Keeping Their Eyes On The Road: The Coalition Government's re-election depends crucially on the dominant themes of the 2020 election remaining firmly rooted in the practical concerns of the majority. If, however, the National Party Opposition can wrench the electorate’s attention away from the Coalition’s bread-and-butter priorities, then everything will be made significantly more difficult for Labour, NZ First and the Greens.
2020’s GENERAL ELECTION will differ from 2017’s in one vital
respect – it will not be about “the economy, stupid”. This poses serious
problems for the Coalition Government.
The unlikely pairing of Labour and NZ First would not have
happened had the dominant themes of the 2017 election not been inequality,
homelessness, child poverty and pollution. Fluid public concern surrounding
these issues had congealed into a broad political consensus that “something
must be done”. This, in turn, had led to a blurring of traditional electoral
boundaries. It was this blurring effect which encouraged a party of the populist
right to reach out to a party of the centre-left and, more surprising still,
accept the participation of radical greens in a new government.
The re-election of this unlikely electoral alliance depends
crucially on the dominant themes for 2020 remaining firmly rooted in the practical
concerns of the majority. Is the gap between the rich and the poor widening or
closing? Are people better housed than they were in 2017? Have
first-home-buyers been given the hand-up they were promised? Has the percentage
of kids living in poverty gone up or down? Are New Zealand’s rivers and lakes
more – or less – swimmable?
Positive answers to these questions – and the absence of too
many distracting alternatives – should turn the Coalition Government’s
re-election into a slam-dunk. If, however, the National Party Opposition can wrench
the electorate’s attention away from the Coalition’s bread-and-butter
priorities, then everything will be made significantly more difficult for
Labour, NZ First and the Greens.
Unfortunately for the governing parties, the 2020 election shows
every sign of being defined by the politics of distraction.
For this, the governing parties have no one to blame but
themselves. They were the ones who decided to put euthanasia, the legalisation
of cannabis, the decriminalisation and liberalisation of abortion, and the
reform of New Zealand’s justice system on the political agenda. All of these issues
are distinguished by one over-riding political characteristic: their capacity
to polarise the electorate. The very outcome which this curious, composite
government should be straining every political sinew to avoid.
The National Party and its allies have lost little time in
girding their loins for this fight – one much easier to win than a battle against
consolidating the material gains of the voting public. Already, the
conservative lobby-group, Family First, is pouring over the poll results
supplied to it by Curia Research, the agency directed by National’s long-time
pollster, David Farrar.
Family First have noted the white-heat generated by all
aspects of the transgender issue and, thanks to Curia Research, now know how
New Zealanders feel about some of the most sensitive questions associated with
transgender politics. More importantly, Family First has hard evidence that the
gulf between the attitudes of NZ First and Green Party voters is vast. The
potential to destabilise the government by driving the transgender issue to the
front of the electorate’s consciousness is, correspondingly, huge.
Curia’s data also makes clear how divided the centre-left’s
electoral base is on the transgender issue. If the Right is able to goad the
identity politicians of Labour and the Greens into displaying a series of
extreme responses to the transgender issue, then the potential for alienating a
significant number of socially conservative Labour supporters is considerable.
The likelihood of the activist left perceiving this danger
is, however, remote. Of more significance to them will be the fact that upwards
of a third of voters are happy to have transgender issues canvassed within New
Zealand schools. They will, rightly, celebrate the sheer numerical dimensions
of the tolerance and solidarity on display. Of less interest to these activists
will be Curia’s finding that a clear majority of citizens are opposed to
teaching children that their gender, far from being biologically fixed, can be
changed.
The exploitation of the political sensitivities associated
with the transgender issue will only be the first of many diversions as the
politics of distraction unfolds between now and the general election. At most
risk of electoral injury will be NZ First, whose deeply conservative electoral
base will experience ever-increasing levels of personal and political unease as
Labour and the Greens advance their ultra-liberal social agenda.
If, by 2020, National is able to convince NZ First
supporters that Labour’s and the Green’s priorities are no longer theirs, then
it will win.
This essay was
originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday,
18 January 2019.
