures on the public sector. ACT deputy leader Brooke van Velden is attacking workers’ rights. Jones, Bishop and Brown are unleashing environmental havoc with their Fast-track Bill. If Brash, the Taxpayers’ Union and the ACT Party had their way, this agenda of austerity, deregulation, and the corporate takeover of the country would go even further and faster.

The rise of right-wing populism in Aotearoa represents a clear and present threat to Māori, and to the working class as a whole. Across Europe and America, the evidence is abundant that, once this dangerous form of politics emerges, it is here to stay, and only grows more extreme over time. Right now, it is traditional conservative politicians like Brash, Seymour, Peters, and to a lesser extent the National Party leadership who have made this opportunistic turn to the right; but it is entirely possible that a genuine far-right party or leader will emerge at some point in the next decade or two, presenting a danger orders of magnitude greater than the current Coalition.

Right-wing populism feeds off the decay of a capitalist system in crisis, and its failure to deliver decent living standards for working class people. Centrist politics-as-usual has proven utterly incapable of permanently defeating the radical right, as the status quo continues to grow ever more unappealing to the majority of society. The only way to beat right-wing populism once and for all is to expose its true purpose — to protect the wealth and power of the super-rich — and to build a movement for genuine, transformational change in the interests of the many, not the few.

We Need an Alternative

Austerity and right-wing populism will never be defeated if the left sits back and hopes that the coalition parties will simply tear each other apart. They are united around advancing the interests of the capitalist class, and are determined to divide their opponents. They will stop at nothing to turn Pākehā against Māori, whilst filling the pockets of their wealthy donors.

The coalition parties do not care about their obligations under international law to uphold indigenous rights; they do not care about the existential threat to humanity posed by the climate crisis; they do not care about worsening poverty, inequality and hardship. They do not care how many furious citizens sign petitions or make submissions. All that matters to this government is increasing the profits of the capitalists who put them in power and will stop at nothing to keep them in power.

The right-wing parties have chosen this moment to sow racism and division for a reason — because the economy is in crisis, and austerity is making life worse for the vast majority. That means the system is weak. Now is the moment to do what the ruling class fears most — the radical left must build a movement for an alternative economic system that serves the interests of the many, not the few. We must counter the Coalition’s austerity agenda with a real vision for change.

The fight for an alternative economic system must base itself first and foremost on popular demands that would take wealth and power away from the top 1%, and give it back to the people. For far too long, workers have worked long hours for low wages; housing has been unaffordable for far too many people; the cost-of-living has kept rising; public services have been crumbling into disrepair; the tax system has made the poor pay far too much while the super-rich pay less than the average household; and poverty and homelessness have been a stain on our dignity as a society. Successive Labour governments have failed to address these crises.

Common-sense reforms to immediately tackle these systemic issues must be at the heart of a movement for change. It is the greed of the super-rich that is responsible for society’s ills. We can live in a world where decent, affordable housing, universal public services provided free at the point of use, well-paying jobs, and guaranteed liveable incomes for those unable to work, are human rights. But such a world can only be created through widespread public ownership, stronger trade unions, and a fundamental and irreversible shift in the balance of power and wealth in favour of working people.

We need a vision to truly inspire people — not just to fight back against the Coalition, but to fight for a better world. Right now, there is a widespread feeling that the centre-left parties have no vision, no alternative. The Coalition is not necessarily popular — the right-wing parties are simply less unpopular than the Opposition.

The centre-left parties — particularly the Labour Party — are unlikely to go out on a limb and embrace radical policies of their own volition. Only an organised mass movement fighting against austerity and for an alternative economic system will bring about real change.

Such a movement is yet to emerge, and will not emerge without organisation. Campaigns and coalitions dedicated to the fight for economic justice must be built and strengthened. Links must be built between the movement for economic justice and the movements to defend both Te Tiriti o Waitangi and Papatūānuku from the government’s attacks.

The union movement will always play a central role in the struggle for an alternative economic system, and all those committed to economic justice must participate in their unions if they can. However, the defensive role that unions play within the capitalist economy must be understood and respected. If unions are sometimes more politically conservative than the radical left would hope for, that is for good reason — unions exist to bargain for the best deal their members can get under the current system. A campaign to change the system altogether must involve union members, but cannot be beholden to union leaders who are necessarily more risk-averse than political activists. Unions are the shield of the working class; the labour movement needs both a sword and a shield in order to fight back.

The current Coalition is demonstrating how easy it is for the ruling class to unite around their shared interests. All they have to do is gather a small group of people representing a few major corporations around a common programme to enrich themselves and their class, then tell the right-wing politicians what to do. Building a united working class movement is so much harder. We are many, they are few — and building solidarity across the many is a huge and complex task. There are millions of people in Aotearoa and billions across the world who would benefit from the overthrow of the current system, but it is impossible to unite every single one of them.

Yet when enough people stand together to fight for a better world, there is nothing we cannot accomplish. The time is right to organise — capitalism is in crisis, and the Coalition’s divisive and unpopular agenda is providing ample opportunity for resistance to emerge. If the left is able to articulate a compelling alternative to the status quo, we have the opportunity to build an unstoppable movement. We must not let this opportunity go to waste.

Elliot Crossan is an ecosocialist writer and activist from Auckland. He is the Chair of System Change Aotearoa.