Nikki Kaye Returns To Save The Day.

A Very Welcome Return To Health: The dismay with which the news of Nikki Kaye’s cancer diagnosis was received by John Key and his senior colleagues is easily imagined. Had her affliction forced Ms Kaye to resign from parliament, the Auckland Central seat would have been up for grabs. Upon the outcome of the ensuing by-election would ride nothing less than the National-led Government’s ability to govern New Zealand in anything resembling a predictable and confident fashion. In other words, a defeat in Auckland Central would have precipitated an early general election.

 

A PARTICULARLY PLEASING sight for some very sore National Party eyes. That was the Auckland Central MP, Nikki Kaye, when she bounded into Parliament last week in remarkably fine fettle. Granted leave from Parliament to deal with a worrying diagnosis of breast cancer, Ms Kaye’s future has for many weeks been uncertain. It has also been the subject of some grim-faced discussions among National’s leading strategists – including the then prime minister, John Key. Her dramatic return to health – and politics – must be a huge relief, not only to family and friends, but also to her party.

 

National’s strategists’ concern over the fate of Auckland Central was entirely justifiable. All of them know how to count, and, of late, the parliamentary arithmetic has become decidedly tricky.

 

The loss of Northland to Winston Peters in March of last year left the Government in a pretty parliamentary pickle. With 60 seats of their own, plus the rock-solid support of the Epsom MP, Act Leader David Seymour, the Government had commanded a one seat majority in the 121 member House of Representatives. After losing Northland, however, National found itself in firm control of just 60 seats. Overnight, Mr Key’s less slavish support partners, the Ohariu MP, United Party Leader Peter Dunne, and the two Maori Party MPs, Te Ururoa Flavell and Marama Fox, found themselves with enhanced political leverage vis-à-vis the Government. The most embarrassing example of this new-found influence is the Maori Party’s emendation of National’s proposed reform of the Resource Management Act.

 

Clearly, the loss of another National Party-held seat would leave the Government in an even more precarious parliamentary position. Even with pledges of unwavering support from David Seymour and Peter Dunne, the construction of the Government’s election-year budget, and the success of its legislative programme, would be entirely dependent on the good will and support of the Maori Party.

 

The dismay with which the news of Ms Kaye’s cancer diagnosis was received by Mr Key and his senior colleagues is easily imagined. Had her affliction forced Ms Kaye to resign from parliament, the Auckland Central seat would have been up for grabs. Upon the outcome of the ensuing by-election would ride nothing less than the National-led Government’s ability to govern New Zealand in anything resembling a predictable and confident fashion. In other words, a defeat in Auckland Central would have precipitated an early general election.

 

Unfortunately for National, its chances of holding Auckland Central in a by-election are very slim. The Opposition parties, understanding that National’s failure to hold the seat would bring forward the election, would likely agree to give Labour’s Jacinda Ardern a clear run – just as they did for Michael Wood in the recent Mt Roskill by-election. Such a clearing-of-the-decks for Labour would add an additional 2,000 votes, at least, to Ms Ardern’s 2014 tally of 11,894 votes – more than enough to overwhelm Ms Kaye’s 2014 electorate majority of 600 votes.

 

Significantly, National’s Mt Roskill campaign turned out to be extremely disheartening. At the start of the operation the party’s strategists had dreamed of making good the loss of Northland by stealing Mt Roskill from Labour. Rumours circulated that National had come into possession of a new, devilishly sophisticated get-out-the-vote software package. If it could turn out National’s 2014 Party Vote, then the seat would be theirs. It was not to be. Not only did the technology fail, but so, too, did John Key’s campaigning magic. The portents for Auckland Central were anything but auspicious.

 

MMP’s rules also disadvantaged National. If a by-election is won by a candidate currently occupying a List seat, as happened with Winston Peters, then not only does the successful candidate secure the electorate seat, but the next person on the Party’s List also enters Parliament. NZ First emerged from the 2014 General Election with 11 MPs. After the Northland By-Election it had 12. If Jacinda Ardern, a List MP, won Auckland Central in a by-election, then Labour’s numbers in the House would be boosted from 32 to 33 by the arrival (probably) of Raymond Huo off its List.

 

The fate of Auckland Central has certainly presented the leaders of the seven parliamentary parties with a complex and volatile political calculation. For weeks now they have been scratching their heads and sharpening their pencils. Complicating the political maths still further is David Shearer’s imminent return to the United Nations. Voters living in the safe Labour seat of Mt Albert face a by-election as early as February.

 

Buoyed by the win in Mt Roskill, and heartened by the prospect of two more in Mt Albert and Auckland Central, Andrew Little’s “bring it on”  challenge to the new National leader made good strategic sense.

