The 51 Biggest Political Moments of the New Zealand 21st Century

How about one last article for the year? Gives you something to do while you wait for fashionably lates on New Year’s Eve. Political commentator Nate Silver* https://www.natesilver.net/p/the-51-biggest-american-politicalhttps://www.natesilver.net/p/the-51-biggest-american-political through the 51† biggest political moments in that time. Going by Silver’s criteria, events are ranked based off of:

• The impact of the event on the future direction of politics‡. This might privilege surprising events versus predictable ones.

• The objective consequences for the lives of Kiwi and global citizens.

• Drama and the sense of “living through history”.

• And as a tiebreaker, agency — meaning that the event reflected the consequences of deliberate decisions made by Kiwi political actors.

*Sometimes insightful, often annoying.

†No, I don’t know why he didn’t choose an even fifty, either. Was Musk buying Twitter really that essential to slip in there?

‡Silver has included every single American presidential election and midterm. But New Zealand has only seen power change hands three times this quarter-century. Given that it’s usually obvious here that the government is going to get reelected, I have left elections off of my list.

So here’s my list with the same criteria for New Zealand. Enjoy the read!

51. October 8, 2022. Nobby Clark defeats Mayor Tim Shadbolt of Invercargill.

Winston Peters was the only person to occupy a New Zealand leaadership position for the entire quarter-century. Only two other figures came close, with both going out within a month of each other in 2022: the Queen, and Shadbolt. His decline felt like a story that belonged more in the American gerontocracy than in New Zealand - doubly so because, at this very election, Shadbolt was replaced by a fellow white man in his 70s and Auckland elected another.

50. December 23, 2016. Permanent Representative of New Zealand to the United Nations Van Bohemen, presiding on the UN Security Council, calls a vote on Resolution 2334.

Condemnations of Israeli settlements in the West Bank are business as usual for the UN. However, for New Zealand’s centre-right government to stare down Israel was our most confrontational stance as a nation on the global stage since the 80s. The vote enabled outgoing American ambassador Samantha Power to abstain, a watershed moment in a long history of America vetoing anti-Israel resolutions.

49. October 14, 2023. Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke defeats Hauraki-Waikato MP Nanaia Mahuta to flip the seat for Te Pāti Māori. 

Each of the 21st century’s four landslides have delivered shock results in some supposedly safe electorates. But most unlikely victors faded into the background from the moment they won, ejected three years later. Maipi-Clarke, on the other hand, staked her claim as the youngest MP in our modern history. Only a handful of Labour MPs from this century served longer than Nanaia Mahuta*, and none made it as far as she did; but Maipi-Clarke made her retire for good. This passing of the baton epitomised the rise of the kōhanga reo generation to take their place in politics.

*From longest to shortest, Jonathan Hunt, Trevor Mallard, Michael Cullen and Helen Clark.

48. September 8, 2022. Queen Elizabeth II dies.

This was the only change in head of state not just in this era, but for practically every New Zealander alive today. The Queen’s death was one of the best examples of how events are often significant because nothing happens. For decades, politicians across the spectrum have insisted that the Queen had their respect. However, one day she would be succeeded by Charles, who never recovered his reputation amongst older generations with his mistreatment of Diana. And so the line went that that would be the moment to become a republic and cut ties with the republic.

The Queen passed. The King was crowned. And nobody made a move. Republicanism is stone cold dead, perhaps for another quarter century.

47. October 13, 2019. Andy Foster defeats Mayor Justin Lester of Wellington.

I don’t think anybody would ever have picked that Wellington would elect an NZFirster as Mayor. Andy Foster was never a raging right-winger, but he was also a twice-over-loser running against the Labour first-term mayor. Not only was Lester caught off guard, but quite a few eyebrows shot up at internationally renowned Sir Peter Jackson cutting the checks that clearly made this razor-sharp upset possible. Under Foster, Wellington City Council sank into the worst dysfunction and toxicity a Kiwi city can possibly manage short of a Tauranga-style  public execution.

46. July 22, 2001. The National Party conference elects Michelle Boag as President.

Boag would embark on a vigorous campaign to clear out deadwood, leaving little continuity between National in the 20th and 21st centuries. This enabled young gun Bill English to ascend as party leader. The result was a catastrophic embarrassment at the 2002 election. A much-depleted party caucus made Brash and then Key unusually influential in shaping the ranks for the years to come. (Boag’s political relevance would also redound on National 19 years later when her leaks of COVID-19 data to party MPs were exposed, hurting the cause.)

45. November 8, 2016. Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992) star Donald Trump defeats 13 Hours: Secret Soldiers of Benghazi (2016) director Hillary Clinton for the Presidency of the United States.

Trump’s win, coming on the heels of the Northland byelection and Brexit, was a clear signal that the postwar liberal internationalist consensus was coming unstuck. These years were ripe for anti-immigration politicking in New Zealand, and we have lived under a cloud of growing international uncertainty since, punctuated by Ardern’s skirmishes with Trump. 

