Integrity Briefing: Can the Opposition capitalise on the Government’s unpopularity?

In a recent Roy Morgan poll New Zealand’s main political parties – Labour and National – were at 28% and 28.5% respectively. It’s the first time both those parties have scored under 30% at the same time. It suggests an interesting trend in our political landscape: the decline of the traditional parties and reconfiguration of our Parliament into opposing blocs with no centrist minor party to mediate between them.

This Democracy Briefing considers the status of the Opposition bloc. The members of the governing coalition will be considered in a follow up column.

Te Pāti Māori

The average of the last five public polls have Te Pāti Māori on 6.5%, able to enter Parliament without an electorate seat – and if their current levels of support carry into the election campaign they’re likely to hold all of their current seats and possibly capture the final Māori electorate off Labour.

They have been the most obvious beneficiaries of Act’s Treaty Principles Bill, performing a haka in the debating chamber during the first reading of the bill – generating video footage that received global attention – and organising the hikoi te tiriti in response to David Seymour’s legislation. It was arguably the largest parliamentary protest in New Zealand history.

This year Te Pāti Māori has focused most of its efforts outside of Parliament. It is often criticised by the coalition parties for its lack of presence in parliamentary proceedings. Even when present, Te Pāti Māori MPs are usually there to disrupt those proceedings rather than participate in them.

Its leadership has expressed an ambition to form a separate Māori parliament, suggesting that this could function similarly to the devolved model in the UK, in which parliaments in Scotland and Wales hold regional authority. It’s not clear how this would work in New Zealand: hapu and iwi are distributed across the nation instead of concentrated in a geographic area.

In 2025 Te Pati Māori are likely to continue capitalising on the extraordinary opportunity offered to them by David Seymour. But they’ll also remain under scrutiny for their questionable campaign practices. As described in a recent Democracy Briefing:

Many of the allegations revolve around Manurewa Marae, which is closely linked to Te Pati Māori and its president John Tamihere. The CEO of the Marae during the 2023 election was Takutai Moana Natasha Kemp, who is now the Te Pati Māori MP for Tāmaki Makaurau. John Tamihere is chief executive of the Waipareira Trust, a charity delivering social services in Auckland. This trust is predominantly funded by the state via the Whanau Ora Commissioning Agency, where Tamihere is also the Chief Executive. This year’s Budget allocated it $182m for the next financial year. The trust has held events promoting Te Pati Māori, and it’s also under investigation after claims it used vaccination drives and census data to harvest private information. There are multiple investigations underway into these claims, conducted by Police, Statistics NZ, the Privacy Commission and the Public Service Commission. In addition, the Electoral Commission has referred Te Pati Māori to the police for its failure to lodge an annual financial statement.

The Statistics NZ report is expected this week. And later this month the Public Service Commission investigation is due to deliver. A decision on whether the police will prosecute is also expected soon. It would be extraordinary if they did so, having decided not to press charges against National Party MP David MacLeod earlier this year (for failing to declare $180,000 in donations).

Labour Party

The average of the last five public polls places Labour on 29.4%, a decent gain on their 2023 election result of 26.9%. During the year Labour leader Chris Hipkins received criticism for his low profile, but this appears to have been a successful tactic: two of the November polls have Hipkins ahead of Christopher Luxon in the preferred prime minister rankings.

Politicians often reference the famous Napoleon quote “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake”, and Hipkins indicated at the beginning of the year that “he would not bark at every car”. This has given the coalition government space to make unpopular decisions and foolish errors and allow the public to judge them for this without constantly being reminded of the failings of the previous government that they voted out of office.

There have been exceptions to this small-target-strategy. One of Labour’s strongest MPs, former health minister Ayesha Verrall, has been matched to the weakest minister in the coalition, New Zealand First MP Casey Costello, who is the associate minister for health regarding tobacco policy, and is widely perceived to be captured by the tobacco industry (Costello vigorously denies this.)