 

Which is why Nikki Kaye’s recovery must be the best news Bill English has received since John Key told him he was quitting.

 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 13 December 2016.

Winning Mt Roskill The Old-Fashioned Way.

Native Son: One of the reasons Wood was able to generate such spectacular support from Mt Roskill voters is because he is one of them. He and his young family have lived in the electorate for 13 years. During that time he has repeatedly proved himself acceptable to his neighbours by standing, successfully, in local government elections. In an electorate chock-filled with the adherents of many faiths, Wood is a self-acknowledged Christian.

 

IT WAS AN OLD-FASHIONED LABOUR VICTORY, won with old-fashioned Labour weapons, by an old-fashioned Labour candidate. Michael Wood deserves the heartiest congratulations for his stunning success in Mt Roskill. Capturing two-thirds of the votes cast is an impressive achievement no matter which way you slice it. Labour is, therefore, entitled to a few moments of self-congratulation at Wood’s success – but only a few. Because the party’s low membership, and its perilously stretched budget, will make it almost impossible to replicate Wood’s success across the country in 2017.
 

Wood threw everything bar the kitchen-sink into holding Mt Roskill for Labour. Beginning his campaign weeks before the by-election was officially announced, he made sure his name and face were everywhere Roskillians looked. They simply couldn’t escape him! Nor could they escape the vast army of volunteers Wood managed to enlist for the duration of his campaign. Canvassers and pamphlet-droppers from all over Auckland – and much farther afield – poured into the electorate in a very passable imitation of the Labour Party machine which had propelled the likes of Phil Goff into Parliament in the early-1980s.
 

And there’s the rub. Electioneering in the early-1980s took place under the rules of First-Past-The-Post (FPP). The very same rules that, in 2016, apply only to – you guessed it – by-elections. Under FPP, and in by-elections, the electors have only one vote to cast. So, there is no chance that, having identified the voters intending to vote for your party’s candidate, and driven them to the polling place, they decide to give their Electorate Vote to your candidate, and their Party Vote to an opposing party.
 

This is exactly what happened in Mt Roskill in 2014. Phil Goff won easily with 55 percent of the Electorate Vote, but National won the all-important Party Vote by more than 2,000 votes. The Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) electoral system which has operated in New Zealand since 1996, by allowing electors to “split” their two votes between two different parties, has rendered the highly effective “machine” politics of FPP frustratingly unreliable.
 

Except at by-elections. Knowing this, Wood was able to assemble and operate an old-fashioned “election-day system” to “get out the vote” in Mt Roskill.
 

An election-day system is a complex process for identifying how many of your party’s supporters have already voted; how many need a hurry-up; and how many require a lift to the nearest polling-place. How do the political parties know who their supporters are? By knocking on thousands of doors and asking. How do they know if they have, or haven’t, voted? By stationing scrutineers in every polling place.
 

It’s a fearsomely labour-intensive process, requiring upwards of 200-300 volunteers to operate effectively. But, when the canvassing work has been done; the database is up-to-date; and the scrutineers, communicators, checker-offers, telephone operators and drivers have all been trained and deployed; then a candidate can be confident that the overwhelming majority of his or her identified voters will end up casting their ballots. The veteran party leader, Jim Anderton, was so good at running his own election-day system that he could predict, with frightening accuracy, how many votes he would get.
 

This was how Wood “got out” Labour’s vote on 3 December. And, if Labour had a sufficiently large membership, it could look forward to doing the same across the whole country. The problem, of course, is that Labour does not have anything like enough members to get out its optimal vote in 2017.
 

Nor, frankly, does it have anything like enough candidates like Michael Wood. One of the reasons Wood was able to generate such spectacular support from Mt Roskill voters is because he is one of them. He and his young family have lived in the electorate for 13 years. During that time he has repeatedly proved himself acceptable to his neighbours by standing, successfully, in local government elections. In an electorate chock-filled with the adherents of many faiths, Wood is a self-acknowledged Christian.
 

Forty years ago, practically all Labour candidates fitted the above description. In 2016, however, Wood is something of a political throwback: an old-fashioned Labour man more suited to when Labour could boast 85,000 branch members and there was no such thing as the Party Vote.
 

If Andrew Little wishes to replicate Wood’s success, then he will have to make good all of Labour’s current deficiencies. He needs to increase the party’s membership tenfold and replenish its war-chest. He needs to identify, as Wood identified, the most serious problems confronting his supporters and to offer them practical and believable solutions. Finally, he needs to ensure that Labour fields candidates firmly rooted in their communities, whose life experiences and personal values complement those of their voter base.
 

An old-fashioned formula for securing the electoral support of New Zealanders? Perhaps. But as Michael Wood has proved – it works.
 

This essay was originally posted on the Stuff website on Tuesday, 6 December 2016.