Most notably, though, the TPP - signed in Auckland, and set to become a centerpiece of the Fifth National Government’s third-term legacy - was snookered by Trump’s ascent, just as Brexit jostled against that trading relationship. Though we have since struck a new deal with Britain and entered the America-omitting CPTPP, Trump’s election denied us the chance of Clinton getting in. 

She had pledged herself against the TPP, but she pledged herself against a lot of things over her career; given her hawkish and internationalist inclinations, I’m sure that she would have found some way to renegotiate the agreement and enter America into it anyway. Instead, we had to languish in a seventeen-year gulf after the China FTA until we finally struck a new trade deal with a global juggernaut - India in 2025.

44. January 18, 2001. Finance Minister Michael Cullen bails out Air New Zealand. 

It’s hard to imagine a world where domestic air travel collapsed and we became an Australian satellite in the air. Spending $885 million - $1.65 billion today - on a single company changed the consensus from the days of mass asset firesales. To this day, it’s a crown jewel in the government’s SOEs, a widely used service amongst the public to reunite families and friends and for domestic tourism of our amazing landscapes, and a major part of our international image.

43. January 20, 2012. Entrepreneur Kim Dotcom is arrested.

Unusually, a high-profile rich man had his name splashed across the papers the very day he was hauled into court. And Dotcom was all too happy to make this fight personal. Accusing the Prime Minister of personally being behind his arrest, Dotcom managed to extend his plight far beyond a simple legal issue of copyright and theft. 

He became a vehicle for all the suspicions of the hard left, that conviction that Key ran a deep state bending the law to persecute dissent. By founding Internet Mana, Dotcom made the 2014 campaign all about him and his promises of a Moment of Truth - to the government’s benefit. Internet never entered Parliament, MANA was knocked out for good, and even Labour hit historic lows. 

42. November 2, 2011. Prime Minister John Key debates Leader of the Opposition Phil Goff.

Labour never really had a chance to topple National in 2008 - with the GFC working against Clark’s government - or in 2014 - a circus of controversy, distraction and strangeness never topped by another New Zealand election. Their one opportunity was in 2011, with a reasonably unified Labour Party facing down a government against the backdrop of a struggling economy and turmoil across the South Island.

And Goff blew it. His obvious uncertainty over the capital gains tax won the audience’s laughter, and the humiliation of Key’s blared “Show me the money!” sealed the deal. This evening became the nightmare of Labour Party leaders for the rest of the quarter-century. Each knew that, if they attempted to defend a capital gains tax at the election, that National would aim to replicate the same success against them - and they had to get their numbers dead right or else not bother at all. Cunliffe botched it too; Little and Ardern didn’t even try; and now Hipkins says he’s up for the challenge…

41. September 11, 2001. Two aircraft hit the World Trade Centre in New York City.

The attacks shattered a sense of innocence and security that many Kiwis had previously enjoyed. Though no Islamic terror ever came for New Zealand, they set off years of both reasonable debate over terror, security, and surveillance, and Islamophobia. 9/11 drew us into our biggest live-fire commitments since Vietnam. The solidly left-wing Alliance split: Jim Anderton’s rump survived in government with Clark until 2008, and the remainder perished, though MPs like Laila Harré and Willie Jackson reemerged in due time.

The Clark government sent the SAS into Afghanistan, later rendered in Nicky Hager’s Hit and Run. John Key bellowed “Get some guts!” and fling support crew into Iraq. And, on the 10th of July, 2014, ISIS seized Mosul and earned international notoriety. It was at this point that the idea of New Zealand adopting the logical choice of a silver fern on a black background became a wee bit problematic. So the best contender in a flag referendum was quietly ruled out, and John Key, for once, lost a political battle - on what he most wanted to be his legacy, no less.

40. July 26, 2012. Louisa Wall’s member’s bill, the Marriage (Definition of Marriage) Amendment Bill, is drawn from the Parliamentary biscuit tin. 

The fact that such high-profile and historic policy decisions can come from the simple chance of what gets drawn from the biscuit tin is startling. Would Key have passed gay marriage on his own initiative in his third term? Or would it have taken lifelong homophile Jacinda Ardern to bring our country forward on this? Instead, a single outspoken Opposition MP was able to build cross-party support.

And nowhere was that more remarkable than in the centre-right Prime Minister supporting the bill. Compared to the furore over matters like Māori rights during Clark’s government and the second Ardern term, Key largely defused social issues, and our country’s innate live-and-let-live mentality shines through in the fact that the Conservative Party, the biggest almost-ran of this quarter-century, never broke into Parliament. For years afterwards, gay marriage meant something not just to its participants, but all the Kiwis who could proudly point to our early movement on the world stage - a 21st century feel-good nuclear-free moment.

39. August 13, 2014. Nicky Hager publishes Dirty Politics. 

An incredibly dramatic episode, and a new dawn for the role that the Internet could play in New Zealand politics. Hager’s book sold like hotcakes and spread the most single damning set of allegations that critics ever levelled at the Fifth National Government. It finished off Judith Collins’ ministerial position, already trembling after the Oravida scandal - but she was simply returned to Cabinet the next year. With the government’s landslide reelection, Dirty Politics never proved its staying power with the swing vote, and Hager has never again reclaimed such a central position in our political narrative.

