Since 1996 no new party has entered Parliament without either a sitting or former MP leading it. The Conservative Party in 2014 came close to doing so, scoring about 4% of the party vote, but ultimately failed and never attained that level of support again.

With some opinion polls currently suggesting the Opportunity Party is inching closer to the cusp of the 5% threshold that sobering reality remains a daunting challenge. As with the Conservative Party and other small parties before them, potential voters will have to be persuaded that the Opportunity Party can make a difference, and that therefore a vote for it would not be wasted.

That raises the broader position of the Party's positioning. The Opportunity Party has correctly positioned itself as a centrist Party, able to work with either the right or the left blocs. But voters like to know which side of the ledger the Party they support is really on.

Saying that a Party can work with either side of politics can confuse voters – believe me. When UnitedFuture's leader, I was often asked whose side I was "really" on – National’s or Labour's. When I replied neither, because I was on UnitedFuture's side, and our support for either a National- or Labour-led government was based solely on any policy agreements we could reach with them, I was accused of being an unprincipled opportunist.

One often hears a similar sentiment expressed in respect of New Zealand First today. And yet people say they quite like the idea of a party that can bridge gap between National and Labour. But despite MMP having been in place for thirty years now, many people still view politics through the old National/Labour prism.

In part this is due to both the major parties remaining too tribal to fully trust a smaller party that says it can work with either side in government. I was acutely aware of this when working as part of Labour- and National-led governments between 2002 and 2017. The reactions of both National and Labour to New Zealand First today show that sentiment remains a powerful part of contemporary politics.

That factor will be even more relevant in the event the Opportunity Party makes it to Parliament, especially given its lack of prior Parliamentary experience. Luxon's dismissal this week of the Opportunity Party as really a vote for Labour and the Green Party shows that nothing has changed in this regard. And sowing voter doubt about the Opportunity Party's "true" alignment in turn raises the question for voters of whether a vote for the Party can be risked.

So far, the Opportunity Party has had a relatively easy ride, because neither of the major parties has taken seriously the possibility it may win seats in Parliament. However, that may be changing now. The Party's rising poll results mean it will become subject to far more attacks from all the other parties as a potential risk to their support levels. How it responds will have a major influence on how voters perceive its credibility and whether it is worth voting for.

Its recent decision to change tack to focus on winning the Mount Albert electorate is a sensible one. After all, if it wins an electorate seat it will be deemed to have crossed the party vote threshold and every party vote it receives will count towards numbers of seats in Parliament. That would immediately reduce the wasted vote argument the other parties will throw at it because it would have crossed the party vote threshold without having to reach the 5% figure. But winning the Mount Albert seat – held by Labour the last eighty years – will be an uphill battle and cannot be assumed.

This will be the Opportunity Party’s fourth election. To date, it has provided novelty value, and until now has not threatened to gain representation. But this year may be its best chance to break through and do so. In the wake of political uncertainty the world over, it may benefit from being a party of fresh faces and new ideas that has come along at just the right time. But equally this election could also be its last chance.

However, even if it succeeds, the Opportunity Party will be in for a rude shock. It says nobly and admirably it wants to refocus the election campaign and politics generally to be about the best policy options for the future. But none of the other parties has such a grand vision – for them, elections are much more about doing all they can to win and retain political power. They are unlikely to welcome the well-meaning newcomer with open arms.

Therefore, should it cross the threshold, it will have to quickly adjust to the real political world where power and its retention are what matters to long-term Parliamentary parties, not earnest, lofty policy debates. What concessions it gains will be at best grudging, and only because its numbers might be needed to form a government. And if not, the Opportunity Party could face three unforgiving years of irrelevance – in Parliament but with few chances to achieve much.

For better or worse, the cruel reality remains that although many new and well-motivated parties have tried to get into Parliament over the years, few have succeeded. Persuading enough voters that it can break the mould and succeed where others have not, and so change the nature of politics, as it promises, is still a mighty hurdle for the Opportunity Party to overcome.

