Which party to vote for? New Zealand General Election 2023

I’ve been remiss in not offering my opinions on the political parties registered for this general election sooner, but I thought it was about time to do so.  I tend to spend a bit of time thinking about it, but basically it comes down to two sets of choices:

• Parties that will on balance take away more freedoms, tax and regulate you more, and overall increase the role of state in people’s lives, and demote the role of the individual over politically-defined collectives vs;

• Parties that will on balance increase freedoms, reduce tax and regulation, and overall reduce the role of the state in people’s lives, and increase the role of the individual over politically-defined collectives.

And:

• Parties certainly or likely to be elected to Parliament vs;

• Parties that certainly or almost certainly will not be elected to Parliament.

So below I have written an alphabetical review of each of the parties seeking to be elected under the party list, with a ranking of their likelihood to be elected to Parliament. My basis for review is whether the policies are libertarian, rational and whether the people behind it are to be trusted or ooze more turpitude than usual for politicians.

For those who can't be bothered reading so far, gere's my overall conclusion. 

Of the parties that are likely to get elected, ACT is the best of a fairly woeful bunch, and it’s primarily because of education policy and what looks like a bias towards less government. It’s far from consistent, and so much rhetoric is populist pablum, but it’s worth giving ACT its first chance to be the main supporting partner of National (which it didn’t achieve under John Key, as he could use TPM and United Future to get a majority). So, I’m reluctantly giving it a tick. Sure you could give National a tick instead, but it’s not a party that will move much towards less government and more individual choice and responsibility. It’s better than Labour, but that’s a low bar to cross. You could gamble with NZ First, but the idea Winston would pull National towards less government spending, less regulation and do anything substantial about pushing back against Maori nationalism is almost laughable.

If you don’t really care about a change in government you could vote for one of a few micro parties. Of them, the Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party is the most consistently libertarian because it has one policy, although it can’t organise itself to get close to being elected or indeed anything else. Of the rest, the New Conservatives might appeal to socially conservative classical liberals, but not libertarians. The other micro-parties are either blends of socialism with claims about freedom (primarily linked to the Covid vaccine, but also climate change and freedom of speech), or led by lunatics (Liz Gunn) or grifting shysters (Tamaki/Grey).

I will be hoping for a National/ACT government without NZ First, because it gives ACT its best chance to prove it can move the dial and make some substantial steps to implement reforms that are needed. 

In short:

ACT: Hold your nose and give a little less government a chance.

Animal Justice Party: Vegan fundamentalist nutters

Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party: Free the weed, but nothing else.

Democracy NZ: Conservative breakaway with an odd blend of anti-vax and anti-GMO, but it will fade away.

Freedoms NZ: Grifters Tamaki and Grey on their latest con.

Green: Blend of eco-authoritarians and commie post-modernists keen to sacrifice us all for the greater good, and if you don't like it why are you so full of hate and want the planet to burn and children to die?

Labour:  Union-tempered version of the above with a focus on much more gradualism.

Leighton Baker Party:  Pointless breakaway from the New Conservatives that is worse organised and is for social conservatives.

National: The anti-Labour party that primarily exists to obtain and hang onto power when Labour frightens or angers the public too much to stay in power, but only rarely and erratically reverses anything Labour does.

New Conservative: Social conservatism with some economic liberalism, yet with little to say about cutting state spending. A shadow of its former self having been decimated by the rise of multiple conservative micro-parties led by egos.

New Nation Party: Inconsistent unhinged blend of conspiracy, localism, lower taxes but more government spending. 

NewZeal:  Alfred Ngaro's conservatives for lower taxes but no plans for less spending. Why bother?

New Zealand First: Like dejavu Winston rises from obscurity to find new causes to advance, this time it's back to opposing racial separatism, transgender activism and to be tough on crime.  

New Zealand Loyal: Liz Gunn's mix of quackery and communism.