38. April 17, 2019. Jacinda Ardern announces that she will never pass a capital gains tax. 

Uncertainty over Labour’s position in a capital gains tax enabled National to win the popular vote at the 2017 election. With National in pole position to take the next election too, and Winston hostile to a capital gains tax, Ardern concluded that her path to stay in power was not compatible with pushing ahead with the Tax Working Group’s chief recommendation. That choice is surely what made Labour’s razor-thin 2020 majority possible. 

But that same choice also meant that Labour, finding itself with an unexpected majority and twenty acres of room to manoeuvre, could not actually harpoon their white whale. Ardern’s promise came back to bite her, hard: a capital gains tax would have been a better defense than anything else they wound up doing on issues of debt, housing, and to disappointed leftists. With even Bill English and Simon Bridges feeling relaxed about a CGT these days, the current government would have faced a no-win situation in assessing whether to ramp up debt by axing the tax. Without the CGT, Ardern’s legacy looks scant. Her 6% rise on the highest rate of income tax has probably already been forgotten by most voters.

37. July 15, 2002. The TVNZ Leaders’ Debate is held. 

Peter Dunne walked in on life support and barked “common sense” at every chance he could. The “worm”, a live tracker of a focus group’s opinions, surged for him, and voters at home responded warmly. Dunne was remade into an enduring political force for years to come, entering coalitions with both Labour and then National.

36. February 1, 2018. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Minister of Internal Affairs Tracey Martin announce a Royal Commission of Inquiry into historical abuse in state care.

Politicians of all stripes are terrible at accepting the responsibility they get paid big bucks to owe to the public. For decades, well into the 21st century, brave and beloved leaders turned a blind eye to their own state employees abusing Kiwis and covering up what they had chosen to inflict. Finally, somebody did the right thing. And to what end? Restitution was a start and not enough, and seven years later, all sides seem content to forget that public services and institutions are structurally capable to this day of carrying out such nightmarish tortures.

35. May B. Fünke, 2001. Deputy Prime Minister Jim Anderton announces the foundation of KiwiBank. 

Yes, it’s just another bank, and if KiwiBank hadn’t been founded then its market share would simply have been occupied by competitors. But it is the single biggest policy contribution made this century by a left-wing minor governing partner. ANZ’s purchase of the National Bank in 2003 has baked into the popular perception that the New Zealand banking system exists to extract money to Australia, with the topic of what exactly to do about that often bobbing back to the surface of politics.

KiwiBank is the last redoubt of a bygone way of governance: economic nationalism. KiwiBank’s cash-from-New-Zealand, for-New-Zealand model presages the debates of the coming decades over immigration. And it feels like an appropriate model for this moment, where Labour are talking about a Future Fund that walks in the footsteps of the Clark government. This inward-looking chatter is increasingly common amongst our political class and the Western world as a whole.

34. September 6, 2012. John Key announces the government’s intent to sell off $10 billion worth of assets. 

A citizens-initiated referendum the following year delivered a low-turnout majority against. Key shrugged, campaigned on asset sales at the next election, won handily, and did it anyway. Despite the sales earning far less than anticipated, the government faced no political consequences, while reaping the rewards of the celebrated return to surplus. That was the third term’s great legacy for the history books. And the privatisation of the energy sector can be felt in our lives to this day.

33. July 9, 2002. Journalist John Campbell interviews Prime Minister Helen Clark. 

The 2002 election shouldn’t have been all about an issue as unimportant as genetically modified crops. But it was. Against the backdrop of an impending Labour landslide, the media’s search for a story with meat on it alighted on “Corngate”, the violation of New Zealand law by the arrival of genetically modified corn seeds. This interview propelled the issue to new heights: one of the country’s greatest journalists and the Prime Minister clashed vigorously. Clark demonstrated the kind of steeliness usually forbidden to women in politics, before storming out and thus only giving the entire episode more attention.

The salience of the issue would create a rift between Labour and their natural allies in the Greens, who were subsequently blacklisted from government for a generation, forced to transform themselves from the image of eccentric hippies into professional politicians. The last word went to Clark, who denounced Campbell as a “sanctimonious little creep”.

32. November 19, 2010. The Pike River Mine explodes and collapses, killing 29 miners.

A deeply unnecessary tragedy. On the most personal level, the loved ones who cared most deeply embarked on an enduring political saga for justice through different governments and start-stop mine exploration. Beyond that, this was the most stark reminder of the importance of health and safety regulations, and particularly the danger that workers in primary industries like forestry often labour under. And islandwide, the timing only added to the sense of an annus horribilis - that horrors like this hadn’t happened in New Zealand, and now they did.

31. October 6, 2021. Reserve Bank Governor Adrian Orr raises the Official Cash Rate.

For most of the quarter-century, the OCR was extraordinarily low. In layman’s terms, that meant that banks didn’t reward you much for saving your money but would happily loan to you on good conditions, so the economy was propelled forwards faster. But once the New Zealand economy began to open, with global supply chains in wreckage, it quickly became clear that growth was no longer the biggest problem - but that growth fuelling inflation.