But this year is potentially its best prospect of doing so.

Our system of government has been built on the partnership between Ministers and their public service officials to implement the government’s policies. Inevitably, that requires a high level of mutual confidence and trust.

The system further assumes that officials, whatever their personal political allegiances, will work impartially with Ministers to achieve those goals. Ministers have the right to expect the professional loyalty and genuine effort of their officials, and officials should expect to receive the support of their Ministers in return.

By and large, the system works as intended, but every now and then things go awry, sometimes seriously. Recent revelations about some Immigration Service officials deliberately pulling the wool over the eyes of both the current and previous governments over a $33 million biometrics technology upgrade that ultimately produced nothing, provoking the understandable “fury” of Immigration Minister Erica Stanford, is perhaps the most dramatic example.

That is presently the subject of an inquiry by the Public Service Commissioner, so making pronouncements, let alone threats of imprisonment, about what should happen next is not only premature but also extremely unwise. Nevertheless, confirmation of Stanford’s complaints by her Labour predecessor, Andrew Little, highlights the seriousness of the situation.

However, officials pursuing their own agendas and keeping Ministers in the dark has been going on in the public service, usually at much lower levels, for years. Indeed, the internationally successful comedy series “Yes Minister” and “Yes Prime Minister” were predicated on the notion that public servants regularly outwitted Ministers and thwarted their efforts to introduce policies the officials disapproved of. Many politicians, in New Zealand and elsewhere, considered the   series to be documentaries rather than comedies.

I began my working career as a junior official in the old Department of Trade and Industry, in the days when import licensing was still in place. To regulate imports and protect both the balance of payments and domestic manufacturing, the government produced an annual Import Licensing Schedule, setting out which specific consumer and other items and to which extent could be imported. The system was cumbersome, and open to much potential abuse.

Officials regularly ignored the Schedule when dealing with licensing applications from favoured  importers and ran the system according to their own instincts and experiences. Indeed, I recall on more than one occasion being at meetings where officials debated “what would Walter have done” to resolve a particular application, rather than following that year’s Import Licensing Schedule. The “Walter” they were referring to was Walter Nash, who had set up the import licensing system in 1936, decades earlier!

Years later, when a Minister, I recall being told by officials that regulations I was seeking were “just a couple of weeks” away, only to discover soon after that no work had been done on drafting the regulations because officials were unsure how to make them work and did not want to tell me so. On another occasion, I recall two officials appearing before a Cabinet committee to discuss a particular government programme. When the Prime Minister asked how this fitted in with current government policy, they bluntly replied that it did not because it was a programme established by a previous government which they were still administering, regardless of the then current government’s policy.

While these are smaller examples than the current Immigration Service scandal, they are symptomatic of a wider issue. Public servants often become so engrossed in what they are working on that they end up viewing it more as their “life’s work” than the government of the day’s policy. Because they tend to outlast Ministers in their roles, it is easy to see how they come to regard their political masters as transitory interruptions, interfering with the work they have been immersed in for so many years.  

And in many cases, they will be right – as public servants working on an issue over several years and different governments, they will often know more about the details (and the problems) than the Minister to whom they are reporting. But while this may provide an explanation of such behaviour, it does not justify it. It does, however, underscore the challenge facing the Public Service Commissioner in trying to get to the bottom of Minister Stanford’s concerns and the wider systemic issues underlying the behaviour she is so furious about.

But unless they are resolved in a way that enables Ministers – in this government or any future government – to regain confidence in the commitment and professionalism of the public service, the very structure and integrity of our system will be severely shaken. That in turn will impact on public trust – especially if it leads to people no longer having confidence that the government they have elected will be able to implement the policies they voted for.

As the esteemed British philosopher AC Grayling notes, democracy is not self-sustaining. It requires informed citizens, trusted institutions, and a political culture that values reasoned debate and compromise. He argues that when those conditions deteriorate, democracies become vulnerable to polarization, populism, and authoritarian tendencies.