Te Pati Maori: Maori nationalist socialists

TOP: The party of clever leftwing policy wonks who aren't clever enough to work out how to get elected

Womens' Rights Party:  Feminist socialists against transgender post-modernism

The parties

ACT: Certain to get elected. Not at all a libertarian party, but the prime contender to pull a National-led government towards more freedom and less government. In its favour is a revolutionary approach to education, including decentralising roles and responsibilities, including what are in essence vouchers and charter schools for all. There is a tougher approach to welfare promoting individual responsibility, and what looks like a belief in significantly liberalising planning laws and a more rational approach to climate change policy. David Seymour’s rhetoric on reducing government waste ought to instinctively mean a reduction in spending, and a plan to lower and simplify income tax rates, although it is mild indeed compared with previous years. ACT is willing to take on the thorny issues of identity and governance around Te Tiriti, which has been ignored for too long. 

However, it is far from being all positive, the policies that are published are weak on some elements of economic liberalising. Water policy can’t suggest corporatisation, privatisation and user pays, but in fact is some bizarre blend of Muldoonism and its over-enthusiastic belief in PPPs (across far too many sectors). Sharing GST revenue with local government is also remarkably wasteful unless local government’s roles and responsibilities are pared back, otherwise the likes of Wellington City Council will just keep building or subsidising more entertainment and convention complexes. Those who rejected Covid vaccines, and the mandates and restrictions placed on people during the pandemic have fair reason to be disappointed in David Seymour’s comments during that period. Finally, it’s approach to personal freedom issues appears largely limited to legalising pseudoephedrine. It would be nice if it campaigned to reverse the absurd tobacco ban.  

There is a reason to support ACT, because no other party likely to be elected to Parliament will have MPs who, mostly, have instincts to put the state sector on a diet and to oppose Nanny State moves that National may just continue with.  However, it is entirely understandable why some might just find it too hard to swallow David Seymour’s pivoting on issues like housing intensification or vaccine mandates. For me, the number one reason to vote ACT is its education policy.  Education more than just about any other policy, is in crisis due to capture by bureaucracy and professional unions who want to take a monopolistic approach to how children should be educated. No other party can do something about this. I might be hopeful about reform of planning laws that could enable more housing, but I’m not optimistic about ACT on this. The cycle of politics in NZ is that ACT will likely peak at this election, especially if National is seen to do well by 2026, in which case this is the peak chance for ACT to effect real change. So on balance, a vote for ACT is defensible as a vote to give National a backbone on some issues.  8/10

Animal Justice Party: Certain to not get elected. Misanthropic lunatics with no chance of getting into Parliament. The party of mandatory veganism and those who want to equate domestic abuse between humans as the same applying to animals (including the emotional abuse of denying your dog its favourite toy – by the way you wouldn’t have property rights over any animal either). With policies to end animals in agriculture, it is fundamentally authoritarian post-modernist nonsense blending a benign hippie-level kindness with economic catastrophe and anti-scientific hatred of humans. The only good thing about the Animal Justice Party is it no doubt take votes away from the Greens, so go on and promote it among your more dull-witted Green supporters. 1/10

Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party: Certain to not get elected. The ALCP is just about legalising cannabis, so you could argue having one libertarian policy (and not wanting to increase the state’s role in anything else) means it is the purest libertarian party. You can’t be said to have “sold out” for voting for the ALCP, and for some legalising cannabis means more than anything.  A vote for the ALCP is making a statement about an issue most parties have chosen to ignore since the ill drafted referendum. However, it is just that one issue, and ALCP have little chance of getting in Parliament. Voting for ALCP indicates you rather don’t care about education, taxes, housing, environmental, economic or other policies.  These things matter so 6/10

DemocracyNZ: Certain to not get elected. Matt King’s breakaway party is a breakaway rural oriented conservative party. It prefers climate change adaptation to mitigation and looks to do little about reducing agricultural emissions beyond supporting scientific approaches towards doing so. It does seem to have a preference towards less regulation generally. It is in favour of more education choice and devolving some power. Otherwise, it is primarily about vaccine mandates, and parallels ACT and NZF on race issues. However, it does have an unscientific attitude to GMOs. The latter is irrational and odd. Still, it is likely to be relatively benign, except of course there is no plausible path to Parliament or even influencing it. It gets a 4/10.

