The Only Other Reliable Vehicle.

An Elite Leader Awaiting Rotation? Hipkins’ give-National-nothing-to-aim-at strategy will only succeed if the Coalition becomes as unpopular in three years as the British Tories became in fourteen.

THE SHAPE OF CHRIS HIPKINS’ THINKING on Labour’s optimum pathway to re-election is emerging steadily. At the core of his strategy is Hipkins’ view of the Labour Party as the only other reliable vehicle for achieving an “orderly rotation of elites” – a position which defines the lowest respectable expectation of the democratic process.

Hipkins seems content to shadow the existing government’s policy options – with the single obvious exception of Crown-Māori relations. Were this not the case, the outcry of the Labour Opposition in regard to social-welfare policy, health policy, and even education policy would be much louder than has been the case to date.

A party representing “the preferential option for the poor”, which, as a political movement strongly influenced by the social teachings of both the Catholic and Methodist churches Labour most certainly was, right up until the late-1970s, would have a great deal more to say about the Coalition’s pestilential preference for sanctions over succour. That Labour’s statements on social policy and the poor have about them a decidedly pro-forma quality is, however, of a piece with the party’s real-world conduct when in power.

That Labour’s tax policy would have to be refashioned radically in anticipation of any genuine assault on poverty in New Zealand explains why it is currently the flashpoint of the party’s internal policy debates. Who holds the upper-hand in these debates is best registered by David Parker’s current caucus ranking. At No. 17 he is currently 13 places below Labour’s present Finance spokesperson, Barbara Edmond.

A Labour leader still firmly attached to his party’s founding principles would not have hesitated to allocate the finance portfolio to Parker. He was, after all, the person who, as Revenue Minister, presented his party with a tax package foreshadowing both a Wealth Tax and a progressive, tax-exempt, income threshold of $10,000. A package which also, significantly, enjoyed the support of the then Labour Finance Minister, Grant Robertson.

That the person who issued a “captain’s call” scotching the Parker/Robertson initiative is the same person who elevated Edmonds over Parker, is hardly to be wondered at. Chris Hipkins has little patience for such blatant social-democratic offerings. That a majority of Labour Party members are enthusiastic supporters of Parker’s progressive and redistributive tax suggestions, while very likely true, is also irrelevant. Rank-and-file preferences will not be enough to prevent “Captain” Hipkins from side-tracking his party away from tax reform in 2026.

Why would he not, when so many of the nation’s political journalists respond with Pavlovian reflexes whenever the word “tax” is mentioned? Hipkins is well aware of the damage done to Labour’s chances in election after election by the self-imposed necessity of having to stand in front of the cameras and explain to “hard-working New Zealanders” why the government should take more of their “hard-earned” income by increasing, and/or imposing new, taxes.

No, by far the best course of action, at least from Hipkins’ vantage-point, is the “small-target” strategy adopted by Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party in the run-up to the 4 July 2024 General Election. Napoleon Bonaparte is said to have advised his generals never to interrupt the enemy when he’s making a mistake. Starmer, in the same vein, determined to forbid his party from promising anything likely to distract the British voters from their all-consuming hate-affair with the Conservative Party. Did he care that this would deliver Labour only a default victory? Not a bit. With a 174-seat majority, he didn’t give a hoot.

But, Hipkins’ give-National-nothing-to-aim-at strategy will only succeed if the National-Act-NZ First Coalition Government becomes as unpopular in just three years as the Tories became in fourteen.

This is not the long-shot expectation which, at first sight, it might appear to be. Electorally, things only really turned sour for the Conservatives after Boris Johnson’s balls-ups. Prior to the tousle-haired one’s spectacular self-immolation, the Tory party seemed set for another ten years in office. It was only in the five years between their landslide win of December 2019 and the July 2024 election – a period that included the rigors of the Covid Pandemic – that the Tories’ hopes turned to ashes. Hipkins’ wager is that the Coalition’s fall from grace will be even faster.

And, in this, he may well be right. Driven by its smaller coalition partners, National finds itself in a place it has studiously (and very successfully) steered clear of since the social impact of the 1981 Springbok Tour solidified into the New Zealand electorate’s long-term and strong aversion to overtly racist political parties. Building on the impressive legacy of Jim Bolger and Doug Graham, National has taken care to paint itself as, if not the bosom buddy of Māori, then not their sworn enemy, either. That enviable achievement has been put at serious risk by National’s coalition agreement with Act and NZ First. If National is unable to shift Māori perceptions – and soon – then Hipkins is betting that, come 2026, the government will crash and burn.

Making free with the matches and gasoline will be, variously, the judiciary, academia, the public service, and the mainstream news media. Hipkins and his potential coalition allies in the Greens and Te Pāti Māori know that the impression left upon Māori and their Pakeha allies by the Coalition’s “anti-Māori” policies is already so deep and so negative as to render its wholesale elimination impossible. Any further refusals to apply the policy brakes risk up-ending the whole ethnically-charged mess into the nation’s streets.

That will not be pretty.

Some idea of what the country might expect is conveyed in blogger and podcaster, Martyn Bradbury’s review of “Autaia – Haka Theatre” staged in the Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre of Auckland’s Aotea Centre last Wednesday. This is how he describes the behaviour of the mostly young, mostly Māori, capacity audience’s reaction to projected images of the Coalition’s leaders:

During one of the performances, Seymour, Winston and Luxon come up in the background and when they did, all hell broke loose. The gasp of shock from the combined audience that these hated figures would suddenly appear in huge form in front of them was startling, and then that gasp of oxygen ignited with a fury and outrage that exploded from the lungs of over 2000 as they roared in naked rage at the three of them. It was like that moment in 1984 when they all start yelling at Goldstein. It was glorious.

This is the anger that Hipkins and his Praetorian Guard – Carmel Sepuloni, Megan Woods, Barbara Edmonds – are counting on. This is why they are surreptitiously shadowing National in respect of most of its policies unrelated to Māori and te Tiriti.

It is the Labour leadership’s calculation that if a major outburst of Māori rage occurs, and the state’s difficulty in bringing the situation under control is painfully exposed, then all that will be required is for Labour and its allies (by now both suitably house-trained) to step forward with the clear message that, as custodians of the “public welfare, peace and tranquility” of Aotearoa-New Zealand, National and its coalition partners have failed. To secure an orderly rotation of political elites, and put an end to the dangerous racial tension, New Zealanders must fulfil the most basic of their democratic duties – electing a government equal to the task of keeping its citizens from each other’s throats.

This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz website on Monday, 26 August 2024.