In “Yes Minister” Sir Humphrey Appleby once famously said, “Politicians come and go, but the Civil Service remains … Politicians are there to make the decisions. Civil servants are there to make sure they make the right decisions.” A more balanced view might be that although modern government requires expertise and continuity, the ultimate authority and accountability for making decisions must rest with democratically elected politicians, whatever their limitations, rather than be usurped by public servants, their expertise and experience notwithstanding.

Given the rise of crude populism across the world at present, re-asserting Grayling’s point is becoming a vital step towards sustaining democracy as we know it.

Labour’s recently released party list is a job half-done.

A positive aspect is that it has introduced a small pool of new talent that would be beneficial to Labour’s ranks. However, it has also not only retained, but in some cases, promoted too many of the old guard that contributed so much to Labour’s failure when last in office. While the list ranking process has culled out some of Labour’s deadwood, it has not gone nearly far enough to suggest a future Labour-led government would look significantly different from the one that was so decisively defeated at the last election.

Current polling suggests Labour could win at least 40 to 42 seats at this year’s election. On the assumption Labour holds all its current electorate seats and wins up to 5 additional electorate seats, it could bring in up to 22 MPs from the party list. Yet of that potential 22 list MPs, only 6 would be newcomers to Parliament. And they rank well below many sitting MPs.

For example, controversial but impressive Police Superintendent Rakesh Naidoo – who seems certain to be elected – has been ranked well behind deadwood former Ministers Willie Jackson, Willow Jean Prime and Jan Tinetti, and veteran Megan Woods, who, while more capable, has only switched to the list because of doubts about the security of her heavily redrawn electorate in Christchurch. Yet there is little doubt that Naidoo is likely to make a greater contribution to Labour’s future than all that group ahead of him on the list combined.

Similarly, former School Strike 4 Climate NZ founder and co-ordinator, and possible but outside prospect to win the new Kapiti electorate, Sophie Handford has been ranked number 26 on the list. While she is still likely to be elected from this position, she sits below former Ministers Jo Luxton, Priyanca Radhakrishnan, and Damien O’Connor, whose best years look to be behind them.

Further down the list and on the cusp of being elected is Warrick Cleine, the current chair and chief executive officer of the international accounting firm KPMG, in Cambodia and Vietnam. His presence in the Labour Caucus would almost certainly bolster Labour’s economic credibility, alongside finance spokesperson, Barbara Edmonds. In a party heavily bereft of economic and business talent, he ought to have been much more highly ranked.

Former Fulbright Scholar and Stanford University graduate, Te Pūoho Kātene, sits a few places further down the list and will probably need to defeat Te Pāti Māori co-leader, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer in the Te Tai Hauāuru electorate to be sure of a place in Parliament. He would likely be a strong asset to Parliament, but thanks to Labour’s conservative and internally protective approach to list ranking, he may not get the chance.

Overall, Labour’s line-up still contains too many plodders in senior positions to suggest that a real process of renewal is underway within the party. The list ranking process should have been the opportunity to move aside those drains on Labour’s appeal in favour of talent likely to be the face of Labour over the decade ahead. It has failed to do so. While the plodders remain and dominate, the risk for Labour is that the new talent becomes frustrated, and gives up waiting, so chooses to pursue opportunities elsewhere.

This cautious and conservative approach is likely to also be reflected in Labour’s forthcoming policy announcements. The public transport fare cap policy ($20 a week in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch and $10 a week elsewhere) announced this week is a good example. On the face of it, it sounds an attractive policy, although the devil will lie in the detail. Because its application will be limited it will hardly provide the “real cost-of-living relief” and “public transport system that works for everyone” that Labour claims. The fare cap is another job half-done, more a gesture than a major policy, and likely to be viewed by voters as such.