Freedoms NZ: Certain to not get elected. Grifting megalomaniac Brian Tamaki and fellow grifter Sue Grey uses the word freedom, but freedoms are selective indeed.  Radical on lower taxes (but next to nothing on how to cut government spending), the big pushes are on compensating the vaccine injured. It claims to want to reject Nanny State but has very general statements about “better health and education. There is the touch of the conspiratorial here too, and it wholly rejects climate change and wants to significantly deregulate almost all regulation affecting the rural sector. Prosperity theology is grand-scale grift against the vulnerable and needy, and from a values point of view, someone who promotes this doctrine is not someone who believes in smaller government. Sue Grey in a different manner is a grifter of pseudoscientific nonsense, such as fear over 5G, and although I have respect for those who choose not to take the Covid vaccine, to talk of it being distributed as “genocide” says a lot about who is she and what she is about. This isn’t a party of freedom, it is a party led by confidence-tricksters who target the vulnerable.  It gets a 1/10.

Green: Certain to get elected. New Zealand’s party of socialism is the anti-thesis of more freedom, capitalism, belief in the human individual and less government. The Greens want more government, more tax (now targeting not just when you earn or spend money, but also just owning property), more regulation, more government departments, and with the exception of a less punitive approach to drugs (except alcohol), there is almost nothing for anyone who believe in freedom with the Greens.  The Greens are also in the frontline of promoting post-modernist concepts of identity defining people as privileged or victims based on immutable characteristics, and of course have little interest in private property rights. Note the Greens want Treaty settlements to include private land, wanting the state to decide that your home has to be bought by the state when you decide to sell.  This is also the party that is uninterested in helping Ukraine fight Russia, but happily puts front and centre candidates that chant slogans about wiping Israel off the map. The Greens after all carry the foreign affairs stance of self-styled “anti-imperialists” who don’t care about wars waged by anyone anti-Western including terrorists. Moreover, the Greens are at the forefront of wanting legislation on “hate speech” and are keen to define that based on who is speaking not just what they say.  A vote for the Greens is a vote to pass more power over your life, property and the community to the state.  It gets a 1/10

Labour: Certain to get elected. Green lite, full of people who wish they could go more socialist, go more identitarian, go more government, more taxes, more regulation, more bureaucracy, but know it wont win them power to do too much.  I mean why would you bother? It gets a 2/10. 

Leighton Baker Party: Certain to not get elected. If you’re going to have a personality led party, it needs to be a personality that enough people like and know. In Australia, Pauline Hanson and Bob Katter have done it, with constituencies big enough to justify it. For a start, it has three party list candidates. If it crossed the 5% threshold, it wouldn’t have enough candidates.  It’s a fairly standard conservative platform, with a few good points, like wanting charter schools, one law for all, enshrining freedom of speech and to ignore climate change mitigation. Yet it also wants direct democracy for decisions like tunnels? Baker is a conservative in the bedroom, and if you can’t rustle up six candidates on the tiny chance you get 5%, then why bother? It gets 3/10.

National: Certain to get elected. The party of free enterprise and individual freedom is generally very poor at advancing policies that reverse the statist policies of a Labour Government, let alone shrinking the role of the state even incrementally, when in power. At this election National’s big pushes are around minor tax cuts, some spending cuts, but a lot of new spending. It’s difficult to see its education policy breaking the bureaucratic/professional union monopoly on delivery and avoiding performance measurement, and likewise for its policy on planning to gut the post-RMA regulation of land use that hinders housing, supermarkets and other development. There does appear to be willingness to turn back race-based bureaucratic and funding measures, towards need, and to place more personal responsibility alongside welfare, as well as repealing the productivity-sapping “Fair Pay” measures. It would be generous to think National would turn the clock back to the spending and regulatory environment of 2017, let alone 1999. Yes voting National stops Labour getting in power, but it primarily stops the march to the left rather than reverses it much at all. You could do worse, but a libertarian would want a lot better.  6/10.