The change in course - the first rise in seven years - began a voyage from pithy 0.25% OCR to a peak of 5.5% in 2024 - the highest rate since 2008. That has made government borrowing a lot more punishing, just as it’s made mortgagees squeal. In many ways, the 2010s were a missed opportunity, a time where New Zealand could borrow and invest for good value, and chose under both National and Labour to focus on paying off debt. Now our hands are a lot more tied.

30. March 17, 2020. Finance Minister Grant Robertson announces the COVID-19 Wage Subsidy.

The experts were always going to recommend closing up our island nation of so few ICUs, but the economic questions couldn’t be solved by any bureaucrat. Robertson had to make his choice, and he decisively changed course from the prudence and restraint he had shown for the prior three years. By paying out billions to businesses, some of which pocketed the money and fired employees anyway, Robertson painted a target on his back as a frivolous Labour minister blowing up our debt. But he also averted total economic collapse and ensured so many households were able to stay on their feet. With Hipkins shooting his tax switch down, nothing will ever loom larger in the legacy of Robertson - a man many already look back on as the Labour Prime Minister who never was.

29. April 7, 2009. The National-led government approves the Royal Commission’s recommendation to merge eight regional councils into the single unitary Auckland Council.

The Key-English government didn’t leave much of a lasting policy legacy in this country, for all its political successes. But the supercity plan was a bold step into the future, one which enabled much of Auckland’s sprawling growth to this day. As amalgamation is increasingly raised as a prospect for other New Zealand urban councils, Auckland is the model to which the nation looks - not as a perfectly successful council in every way - but simply proof that local government can be something more than the utter state it has crumbled into across much of the country.

28. March 28, 2015. NZFirst leader Winston Peters wins the Northland by-election.

What should have been just another case of a scandalous government MP booted out and replaced turned into a shock to the system for National and Labour alike. To National, it said that rushing ministers into Northland to promise investment in new infrastructure didn’t work. The voters were no longer content with promises - they felt left behind and not listened to, and they wanted payback. And to Labour, it said that nothing they were doing was working: voters looking to punish the government were hunting elsewhere. The party would have to start producing new answers for this age of discontent.

27. May 2, 2007. John Key announces that the National Party will support Minister of Revenue Peter Dunne’s amendment to Green Party co-leader Sue Bradford’s private member’s bill, the Crimes (Abolition of Force as a Justification for Child Discipline) Amendment Bill.

New Zealand is a Western world leader for domestic abuse. Getting this bill over the line was our biggest policy development this century to fight that evil, and perhaps the greatest achievement the Greens ever pulled off. But why did Key stand with the left bloc? He could have harvested political capital off of the fired-up conservative legion who would go on to turn out in droves on the citizens-initiated referendum concerning the anti-smacking bill.

Instead, Key strongly defined his young leadership by stepping to the left,  determined to shed the image of National as the conservative “nasty party”. He faced down his right flank, and won, holding their votes tightly to him while conquering the centre ground as well. This presaged so much about his particular model of centrism - less a sort of enlightened progressive Tory, more an anything-goes indifference to conservative sacred cows.

26. December “Dess” Holiday, 2014. Minister of Immigration Peter Dutton amends Section 501 of Australia's Migration Act.

Strangely enough, politics rarely echoes strongly across the Tasman, between us and our closest neighbour and ally. We couldn’t even end the career of noted deep cover double agent Barnaby Joyce. But the 501 issue is the single thorniest challenge in that relationship. Not only that - it’s been our single most thorniest challenge on the major issue of law and order. Of the Australians deported, some of them have returned to committing crimes and drawn on gang experience. Their ruthlessness has rewritten the playbook for how organised crime operates in New Zealand - and however the crime stats or trends like ram raids go up and down, it’s clear that for a long time now we have only been falling further and further behind in the War on Drugs.

25. July 26, 2005. Helen Clark announces that student loan interest will be scrapped. 

This was the most significant policy for students in this century. Given our frequent tendency to compare ourselves to America, the contrast is obviously fortunate that our students don’t labour under crushing debt. With the 2005 election fought on a knife’s edge, this policy is usually credited as the reason that Labour won a third term - and a fiercely right-wing Don Brash premiership, heading into the storms of both the Exclusive Brethren controversy and the GFC, would have radically derailed New Zealand from the history we know.

Instead, the backlash stoked the Muller coup to boiling point, at which point Bridges confronted them and lost. And the Muller takeover has stuck with me for a long time as the point at which everything fell apart for National. All the work that Key and English had put in over a dozen years fell apart in a couple as droves of forward-thinking talents fled the party’s ranks. The rump that remained has shown their paucity of ideas and communication in government over these past couple of years.