A feature of Labour’s announcements to date has been that they have not gone quite to plan. The capital gains tax policy was hurriedly announced last year after details had been leaked to the media; the list announcement was side-tracked about whether and when Naidoo had informed the Police leadership of his intentions, and earlier this week a Labour candidate almost pre-empted the fare cap policy announcement by suggesting a tax-relief policy announcement was imminent.

Given the modest nature of both its list and policy offerings to date, Labour can hardly afford to have its future announcements disrupted this way. To be taken seriously as a potential government-in-waiting, it first needs to look like one.

Presenting a party list that looks more like clinging to the relics of the past than facing the challenges of the future is unlikely to help to achieve that goal.

 

Parliament rose late last Saturday evening after a marathon period of Urgency passing legislation relating to last week's Budget and other matters. This was not unusual – Parliament usually goes into Urgency for a couple of days after a Budget.

Nor is it unusual for Parliament to begin a three-week recess, as it has done now, once the post-Budget Urgency has finished. This annual recess is normally the time when Ministers get out and around the country to promote the Budget, and when the Opposition sets out its response. It is often also the time when major problems with some of the Budget policies come to light, and when governments are forced into hurried amendments or even backdowns.

What is perhaps a little unusual following this year’s Budget is the low level of public and political reaction to it. Aside from Hipkins' initial response of "more cuts, more pain, and higher costs", there has been no more substantive critique from the Labour Party. The same goes for the Green Party that quickly labelled the Budget a "trashfire" and Te Pati Māori who said, "it was the worst Budget they've seen". Beyond those initial reactions, the Opposition bloc has so far had little to say about the Budget. The public response has been similarly muted, with Dame Lynda Topp's comments against the increase in defence spending being the most vocal.

And aside from the clarification about new mothers and postnatal hospital stays, which related to a post-Budget social media post rather than the Budget announcement itself, there have been no obvious Budget oversights revealed so far that Ministers have had to hurriedly tidy up.

The government will of course argue that this overall lack-lustre response to the Budget was because it has largely got the balance right, and that people understand that in challenging times, as we have now, there are no magic wands to be waved or money-trees to be shaken. Ministers will interpret the comparative quiet following the Budget positively as they approach the rest of the year and the election campaign ahead. They may be right, but the next round of opinion polls will confirm whether that is the case, or, more ominously for the government, whether people have simply switched off what it has to say.

The biggest post-Budget, although still relatively low-key, talking point is when will the Labour Party get around to releasing some policy of its own. For some months now Labour has been saying it will not release policy until after the Budget when it has had the chance to assess the Budget numbers. The not unreasonable point is that it does want to promote election policy that is either unachievable or unaffordable, prudent constraints that never troubled the previous Labour-led government.

However, while no-one expected a torrent of Labour policy releases immediately after the Budget, few would have expected Hipkins’ admission earlier this week that that the Labour caucus has not yet sat down as a team to review the Budget in detail. He says Labour has “yet to decide which bits of it we're going to keep and which bits are going to stay the same." Nevertheless, he says, somewhat contradictorily, that voters “can expect to see quite a bit from us in the near future.”

The eventual release of Labour policy, whenever it occurs, may sharpen debate between the two main political blocs in a way the Budget did not. But, because of the fiscal constraints the Budget has imposed, its impact may also fall just as flat.

By deferring its major policy announcements for so long, Labour has created a potential problem for itself. On the one hand, given its acknowledgment of the need for affordable and achievable policies and its need to be guided by the Budget numbers, Labour’s eventual offering may simply be too bland to convince wavering voters it presents a real alternative to National. Yet, on the other hand, too bold and expensive a set of promises may persuade sufficient voters it would be too profligate in office and so tip the balance back the government’s way.

All in all, the likely upshot of the government’s no-frills, no excitement approach and Labour’s desperation to be seen as responsible stewards, unlike the last time in office, looks set to lead to a very stolid and unexciting few months through until the election.

