2011 election campaign has begun
15th November 2008


Comparisons in the media between the New Zealand and American elections have been unflattering to us. Our election, they say, was dull. It lacked personalities, momentum and any glimmer of history-in-the-making. If it’s true that the campaign never reached great heights this is simply because we hadn’t sunk to the depths of America under Bush. Our outgoing government was not an administration of ideologically driven numbskulls. And although we rewrote recent history by electing a male Prime Minister this is nothing compared to Obama’s epoch-making victory.

But if the campaign was dull the events of the past week have made up for it. Overnight our political landscape is transformed and like show-ponies on Cup Day all parties are scrambling to cover ground.

National, isolated for years by an MMP system that threw up few allies on the right, is suddenly everybody’s best mate. Quick-fire deals with ACT, United Future and the Maori Party have left Labour out in the chook shed with just the Greens and Progressives for company.

Why has John Key stitched up deals with so many partners? After all, he doesn’t need the votes of all these small parties and he knows there will be a cost to running a government that includes both Rodney Hide and Pita Sharples. National’s deal-making this week is really the first shot in the 2011 election campaign. They know that the next election is unlikely to be so kind to them and that they have three years to convince the electorate there is a natural grouping of interests in the centre right. This is why the deal with the Maori Party is particularly important. When the electoral mood swings back to the left ACT will dwindle but a centrist Maori Party will be an ally worth having.

And under Helen Clark’s tutelage National has learned a lesson or two about managing MMP. Labour’s decision in 2005 to run a minority government, criticised by National at the time and sneered at by right-wing columnists since, turns out to have been a good idea. It gives the minor partners in government at least the appearance of power while retaining the independence to keep their supporters on side.

This is important because, however risky MMP is for National and Labour, it can be lethal for small parties. ACT has a full hand of cards this week but it would have vanished completely in 2005 if National hadn’t thrown Rodney a lifeline in Epsom.

NZ First’s sudden death at the polls sends shivers through all the small parties. This was a party that once had 17 MPs, whose leader was Minister of Foreign Affairs, whose leader was Winston, for goodness sake. But without a safe electoral seat or 5% of the party vote it is nothing.

That one safe electoral seat can make or break an MMP government, which may be a weakness, depending on whose side you’re on. Only the Greens, through excellent branding, have managed to stay in parliament throughout MMP without an electorate seat. Others – Peter Dunne and Jim Anderton – cling to their seats like tiny life rafts.

NZ First’s best hope of getting back into Parliament is that sometime in the next three years a sitting MP has a falling out with his or her party and casts around for another vessel to sail back in on. Their 2011 election campaign should start now by ditching Winston, shoring up their networks and keeping an eye out for a potential sugar-daddy.

As for Labour, their behaviour this week has been most unbecoming for a party in defeat. The Clark and Cullen vanishing act has allowed them to move from wake to wedding with Hamletic swiftness. They seem almost buoyant in opposition and, with 43 MPs and an experienced leadership team, things could have been worse. As Treasury forecasts bleaken perhaps this wasn’t a bad election to lose. Suddenly 2011 doesn’t seem so far away.

The campaign has just begun.