New Conservative: Certain to not get elected. The New Conservatives have clearly been gutted by the plethora of micro-conservative parties. There’s not really a lot here in economic freedom, some useful principles around property rights, but a bigger focus on family.  Although I’m more conservative on abortion than many, granting personhood to fertilised cells is not compatible with individual freedom.  There is a space for this party to represent socially conservative economic liberals, but there isn’t a lot that shows them to be economic liberals, especially a big pledge of lower taxes with nothing substantial on cutting spending. 5/10.

New Nation Party: Certain to not get elected. Starting with anti-privatisation rhetoric, there is an interesting range of positions. It wants a written constitution to protect freedoms, which is fine. Leaving the UN is conspiratorial nonsense (you don’t need to leave the UN to ignore what you don’t like).  It wants a $25,000 income tax free threshold, and no tax on benefits, superannuation or student allowances, but again no policies to cut spending except a generic “reduce powers of central government”. Sure, reinstating oil and gas exploration is fine, but more “provincial” powers is not compatible with more freedom. Then it wants to investigate decriminalising cannabis. It’s quite a mix of opposing He Puapua, more health spending, more funding for tertiary students and effectively defunding RNZ and the media generally.  I’m generous giving it 3/10

NewZeal: Certain to not get elected. Alfred Ngaro’s personal project. Another conservative party, but with a few weird policies like enabling housing deposits of only 2.5% for first home buyers. There is little interest in lower taxes and shrinking government, so the real question is why would you bother? 3/10

New Zealand First: On balance likely to get elected. Yes we do all know Winston, the indefatigable face of next generation Muldoonism. Winston put National in power once, Labour twice. He pivots between economic nationalism, anti-immigration and toughness on crime, and this time is opposing Maori nationalism and separatism in the way only Winston can. He is also waging war on “wokeness” which he discovered a few months ago, just under six years after he chose to govern with the blatantly woke Jacinda Ardern and the woke-ultras of the Green Party. The problem is this, I can believe Winston didn’t know He Puapua was being developed when he was a Cabinet Minister because he is fundamentally lazy.  He spends two years out of Parliament barely saying boo, and when he IS a Minister he’s happy travelling and having his name linked to a handful of policies. If you think Winston is going to change policies, then I have a bridge to sell you.  Winston is a populist opportunist who has three times in 27 years been given senior Cabinet positions (and his floxham and jetsam of followers) and there is no evidence it has made any substantial difference to economic or personal freedom.  Yes he might get in, but he is likely to slow down reforms than accelerate them, so 3/10.

New Zealand Loyal: Certain to not get elected. Liz Gunn’s unhinged party that is also incapable of getting enough candidates to be represented adequately if it reached 5%. It’s easily the most conspiratorial party of all, not only is it anti globalism, but it is hysterically environmentalist. It is keen on quack remedies and a financial transactions tax. Anyone talking about Covid response as a “mini-Holocaust” is not just hysterical but vile. It wants to nationalise all communications and energy, so this is no party of individual freedom, but a party of a deranged mix of authoritarian mysticism and hysteria. It’s frankly very sad.  0/10