And that may confirm for many struggling with ongoing cost-of-living pressures that conventional politics no longer works for them, and that it may be time to look to more radical options. Mirroring the trend now appearing with the rise of the Reform Party in Britain and One Nation in Australia, those voters may well turn to the fringes.

In that respect ACT, New Zealand First, the Greens and Te Pati Māori stand more than ready and willing to accommodate them, although none is likely to plumb the depths of extremism the way Reform and One Nation are.

 

 

With her latest Budget Finance Minister Nicola Willis has joined some very unlikely company.

In 1972 then Finance Minister Rob Muldoon crowed that “I’ve spent it all for them”, meaning that there was no room for rash spending promises from Labour before that year’s election. In a somewhat more genteel fashion, former Finance Minister Grant Robertson deliberately set constrained forward spending allowances and booked $4 billion in savings and reprioritisation in the 2023 Budget. His intention was to leave the National Party with extremely limited fiscal room to fund its election promises without having to either cut public services or rely on highly optimistic economic revenue forecasts.

In this year’s Budget, Willis’ highly targeted new spending initiatives and forecasts of both an earlier return to Budget surplus and reduction in government debt levels are predicated on continued financial discipline supported by more solid economic growth, alongside an early end to the Iran conflict. At a blunter political level, like Muldoon and Robertson before her, Willis is also aiming to severely constrain Opposition parties from being able to make lavish election promises, without delaying the return to surplus and significantly increasing government borrowing.

However, there is one aspect of the Muldoon/Robertson line that Willis will not be keen to follow. Both Muldoon and Robertson lost heavily the elections which followed their 1972 and 2023 Budgets respectively.

Many of the initiatives contained in today’s Budget had either been pre-announced or well-foreshadowed. However, there were some carefully politically crafted surprises, for example, the record $5.5 billion boost to frontline health services and the lowering of the bowel cancer screening age from 58 to 56. Each addresses pressure points which have been the subject of Opposition criticism in recent months.

In a similar fashion, in education there is a substantial investment of hundreds of millions of dollars to maintain and upgrade the school property portfolio, including creating 4700 more places for students through new classrooms and expansions. Some of the $1 billion expected savings from cancelling the free university fees policy will be spent expanding the number of places in secondary school Trades Academies by 20,000 places by 2030.

Overall, with its moves in health, education and infrastructure, the government has focused its response on “big picture” solutions to improve the quality of life, rather than more specific household-focused moves like increases in Working for Families tax credits, or other more direct forms of family assistance. It is gambling that voters would prefer the government to focus on using its scarce resources to improve the basics, rather than household hand-outs.  This is in stark contrast to Labour’s post-pandemic large borrowing spree which went on almost everything but improving core health and education services and general infrastructure.

Willis and her colleagues will be hoping that with the deficiencies of the spending approach to the post-Covid19 recovery now apparent, voters will be more in tune with the disciplined approach she is advocating, and the earlier return to surplus and reducing debt it promises.

This in turn goes to the heart of another aspect of the Budget, far beyond its specific details. Modern Budgets are not just a statement of a government’s economic policies; they are just as much a statement of its political intent. So, not only does a government have to persuade voters of the economic credibility of its Budget numbers, it also must now persuade them of its political commitment to the policies outlined, and that they will be implemented. The Budget is therefore as much a statement of the government’s political agenda, as it is a recitation of the Treasury’s numbers and forecasts.

In that regard, its purpose is much more than just boxing in political opponents in election year the way Muldoon and Robertson did. It is about painting a picture that is broad but detailed, of the government’s future priorities and intentions, and then working to achieve them.

In this year’s Budget, with its big social and physical infrastructure investments and forward projections about the return to surplus and the reduction of debt, Willis is sketching out the broad details of the country’s immediate future, at least as the current government sees it. (Critics may well ask why it has taken until the third Budget of its term to get to that point.)

Although the Budget’s short-term to medium forecasts make it more difficult for Labour – when it finally gets round to it – to announce bold and expansive policies, the bigger immediate challenge for the government will be convincing voters in the just over five months until the election that today’s no-nonsense Budget has done enough to work for them.