24. April 20, 2020. Simon Bridges posts on Facebook.

Bridges’ criticism of the COVID response wasn’t just a new dawn for the importance of social media in politics. It perfectly demonstrated the unparalleled support that the government enjoyed at that time. Plenty of his concerns panned out later, but then and there most people just saw the post as playing politics and precisely why he was so vehemently disliked. If Bridges had just kept his head down and saved it for the Select Committee, he might have been able to claim a mulligan on 2020 and get a fresh start in the second Ardern term. 

23. March 2, 2022. Parliament protestors opposed to the government’s COVID-19 response attack police and set fires.

Perhaps the protests could have ebbed away quietly and slowly, and receded from the popular imagination. Instead, the ugly eruption seared the whole length of the protest into the memory. The Springbok Tour was the last time we saw such chaos and conflict on the streets of New Zealand. The government copped a lot of the blame, not just from those who sympathised with the protestors but also those who simply saw them as weak bunglers. Trevor Mallard’s reputation as the most controversial Speaker of the House of all time was forever sealed. And the entire sorry episode highlighted the deep polarisation and hostility of post-COVID politics.

22. June 8, 2017. The End of Life Choice Bill is drawn from Parliament’s biscuit tin.

Once again, sheer fortune bent the course of history. Such an incredibly divisive policy issue around the world was handled well by all parties. And the referendum was a marked success compared to others this quarter-century that failed to effect change. That meant a lot to the people who got to benefit from euthanasia. 

And it meant a lot for our political order - seemingly relegated at this time to just four parties of any significance, National versus the Labour-Greens-NZFirst government. David Seymour’s stunts like Dancing with the Stars had raised his profile but done worse than nothing for his credibility; ACT was still a joke. This was the moment in which David Seymour really made his name as a serious politician and silenced the 1% polling mockery. And that put him in pole position to benefit from other controversies and National’s downfall.

21. January 19, 2023. Jacinda Ardern resigns.

The general idea that Ardern wanted out of politics was foreseeable, given the long and steady decline of her government. The actual day still came as a shock. Ardern probably would not have been able to change the outcome of the next election, but she would surely have performed far better in the head-to-head against Luxon. That would have set up Labour in a far better position in Opposition, with more talent and a clean slate for the new leader. Ardern’s choice also threw into sharp relief how nasty this era had grown. The threats and abuse against her surely contributed to her choice, unusual for a Kiwi Prime Minister, to embark on a new life abroad.

20. May 20, 2010. Bill English announces that the 2010 Budget will include a 2.5% rise in the Goods and Services Tax.

Key had promised not to raise tax. He broke that promise. He escaped backlash. But this was really Bill English’s moment - one that solidified his reputation in New Zealand politics as the definitive watchword for smart fiscal management. By implementing the biggest change to the tax code in the 21st century, he left his mark that you feel every time you go to the supermarket. And he somehow squared the circle of providing tax relief while shoring up the deficit that has so bedevilled every National Finance Spokesperson since.

19. November 11, 2011. John Key sits down for a cup of tea with ACT leader John Banks.

The Teapot Tapes were mined for drama in every possible way. The meeting was created with the intent of sending one message: Epsom’s National voters who wanted the coalition to continue should vote for yellow over blue. The success of the deal let Key off the hook from his coalition partners’ demands, because any time one of them refused him, he could simply turn to the other too. But the secret recording made by a journalist proved the first in a growing set of controversies in these years about access to information and what the government might be hiding.

And nobody made more hay out of that than Winston Peters. Peters had been able to exploit the febrile environment of the early 2000s to recover his place in Parliament. National voters despairing at their party in 2002 turned to him as a viable alternative, and he rode the resentments of 2005. But he had been knocked out again in 2008, after the Owen Glenn donations scandal, and the voters had gotten to see him alongside both National and Labour. In these times of growing apolitical tranquility, how could he work his way back into the political conversation? By alleging Key had slandered seniors, thus providing a sinister motive for suppressing the recording, Peters built on his Gold Card achievement to make himself the heroic defender of the elderly in NZ politics, and avoided an “early” death for his political career.

18. December 6, 2016. John Key resigns.

A colossal shock that nobody saw coming, this rates highly for drama. As a result, English enjoyed a full year as Prime Minister. With far more political capital and without a hurricane on his hands, English’s premiership left more of a mark than Hipkin’s term ever did. His commitment to upending paradigms on pensions, welfare and prisons make him, in my opinion, the most interesting counterfactual in New Zealand politics.

But Key’s resignation can only rank so highly, because English put up an incredible showing at the 2017 election. Despite widely being seen as Boring Bill compared to the well-liked Key, he lost just 2% of the vote - and he had to face Jacinda instead of Cunliffe! Much of National’s losses came through the unavailable defeat of most of its coalition partners. So Key probably wouldn’t have changed the outcome of the election - all resigning early did was save him the reputational embarrassment, and create grievances within the National camp about the failure to secure Winston in the negotiations.

17. August 30, 2001. The Government of Papua New Guinea and separatist leaders sign the Bougainville Peace Agreement.

We may deserve a pat mention for our place in the bigger stories of the Afghan invasion and Israeli settlements, but we have hardly any influence in global conflicts. The exception was Bougainville. New Zealand provided the peacekeeping force, as the primary actor supported by other countries, and we brought the negotiating partners together. 