Te Pati Maori: Almost certain to get elected. TPM has morphed in the past few years into Hone Harawira’s Mana Party, led in the background by a grifter only surpassed by Winston Peters, John Tamihere. The “genetically superior” Rawiri Waititi and the “Tangata Whenua, Tangata Tiriti or the racists” classifying Debbie Ngarewa-Packer have made the party into a radical Marxist nationalist party. On the bright side, there are elements of its belief in self-determination that would be compatible with a small state, it is also the only party that would decriminalise drug use and possession, but on the other side is a strong belief that NZers need to judged based on their classification. You’re either people of the land (Maori), people that are allowed to remain because of Te Tiriti (forget if you are born here and have no other citizenship), and everyone else who is “dying off” and doesn’t matter. TPM wants more tax, wants private land subject to Te Tiriti claims and Mana Whenua would have first right to buy private land up for sale. This is also the party that thinks all countries should be friends with Aotearoa, including the one attacking Ukraine and including the ones that operate literal Orwellian police states (e.g., DPRK and Eritrea). Neither Marxism nor nationalist identitarianism is good for individual freedom, nor can you expect tired old “anti-imperialist” apathy towards leftwing imperialism. TPM offers little for freedom lovers, but a lot for people who think Zimbabwe offers lessons to follow. 1/10

TOP – The Opportunities Party: Almost certain to not get elected.  TOP’s priorities are a greater welfare state (putting everyone on welfare), a broader tax base, more taxpayer funded healthcare and public transport, and the reinstatement of the Southerner train from Christchurch to Invercargill.  A party of clever people who think they know what’s best. The highlight is wanting to treat cannabis like alcohol, but you could vote for the ALCP and not have the universal basic income policy for people who don’t want to work. It has no interest in liberalising education and of course like the other leftwing parties, wants schoolchildren to be able to vote. It’s main value to freedom lovers is in denying Labour 1 or 2 seats, so go on get your leftie friends to vote TOP.  3/10

Women’s Rights Party: Certain to not get elected. Feminism that is now driven by being gender-critical around trans-genderism. There’s a place for that debate, and the Greens and Labour don't seem to want it, but everything else is just another socialist party for more welfare and more regulation. 2/10. 

Footnote:  I'll be interested to see how leaders of all of the parties respond to the war against Israel from the Islamofascist Hamas. Labour has already disgraced itself and National has shown backbone.

Does Winston really care about the constitution or is it baubles as usual?

So Winston Peters is doing what he usually does, after spending two years in the political wilderness he times a revival to tap the issue of the season, that the other parties aren't doing well at tapping, so he can ride his way back to Parliament with a bevy of people nobody has ever heard of before.

This time it is to tackle co-governance with Iwi, and the embracing of the Treaty of Waitangi in ALL aspects of central and local government.  Now I have some sympathy for that position, as important as it is to consult with Iwi and for Maori to be adequately represented in Government, New Zealand clearly achieves that, with Maori represented in both Parliament and local government on the basis of one-person, one-vote and a general consensus among the two major parties about the importance of including Iwi in consultation on issues affecting them. Winston is trying to do much more than address overreach of that.

He wants to tackle non-Maori fear of Maori cultural and linguistic growth, and dominance, whether it is seen in Maori phrases inserted into the ever declining audiences for television news (which frankly is a market decision, you can just switch it off), or the inclusion of references to Te Tiriti in more and more laws and government programmes.

Winston can tackle this because he is much more obviously accepted as being Maori (David Seymour is not so seen). He also knows he can guarantee that TVNZ, Newshub, RNZ and Stuff at least will seek to paint  HIM as being divisive, even racist and he can run rings around the fact he's spent his political career saying the media is unfair to him.

Winston has a couple of problems though:

1.  There is little evidence Winston did ANYTHING when in power, the three times he was a Minister, to slow down Maori nationalism. There was little of it to respond to when he supported National from 1996-1998, but from 2005-2008 and 2017-2020 under Labour, what evidence was there that Winston Peters ever did anything to push this back?

2.  He put Jacinda Ardern into power, notwithstanding that National clearly had the plurality of support as the major party in the 2017 election. It is disingenuous for him to be able to credibly claim that he knew NOTHING of the Maori nationalist aspirations of the Labour Maori caucus (or indeed the Greens, who were part of that coalition and are even more adamant of claims of Maori nationalist/statist based self-determination). However it is entirely possible Winston just took his portfolio, advocated for his pork-barrel Provincial Growth Fund, and the let the two parties on the left get on with it all. 