  

 

 

It is often said that Oppositions never win elections because governments lose them. In other words, if a government is unpopular enough it will lose an election, regardless of the calibre of the Opposition. 

That was certainly the case in 2023 when Labour was tossed out of office. The public mood then was far more that people had had enough of Labour and were keen to get rid of it, rather than a positive feeling for National. And as National's support has waned in recent months, and Labour's increased, it was beginning to look as though history might be set to repeat itself at this November's election. However, that may be about to change.

Until recently, Labour's policy of saying nothing and therefore keeping the focus squarely on the government and its perceived shortcomings looked to be working. It was not a new idea – it was the same approach Albanese's Labor Party successfully followed in Australia in the lead-up to its first election victory in 2022. To that extent, it was smart politics for Hipkins and New Zealand Labour to copy them.

And they have done so, almost to a fault. With only two exceptions – the Future Fund announced last October, and the capital gains tax hurriedly announced a couple of weeks later but only because some details had been leaked to the media – Labour has been a policy free zone since the last election. Its excuse has been that it is waiting for the government to release this year’s Budget so it can see the true state of the country's books before making policy commitments. However, given the likely dire government accounts, that simply means, if it is to be true to its word, that Labour's election policy offerings are likely to be very meagre and uninspiring indeed.

But it goes deeper than that. Labour will not even provide full details of the two policies it has announced so far. Earlier this week Labour admitted it cannot say until after the election which public assets could be transferred to the Future Fund, because it will not know until it assumes office which state owned enterprises may be subject to Treaty of Waitangi obligations. That argument simply does not wash – Labour has had all the months leading up to last October’s announcement, and the seven months since then, to find out the answers to those questions. Rubbing salt in the wound was Hipkins’ subsequent arrogant assertion that “I don’t think the public really care which companies are going to go in or not.”

And the obfuscatory explanations about how the annual three free doctors’ visits to be funded by the capital gains tax may work, let alone the technical details of the tax itself, show a similar disturbing unwillingness to fill in the policy details or let the public know how its policies might work.

In a similar vein, there is Labour’s muted response to the Finance Minister’s announcement that around 8,700 more public service jobs will go by 2029. It seems to have left most of the self-serving howling to its acolytes in the Public Service Association, which it is unlikely to do the cause much good. Perhaps it is because, deep down, although it could never say it, Labour knows that the public service bloat of the Ardern years was unsustainable and that substantial restructuring was necessary and overdue. It probably also senses that outside the public service citadel of Wellington, reducing the size of the public service strikes a positive chord with voters.

Labour’s problem in trying to appear responsible and realistic about its election policy commitments, unlike the naive optimism of its predecessor, is that it ends up looking insipid and unconvincing. Moreover, and perhaps more seriously, the vacuum of its silence has left the field open to its potential partners in government, the Greens and Te Pati Māori to fill with a raft of expensive and far less credible and responsible policies. Although they are neither Labour policies nor ones it would readily seek to implement, the risk for Labour is that, to its detriment, because of its silence, it becomes defined by the policies of the Greens and Te Pati Māori, and therefore probably less electable.

Commentators often say that around the world at present it is not a good time to be in government. That would tend to support the “Governments lose rather than Oppositions win” line of argument and would explain Labour sticking to its policy silence. It looks to have calculated that, faced with a government whose popularity is declining, its best policy is to promise as little as possible so as not to risk alienating potential support.

There are, however, two problems with maintaining that approach. First, despite the government’s waning popularity, all the opinion polls over the last two-and-a-half years, and particularly since late last year, have shown the Coalition with the numbers to win re-election, albeit with a narrow majority. Second, Labour’s two policy announcements to date have had little impact on its public standing and there is mounting frustration at its policy silence.

The risk it faces now is that if starts to release a plethora of policy in the wake of next week’s Budget it will not be taken seriously. On the other hand, continuing with the too clever by half approach of trying to present so small an electoral target as to be near invisible for as long as possible risks ending up backfiring spectacularly.