Verrall has also benefited from the dire financial condition of Whatu Ora/Health NZ, the mega-entity formed by Labour when they merged the District Health Boards with much of the former Ministry of Health. The agency has spent the year trying to claw back a forecast $1.7 billion deficit, and Verrall has suggested that the deteriorating state of its finances have been exaggerated to justify the cuts. In the Ipsos issues poll, health is now the second most important issue for voters, and Labour is more trusted to address the area than National.

Many political parties that lose an election by a wide margin enter into a period of contemplation, and often recrimination. In a debate about Labour’s poor performance in government and lacklustre election campaign Chris Hipkins would come under enormous scrutiny, with many in the party questioning the purpose of restoring someone with his mediocre track record back into power.

He has deftly avoided this reckoning, opening up his party to a conversation about a wealth tax or capital gains tax, and aligning with Labour’s Māori caucus to throw Labour’s support behind Te Pati Māori’s opposition to Act. His caucus rival David Parker is isolated and powerless, and Hipkins ends the year secure in his position.

The Green Party

Widely acknowledged as the losers of 2024, the Greens averaged 9.06% across the five most recent polls, down from 11.61% in the 2023 election. They suffered a sequence of disasters: the arrest, resignation and conviction of Golriz Ghahraman, the death of Efeso Collins, Marama Davidson’s cancer diagnosis and the prolonged attempt to force Darlene Tana out of the party and out of Parliament.

Although the party’s decline in the polls is moderate, the opportunity cost of the lost year is considerable. The rightwing coalition government has taken a strong anti-environmental position, with the controversial Fast Track Approvals Bill by-passing a number of environmental laws, and its most outspoken advocate Shane Jones who has made comments about eradicating native species via the legislation.

The Greens’ new co-leader Chloe Swarbrick should be more appealing to younger voters inclined towards environmental politics, in contrast with Chris Hipkins, who conducted a “policy bonfire” of his government’s environmental initiatives when he took over from Jacinda Ardern. In a series of polls earlier this year Swarbrick outperformed Winston Peters and David Seymour in the preferred prime minister question, but in recent polls she’s drifted back to their level.

A perennial complaint about the Green Party is that its MPs often seem interested in every progressive cause other than environmentalism. Two of its key issues since the election have been the Israel-Palestine conflict and opposing the Government’s Treaty policies.

More recently, the Greens have responded to their decline in support with a pivot back to core issues, recently announcing an alternative emissions reduction plan, which included a “Green jobs guarantee”, a ministry of works to deploy climate infrastructure and the inclusion of agriculture in the emissions trading scheme. Few of the party's MPs have distinguished themselves in opposition. With the exception of Swarbrick’s consigliere Ricardo Menéndez March, the caucus is invisible.

The Progressive bloc

One of the regular features of the (previous) centrist-era of MMP was the uncertainty around coalition dynamics. Would the Greens rule out going into government with National? (Yes). Would National or Labour rule out New Zealand First? (Sometimes).

Now that Parliament has polarised into rival coalitions, voter and media attention may turn much more to the proposed policies of the minor parties, and how much radicalism National and Labour will tolerate in order to form governments. Christopher Luxon has clearly made a strategic error conceding to David Seymour’s Treaty Principles Bill – but will Chris Hipkins be forced to make similar concessions towards constitutional change to buy support from Te Pāti Māori?

Hipkins may have even less room to manoeuvre than Luxon, given the pressure he’ll come under from his own caucus and activist base. The right will campaign on the potentially extreme nature of such a government, along with the threat of a capital gains tax – but if the economy and health system continue to deteriorate this may not be enough to secure a second term.

Chris Hipkins is a careerist, whose ideological commitments seem to be non-existent – but he may become prime minister again, presiding over one of the most radical governments in New Zealand history.

Dr Bryce Edwards

Political Analyst in Residence, Director of the Democracy Project, Victoria University of Wellington

Note to Media: This analysis can be freely re-published by any media outlets.