The coalition has been a success insofar as it has provided stability despite the differences among the parties.
Differences are to be expected but they have been stated in ways that indicate frayed relationships, especially but not exclusively between Luxon and New Zealand First leader Winston Peters.
Luxon accused Peters of putting politics before the national interest in releasing emails in April relating to the United States attacking Iran. Luxon described Peters’ comments against Chinese-born Green MP Lawrence Xu-Nan as “racist”.
Back in 1996, at the end of parallel coalition negotiations with National and Labour, Peters required a private apology from National’s Jim Bolger for having cast Peters’ anti-immigration policies in a similar light, which was duly delivered over a whisky session between the pair one night.
Peters has repeatedly referred to Luxon’s inexperience in politics and has breached an unspoken coalition etiquette by musing publicly over National’s leadership problems.
Act leader David Seymour does more than Luxon or Peters to promote the stability of the coalition as a selling point.
But Peters’ campaign record suggests that it is not in his DNA to promote either of his partner parties in a remotely positive light.
Negotiations with Act and New Zealand First are likely to be more difficult than in 2023 if they make it back.
Unlike 2023, none of the parties will have the sense that they can delay their priority policies to another term. They will have less patience and a greater sense of urgency. For that reason, they are likely to be less compromising.
After heated disagreements over how National pushed the under-16s social media ban through Cabinet, Act and New Zealand First are likely to collaborate on management issues to prevent any repeat.
A possible one-term Government
No National Prime Minister in the party’s 90-year history has led the party to victory at one election and then defeat three years later.
There hasn’t been a one-term Government for more than 50 years.
A loss of power would be humiliating for Luxon if the result were because of a polling slump by National, and polling suggests it has lost eight to 10 points since the 2023 election.
He entered Parliament with “future leader” virtually tattooed on to his forehead and became leader within a year after a no-confidence vote in Judith Collins, well before he was acclimatised to politics.
A loss would undoubtedly lead to recriminations in all parties but especially within National over whether the caucus made an error in not replacing Luxon when it could have.
There have been two one-term Labour Governments, one led by Sir Walter Nash from 1957 to 1960 and the 1972 to 1975 Government led by Norman Kirk then Sir Bill Rowling after Kirk died in 1974.
Several National leaders took over the role of Prime Minister during a term: Sir Keith Holyoake in 1957 (his first time as Prime Minister), Sir John Marshall in 1972, Dame Jenny Shipley in 1997 and Sir Bill English in 2016. But all led the party to defeat at the next election and their ascensions occurred after their predecessor had won at least three elections.
New kids on the parliamentary block
If the Opportunity Party makes it over the 5% threshold, it will be the first party to do so under MMP without a sitting or former MP leading it.
With just over nine weeks to go, under the leadership of political novice Qiulae Wong, it has already crossed that hurdle, according to most reputable political polls. It is the fourth time the party has sought parliamentary representation.
It is hoovering up support from those voters attracted to the bright new thing in the political marketplace, who are just fed up with other parties and from those attracted to its highly distributive land tax and universal basic income, who are likely to be younger voters.
It markets itself as a blue-green party with an emphasis on environmental issues, but with a belief in markets as well and claims it could work with the left or the right.
What makes the Opportunity story compelling at present is that a bunch of newbies could hold the balance of power in deciding whether the left or the right leads the next Government.
While its policies lean more heavily to the left, it insists that it would try in good faith to negotiate a deal with the highest-polling party. In four reputable polls in the past month (Taxpayers’ Union Curia, Talbot Mills, 1News-Verian and RNZ Reid Research), three have had Labour ahead of National, but one was virtually even.
The Act Party was a new party when it made it to Parliament in the first MMP election in 1996. But it did so under the leadership of Richard Prebble.
He had been voted out of Parliament in 1993 as the Labour MP for Auckland Central, then helped to form Act, became leader and stood in Wellington Central in 1996.
Few polls in the closing days of the 1996 campaign showed that Act would reach the 5% threshold, so two days before the election, Prime Minister Jim Bolger, in need of a coalition partner, encouraged voters in Wellington Central to back Prebble over National’s own candidate, Mark Thomas.
With a seat, Act would have been able to claim all its party vote even if it had fallen under 5%.
Prebble won the seat and Act won 6.1% of the party vote.
But in the end, National and New Zealand First had just enough votes for a majority coalition Government.
Staking a claim on the Māori seats
Te Pāti Māori is exploiting the rules of MMP by campaigning solely for the electorate vote.
It is hardly a new phenomenon. Parties have sought to exploit the rules of MMP for their own benefit over 30 years, through coat-tailing rules that allow a party that wins a single seat to claim its party vote even if it falls under the 5% threshold, or electoral accommodations.
The subtext of Te Pāti Māori’s strategy is that if it wins more electorate seats than its party vote entitlement, it will create an “overhang”. That would expand the number of seats in Parliament beyond 120 and mean more seats for the centre-left bloc.
Te Pāti Māori’s strategy is not endorsed by Labour, which is going for a two-ticks campaign.
To suggest that Labour should fall into line with the strategy and encourage its supporters to vote for Te Pāti Māori in the seven Māori seats is to ignore the stark differences between the two parties and the history of the seats.
Labour last held all seven Māori seats in 2017. Before that, it last held all seven in 2002, before the 2003 Court of Appeal foreshore and seabed decision and the Labour Government’s subsequent legislative response, which upended Māori politics in New Zealand with the establishment of the then Māori Party.
Labour lost one of them in 2020 and it lost all but one of them in 2023. Labour regards the implosion and internal divisions of Te Pāti Māori this term of Parliament, not to mention its extreme policies on the Treaty of Waitangi, as presenting it with the best chance of regaining the seats in years.
Those divisions add even more interest to the contest in Te Tai Tokerau, where Mariameno Kapa-Kingi, who won the seat for Te Pāti Māori in 2023, split with the party and is campaigning not only against her former party and its new candidate, iwi leader Aperahama Edwards, but against two other MPs, Labour’s Willow-Jean Prime and the Greens’ Hūhana Lyndon.
Right-wing opponents of Te Pāti Māori and some commentators have suggested that if the strategy works, and a left-wing Government is elected on the basis of an overhang, the public would turn on the Māori seats and eventually get rid of them.
Others on the right, including Act’s David Seymour, are less vexed by attempts to game the system.
New Zealand First candidate Michael Laws has argued that overhang tactics on the left should be countered by overhang tactics on the right.