And voters may simply conclude that all this self-imagined clever strategy really means is that the party is bereft of, or afraid of new ideas, and ill-prepared to return to government.

Rawiri Waititi is absolutely correct when he says there will be no one-term government without Te Pati Māori. At no point since the last election have Labour and the Green Party been polling strongly enough to contemplate forming a government without the inclusion of Te Pati Māori. And even if Te Pati Māori were to be involved, there have only been three occasions, according to the polls, since the last election when the left bloc would have had the numbers to form a government, were there to have been an election.

The problem with Waititi's assertion is not the accuracy of his observation, but rather the sheer unlikelihood of its being able to be achieved. One of the main reasons why Waititi’s claim is not viable is Te Pati Māori itself. Since the high point of wresting the Tamaki Makarau seat from Labour in last year’s by-election the party has been engaged in its own self-destruction, culminating in this week’s announcement by Tai Tokerau MP Mariameno Kapa-Kingi that she is leaving to form her own party. This is despite her having won a Court battle earlier this year to be reinstated to Te Pati Māori, after the party expelled her and Takuta Ferris last year.

With speculation swirling about the status of other Te Pati Māori MPs, it is still far from clear what state the party will be in to fight the election later this year, let alone contribute to any process of government formation post-election. The dysfunction that has gripped the party over the last few months is showing no signs of abating or being resolved, raising doubts about its capacity to conduct a credible election campaign, let alone remain a viable political force afterwards.

But even if Te Pati Māori can put its divisions behind it, which still seems unlikely, the bigger question arises as to whether Labour would be prepared to accommodate it within a governing arrangement. Although Labour looks to have no path to government without Te Pati Māori, Chris Hipkins has so far been disparaging of Te Pati Māori’s readiness to be part of a government and keeps refusing to say whether the two parties could work together.

He knows that if he were to embrace Te Pati Māori alongside the Greens, he would potentially risk shedding more conservative Labour supporters, most probably to New Zealand First, thus outweighing any potential gain. Yet he also knows the logical truth of Waititi’s assertion. Nevertheless, as increasingly seems his wont on so many other issues, Hipkins will continue to sit on the fence for as long as possible.

At the same time, Labour is actively campaigning to regain the Māori electorates. It has assembled an impressive slate of candidates to contest those electorates, which will mean the outcome in none of those seats can be taken for granted. But if Labour wins all those seats, which it says is its objective, it may be counter-productive to its overall election prospects.

Unless accompanied by a substantial increase in its party vote, Labour’s winning all or most of the Māori electorates would simply mean a likely reduction in the number of list seats it wins, thus not helping its overall chances to form a government. And if Te Pati Māori loses all its electorate seats, all party votes which it attracts will be wasted, as it is unlikely to cross the 5% party vote threshold.

Labour’s Māori electorates strategy therefore looks to be driven more by a desire for vengeance than common sense. Given that its strategy is driven by Willie Jackson, that is probably no surprise, but it is unlikely to enhance Labour’s prospects of leading the next government. It has never come to terms with the reasons for its rejection in most of the Māori electorates at the last election. Despite the impressive candidates it has selected to contest the Māori electorates this year, Labour still seems not to have learned the lesson so bluntly delivered at the Tamaki Makarau by-election last year, that it no longer has any historic right to assume those seats are its own.

Indeed, the arrogance which Jackson typifies so strongly may well prove to be one of the strongest factors in favour of Te Pati Māori, especially amongst younger Māori voters, fed up with years of Labour’s lazy indifference to their concerns. They are unlikely to take kindly to Labour’s renewed interest in the Māori electorates, nor to any suggestion that their future advancement lies inherently with a Labour-led government.

Nevertheless, none of these machinations detracts from the fundamental point Waititi has been making. But each contributes to making it even more unlikely that his ambition to see a one-term government can be realised.