The work of New Zealanders helped enormously to deliver a peace that has saved thousands of lives and enabled communities to resume something much closer to normalcy. Bougainville is presently on track to join the ranks of the international community as an independent state in 2027. In these years of growing isolationism around the world, I really hope we don’t forget the good we can do in the Pacific when we get stuck in to work with what local partners are asking for.

16. October 19, 2021. National agrees to support the Labour Government’s Medium-Density Residential Standards.

The housing crisis engulfed practically everything else in politics across the second half of the 2010s. The housing crisis served as the spearhead of poverty, stabbed English in the heart, and became the clarion call against Ardern’s first term as well. This was the turning point: the moment at which the established political order finally called enough enough and declared war on NIMBYism. National walked away from the MDRS in 2023 and attempted to compromise with local councils. But it’s too late - the genie is out of the bottle - and Chris Bishop has grasped the challenge with both hands, becoming a world leader on Abundance reforms.

15. November 19, 2024. Te Toitū Te Tiriti hīkoi arrives at Parliament.

The most Select Committee submissions in the country’s history came to something. The largest protest in the country’s history was bound to be historic, but its influence didn’t stop there: inside Parliament, Te Pāti Māori’s MPs created the first and only moment in which the eyes of the entire world have come to watch New Zealand for a day. Basically, the haka did numbers.

All of this contrasted sharply with Australia’s rejection of the Voice at a referendum the year prior. The Treaty Principles Bill - the most polarising law in years - was decisively sealed away as unrepresentative, whatever arguments its proponents wanted to make that its values would triumph if it ever came to an election. Amidst the sharpest turn to the right in two decades, this showed that mainstream Māoridom wasn’t going down without a fight - it’s here to go toe-to-toe with this government.

14. July 16, 2017. Metiria Turei delivers a speech to the Green Party Conference in Auckland.

Turei’s speech was exceptionally unusual and human for a politician, candidly admitting her circumstances of poverty and in particular that she had committed benefit fraud. Her strategy proved ill-developed, and she would later be forced out of the co-leadership, kicking off the era of James Shaw as the most influential Green Party leader of all time. But in the short term, as a tactical blow, it was devastating, with the Greens threatening to supplant Labour as the largest party on the left - and, in turn, triggering the course of events that would lead a few months later to Jacinda Ardern becoming Prime Minister.

13. January 27, 2004. Don Brash delivers a speech to the Rotary Club of Orewa.

Simple and brutal. Wrote the playbook for race-baiting in New Zealand. We will continue to compare every dog whistle for decades to come to Orewa. Brash was on track for a second landslide defeat. Never before has a politician seen such rewards for giving a single speech, leaping to almost become Prime Minister, and that influx of new MPs fleshed out the Fifth National Government. 

12. October 2, 2025. Eru Kapa-Kingi severs ties between Toitū Te Tiriti and Te Pāti Māori, accusing the co-leaders and president of the latter of toxic and bullying behaviour.

It’s too soon to say whether TPM’s collapse is reversible, or if it will have a major impact on the election. If the left bloc manage to win anyways, then the significance of this petty feuding will diminish considerably. But never before has a party riding at its absolute, all-time peak so suddenly and rapidly demolished itself. Enormously dramatic, with a series of intermeshing claims, rivalries, and relationships. A knife’s-edge loss riding on TPM’s shoulders won’t just produce the blunt fact that the government did not change - all the hostility for the government over these past years from the left bloc will turn on TPM with the fury of a thousand suns, and raise questions about whether the project can ever serve te kaupapa again.

11. September 6, 2006. The Labour Government passes the KiwiSaver Act 2006.

Helen Clark’s model of politics drew on the best of Blair: make promises you know that you can keep. Delivering on the 2005 pledge card, Clark and Cullen left a major impact on the personal finances of New Zealanders that affects the work contracts we sign and the financial planning we make today. 

KiwiSaver has become emblematic of how Labour changes and National preserves - its repeal has never been seriously considered to be on the table. Instead, governments simply modify it this way and that, engaged in something of a continuous negotiation between business, workers and Treasury as to how much of the burden of Kiwis’ futures each should have to bear.

10. April 7,  2008. The New Zealand government signs a free trade agreement with the People’s Republic of China.

This was the first time a rich Western government had struck such a deal with China. Such a celebrated diplomatic triumph served as the swan song for the Clark government. This was the last bit of economic good news for a while. The benefits to our economy, both for fuelling exports like agriculture and the affordability of a wide variety of imports, have been immense - our two-way trade with China reached a staggering $40 billion dollars this year - especially at a time when many other Western competitors have struggled to find a pathway to continued growth. 

But it also forever changed our strategic position in the Pacific. We had not been loyal American allies since the 80s, but that was clearly the worldview that we inclined towards. Creating such interdependence with China meant that we could no longer as freely criticise the alternative to the Western liberal democratic order. Parliament’s few China hawks like Louisa Wall and Simon O’Connor have been largely isolated and passed over for promotion. And, as the United States has deteriorated since Trump’s election as an increasingly unreliable ally, the importance of our relationship with China seems set to only deepen.

