As In 2002, So In 2020: The NZ Election, 1/3

Election night coverage found a historical comparison: the 2002 election. National, then led by Bill English, cratered to just 22% of the vote, and a caucus of 27. Victorious, Labour passed the Foreshore and Seabed Act 2004, seizing countless hectares of Māori whenua and taonga. National recovered in the polls through anti-Māori rhetoric. Labour responded by retracting recognition of race-based issues in the health and education systems we still grapple with fifteen years on. Was this election like 2002?

Māori politics was absent from the “mainstream” of most media, parties, and public discussion. The vibrant Māori electorate debates went largely ignored.

Debates about unemployment, GDP and business confidence were waged in the realm of pure economic theory, where neither bias nor historical barriers exist. John Tamihere’s past victim blaming went unscrutinised.

I never encountered coverage exploring what role the Māori Party could play in Parliament or in government for the next three years. The Māori Party are critics of the Labour Party, and unlikely to cooperate with them, but this was never explained. Were many voters aware that the Māori Party had a serious chance to return?

This election was portrayed as a massive win for Labour. They converted centrists aplenty, including a talking head on TVNZ who praised Jacinda as acceptable to conservatives like him! Nowhere did coverage acknowledge one exception to their obvious triumph: the challenge in the Māori electorates.

Prime Minister Ardern can be expected to govern like Helen Clark, post-2002. Going into a tricksy election in 2023, she wants those centre voters. What check is there on her power, now that she has a majority? The National-ACT opposition is neither able nor willing to attack her on Labour’s home turf as advocates for Māori.

Supporters of the Greens are disproportionately white, affluent, and university-educated. I believe allyship and empathy is strong. So is the desire for cooperation and friendship with fellow traveller Labour. How many Greens voters do you hear protesting about Ardern’s win? Even progressive icons like Georgina Beyer sided with Labour, and against the minority, last time around.

Two facts mark the Prime Minister out against her predecessors. After leaving office, Helen Clark advocated for legalising marijuana, to close a front of the War on Drugs that has amounted to a war on brown people. Ardern did not. After the 2008 election, in the aftermath of years of racialised politics, the newly elected John Key could have chosen to govern without the support of the Māori Party. He incorporated them anyway, with concessions of portfolios and on policy. Jacinda Ardern did not.

Cabinet is the only redeeming factor. Labour have lost their Māori voice in the no. 2 spot. However, Kelvin Davis is now joined by Poto Williams and Kris Faafoi in an all-Māori-Pasifika team in charge of the criminal justice system, amidst a Cabinet resplendent with Māori experience, competence, and presence. I hope their ongoing mahi can compensate for how content the top two team of Jacinda and Grant are with continued centrism.