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Election cycles drive up the feeling that it’s time for a change and new governments get honeymoons.  Both are at work in NZ now. The size and magnitude of Labour’s defeat has not sunk in.  The highest electorate swing against Labour was nearly 30% - MMP proportional representation cushioned this effect. In 1996, Labour got a lower vote than in 1990 when we got booted out, the lowest vote since the 1920’s, yet we were in government in 3 years.

Labour’s big job is to analyze what happened and why.  Why, when for a decade, the global economy enjoyed its best growth ever.  Unemployment was low, huge expenditures directed at health and education.  There was a feeling that, while the leadership had mastered the necessary economic themes, there was little substance to back up the ‘spin’.  NZ endured a series of publicity-savvy clichés like, the ‘knowledge wave’, then we were going to make billions out of climate change that later would cost billions?  Red tape-cutting initiatives were laughed at because they often made matters worse.  ’Closing the gap’, another worthy goal, was quickly forgotten. Last minute, opportunistic law and order suggestion to ban gangs were counter-productive. Good policies to get families cheaper prescriptions and doctor visits were lost because the ‘systemic problems’ in our hospitals went unaddressed.  National’s promise to uncap doctors’ fees, was not exposed.  For 70 years since Labour established a good socialist system of public funds for people to go to a local doctor, who owned their own businesses (the best of a mixed social economy).  The battle between the state and government has been simple.  Labour would say, “We want to give another $10 subsidy for kids, or the elderly, to go to the doctor.  Doctors’ please pass that money on.”   The doctors would say, “We won’t accept socialist control.”  The Labour Government successfully navigated this.  But Labour’s decline goes deeper, they became so unified, so good at politics and paying off sector groups in good economic times they missed out on the basic values of working New Zealanders.  Their attacks on National’s John Key as a ‘rich prick’ missed the mark.  Working people, the battlers, who want their own homes, the lawn-mowing democracy, a holiday in Sydney , want their kids to do better, don’t despise success.  They want part of it.

For generations, class envy went upwards.  Poor people looking at the rich and thinking they weren’t getting their fair go.  That was true, especially in the closed economy days when businesses were subsidised and protected.  Class envy now doesn’t just go upwards, it goes downwards.  Battlers, who do everything right, feel they pay too much for sector groups who get handouts, benefits, special  considerations they didn’t get.  I suspect the biggest swing from Labour to National was the normally reliable migrant and ethnic vote.  The largest meeting of the election cycle was a mass Asian protest against crime in South Auckland .  Immigrants who had nothing when they came to NZ, worked hard, started a business, sent their kids to universities to be our doctors, lawyers and accountants, ask, ‘Why do people who aren’t prepared to work, keep getting handouts and cultural exceptions?”  Labour, for generations, was the natural liberal home for migrants.  National was seen to be unsympathetic, even hostile.  Our greatest Labour leader, Peter Fraser, understood this.  He said how he hated slackers, and if he had his way, slackers should be put in a tank of water and be forced to hand-pump the water, and drown if they didn’t pull their weight.

Wherever there was a social problem, there’s a TV campaign and a well-meaning Commission whose values often jarred.  People groaned when the Children’s Com missioner said we had to balance the artistic needs of suburban kids and property rights of homeowners, driving the graffiti debate.  A battler who has taken a second job to build a fence should vote for that?  This was a ‘values’ election as much as a general election. 

Labour believes in merit, a fair go, regardless of race, gender, geography, income, or accident of birth.  That’s not how it’s seen now.

In Phil Goff and Annette King, we have leaders who understand this.  They have 13 new MP’s, they can win sooner than people think.  But they have to turn the page.  People didn’t vote for National because they wanted new faces on the same policies.  I hope National think that, however it will be the global economic situation and the response to this challenge that will decide the next election.

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