9. March 15, 2019. A white supremacist terrorist attack kills 51 Muslims at mosques across Christchurch.

While there have been other disasters in New Zealand’s 21st century, none were so clearly the choice of a human being to cripple, kill and traumatise, and for so hateful of a “reason”. New Zealand had mercifully been spared most of the mass shootings and terrorism overseas, and the introduction of such a pathogen sparked a vehement response. As with abuse in state care, the resolve to remain focused on this issue has abated amongst our political class, with minority faith communities remaining alarmingly exposed. 

Without being crass about the political response, it clearly was a moment where Jacinda’s empathy and leadership for the sake of the survivors resonated with many. After her first war, waged against mycoplasma bovis the year prior, March 15th really began to build her image of being remarkably capable of judging the right response in a crisis - what those most afraid and distressed needed to hear. 

Her new gun laws are a significant part of her legacy, and a huge part specifically of how she has crafted an adoring narrative as an idol for many liberal Americans. The bipartisan consensus demonstrated good health in our political system - except, of course, the critics would argue that the decision was rushed. David Seymour’s opposition was an important step on the path to ACT becoming a major player. The gun lobby has now been mobilised as a political force.

8. October 15, 2018. National Senior Whip Jami-Lee Ross holds a press conference on the tiles of Parliament.

There has never been a moment like it in New Zealand politics. Bridges was on track to make Jacinda a one-term Prime Minister, and then Jami-Lee Ross became a household name. This was not some spurned backbencher. (Obligatory Danyl Mclauchlan plug.) This was a critical member of Simon Bridges’ team, embarking on a kamikaze mission. Bridges’ long-winding search for the notorious leaker backfired catastrophically when Ross revealed the depths of his grudge against his boss, and his willingness to say anything to take him down.

In the end, Ross never quite proved to bear the smoking gun. It quickly became apparent that he was a deeply wicked man, rightfully shunned from the New Zealand political scene. But startling audio tapes produced of Simon Bridges refusing to challenge Ross’s statement that “Two Chinese [donors] would be more valuable than two Indians” and adding that one of his own MPs was “f***ing useless” dragged New Zealand politics to new lows and permanently poisoned Bridges’ leadership. 

Bridges held on, just, but it was the powerful opening blow of one of the most dysfunctional and toxic periods of Opposition ever experienced by a Kiwi political party. Jami-Lee Ross was a man who thought he was living in House of Cards, and for agonising weeks, he made the rest of us suffer that same nightmare existence.

7. September 4, 2010. A 7.1 magnitude earthquake ruptures along the Greendale fault line.

All of a sudden, New Zealand had to consider the fact that buildings needed to be made safe from earthquake damage, for more and worse could come any day now. Suddenly, the government had to make momentous decisions concerning demolitions, regulations, and the sheer spend demanded - already in a time of economic crisis - to get the city and the region back on its feet. 

And this initial rupture of energy is presumably what then piled up the tension along other faultlines around the country. That unleashed the wave of earthquakes across New Zealand in the 2010s, with all their myriad consequences. To name just two: one, Wellington is still working to recover from its own earthquake damage, never mind the dismal state that the weakened pipes are in. And, two, the entire town of Kaikōura was cut off and sent into a state of emergency in 2016. Even if future earthquakes do not catch our biggest cities unawares, any earthquake in the wrong place can threaten the populations, livelihoods and futures of villages and towns. 

6. October 20, 2017. Winston Peters announces that NZFirst have reached a coalition agreement with the Labour Party to form a government.

The height of politics as intentional theatre, Peters dragged the decision out for weeks to extract maximal concessions - and, one suspects, to make it sting all the more for his opponents in the National Party. The narrative of a “great betrayal” on the conservative side of politics would endure for years. That moulded National’s sense of entitlement to govern, NZFirst’s current aversion to working with Labour, and ACT’s sense of an opportunity on the right. 

Of course, though, these are all secondary to what the decision did then and there: a young female hero would now become Prime Minister, with Winston wielding incredible veto powers within her government. And the Greens would get their first chance since the 1999-2002 term to participate in a confidence and supply agreement with a government, and prove they were ready to govern. In this single day, by refusing to grant National a fourth term on the way towards the tumultuous waters of COVID, Peters shaped the entire political landscape for the remaining third of the quarter-century.

5. July 30, 2017. Andrew Little openly speculates that he may not be the right man to lead the Labour Party into Election Day.

The sort of thing you simply never do in politics. This was the moment it became clear that, for all this conscientious worker had done to reunite the squabbling Labour Party, not only could he not win the election - he was not going to be leader in a week’s time. By engaging in such public and unusual self-immolation, he guaranteed that the party would need a saviour. Even if it had been Phil Twyford or Grant Robertson who had to step in, this moment would still surely rank highly for the drama and the impact on the Labour Party, which might well have been left in a terminal condition. 

But he placed his bet on the ability of Jacinda to become a political phenomenon. And, incredibly, proved to have laid a winning bet. Labour surged all the way to briefly lead National in the polls, in the most fascinating and complex election this country has ever held. And Little got the result he wanted - which, as I just laid about, was influential for a number of reasons. That makes this the single most momentous decision made by a politician who was not forced to respond to events, and made a captain’s call purely on their own initiative. But some stories change more than the fortunes of a single political party, or one election’s outcome.

4. February 22, 2011. A 6.3 magnitude earthquake strikes the previously unknown Port Hills faultline.

The single most violent national trauma of New Zealand’s 21st century, killing 185 people. The earthquake at least lacked the personal malice of March 15th, and can be looked on as more of a common unifier than a horror specifically meant to divide one individual community from the rest of us. But the neglect of earthquake safety in some buildings like the CTV produced real anguish about avoidable tragedy. And these losses forged an unshakeable bond between countries like us and Japan who also grieve that day.

The quake was an immensely confidence-shattering event that saw Christchurch’s population fall below Wellington’s. And, critically, this was the point of introduction for the term “liquefaction” to public discourse. The resultant red zoning reshaped many decades of cultural geography, and the damage caused and space opened up would go on to make Christchurch a nation leader in government-led urban design and in tackling house prices. Coming in an election year, too, it contributed greatly to the desire to see a crisis government rewarded with reelection for steering through smoothly, and forms the core of the Key-English legacy. This was by far the most impactful event to one specific region of the country - but some events meant more to the entire nation.

3. August 31, 2010. South Canterbury Finance asks its trustee to place it into receivership.

The largest Kiwi-owned investment fund going under was significant in its own right for how many businesses and families it ruined. But I’m using this more as a symbol - a useful date to cap off the devastation wreaked over the years after 2007 by the Global Financial Crisis and Great Recession. We got off relatively lightly compared to other countries like the UK, who still live under its long shadow to this day. 

Nonetheless, the thunderblow still put the nail in the coffin for the Clark government, and upended what Key and English will forever be remembered for. Instead of the latitude of a good economy and low debt with room to move, the mission of their government became economic rescue; which, in turn, led to cries of nine years of neglect; and so New Zealand slipped into an era of growing dysfunction. But Key and English still kept winning on the economy, as they would have in a timeline without the Great Recession. Two events yet did more to remake the very organs of our politics.

2. June 19, 2003. The Court of Appeal unanimously decides Ngati Apa v Attorney-General in favour of the plaintiffs.

This decision permanently altered our political system. Before this, most Māori voters were lazily written off as belonging in the Labour tent, with a side role for NZFirst. Thus, the Māori seats were always Labour’s, and National ran campaigns a generation behind. But the backlash to this decision burned so bright, fuelling National and NZFirst alike, that Helen Clark chose to put white ahead of right. That engendered a massive hīkoi and a long-overdue eruption in Māoridom. And Tariana Turia split away to do something different. 

This quarter century has seen unprecedented competition in the Māori seats. This significantly altered the behaviour of the Key-English government, who chose to work with TPM. So, too, did the Ardern-Hipkins government have to plan for how to bring the seats back and keep them. But it also established a hard red line that no party that is not kaupapa Māori dares to cross: there has been no place for progressive schemes to deliver land back quickly and easily since, never mind any talk of reparations. We do wildly unfair Treaty settlements - and there’s not too many more of those to go - and case-by-case deals like Ihumātao and Te Here-ā-Nuku Trust compensation. In many ways, policy towards hundreds of thousands of Māori people and their communities still labours under the shadow of the foreshore and seabed decision today.

But one transformation of the boundaries of our politics was utterly total.

1. March 21, 2020. The first case of COVID-19 in New Zealand is detected.

If COVID had not come, nothing would be the same in our politics right now. The response necessary to prevent a pandemic ravaging the entire population has redefined the last fifth of the quarter-century, with no signs of stopping. Labour soared and crashed, National plummeted and recovered, ACT got in the game, polarisation spiked. We now enjoy our highest spending and debt in decades, and our most ideologically extreme government of the 21st century. (The most extreme so far!) 

And, after a couple years of the hangover, New Zealand finally tumbled off of the consistent right track majority that we’ve enjoyed for the rest of the quarter century. Inflation returned to the party, and even with its ebb, cost of living is still a crisis and growth is stalled, without real answers coming to the fore of our political debate. COVID did something nothing else on this list did: it changed the default assumption of our politics from “things will get better” to…it’s too soon to say. 

But the optimism of the past has been banished to wait its turn. In its place are dark days, and hard decisions to be made, and the spectre of a worse world abroad looming over our safe little islands. Lockdown and vaccines and Jacinda protected us. Most of us. More have died from COVID-19 in New Zealand than people did in 9/11. 

But as Winston (Churchill) found out, life goes on, and the next government must face the hangover and all the usual issues. The fifty events I listed above should be more than enough to demonstrate that, for a little country, we face big problems, and need big politicians with big ideas to make big changes if we’re to stand up tall again.

Will 2026 be a year for the history books? Or a start to the second quarter-century to forget?

...Happy New Year!