It might be welcoming to some to have Winston talk in a way that so much of the media would deem politically incorrect, but as he was with immigration, most of what he says reflects little about what he does. 

His other problem is that ACT not only polls but has multiple MPs to occupy this space. It might be notable that Winston talks mostly about the artifacts of the Maori cultural renaissance and the media expressions of it, rather than the more disturbing undermining of liberal democracy, such as granting Ngai Tahu a seat on Environment Canterbury, to sit alongside elected members with the same powers, or the efforts of Rotorua District Council to gerrymander Maori local authority seats that would represent a fraction of the number of non-Maori voters.  

There is a profound awkwardness of politicians, especially non-Maori ones, talking about these issues, because of a lack of philosophical conviction around what constitutional arrangements should exist for a free liberal democracy, and a lack of willingness to engage with views that claim that the underlying cause of poor socio-economic outcomes for Maori is not simply a legacy of colonialism and subsequent non-Maori settlement. The willingness of some Maori nationalists (especially now in Te Pati Maori) to go down the path of "it's us vs. them" should frighten most people, and if Winston Peters is more effective in having that debate that David Seymour (which I think he is), then so be it.

But don't expect a vote for NZ First to deliver anything transformational.  From 1996-1998 NZ First was a brake on a National Government continuing with free market liberal reforms, but not a stop. Similarly, from 2005-2008 and from 2017-2020 it was a brake on Labour Governments continuing with growth of the welfare state, but put a foot on the accelerator of economic nationalist interventions.  It was not a brake on Maori nationalism, because the policies now being advanced by the Government had their genesis in 2017-2020 (or earlier in the case of He Puapua).

There are reasons to be sceptical about ACT achieving much in this space, or National, but these pale in comparison to the reasons to be sceptical about Winston Peters. 

Don't fear Winston

I am wholly relaxed about a government of which Winston Peters is a part, not just for the reasons outlined by Peter Cresswell, but because his bite is actually rather small when compared to many of those who despise him.

For a long time, Winston Peters was the second coming of Robert Muldoon, except of course when it came down to it, Winston wasn't that interested in turning back the clock of the reforms of Roger Douglas and Ruth Richardson (except that he wasn't keen on privatisation).  Despite his rhetoric, after all, central government privatised its shareholding in Auckland Airport in 1998 while Winston was in government.  

He isn't an acolyte of environmentalism, in that he doesn't believe in sacrificing prosperity and wealth to engage in what is virtually nothing besides virtue signalling about climate change.  In that sense, he is much less toxic than the Greens, who combine welfarism with environmentalism and the glorification of identity politics.  Winston has NONE of this (although his willingness to buy votes with the elderly could be described as a form of welfarism).

So the so-called rightwing commentators who think a National-Green coalition is a good idea are demonstrating how utterly beguiled they are with the image of the Greens and ignoring the substance.  Either a National-Green coalition would kneecap the Greens on principles and policies, causing them to splinter and disintegrate below the 5% threshold, or (more likely) a National-Green coalition would be led by the Greens pushing climate change, getting the baubles of railways and tramways that will cost hundreds of millions of dollars a year for many years to come in losses and continuing the slide towards identity politics that National has done nothing to reverse.  Furthermore, it will encourage more welfarism.

After all, it is the National Party that is willing to sell out its principles for power (Muldoon 1975-1984 being the most egregious case study).  The Greens are a party of principles and policy (the wrong ones in my view, but still).

That's why I'll be more comfortable with Winston calling the shots over National or Labour.  National doesn't lead the fight against leftwing ideas or concepts touted by Labour and the Greens and their supporters, it just plays personalities and fear.  

Winston may contain the growth of identity politics, he wont sign up to mindless environmentalism (even though he has policies that might feed into it) and he wont embrace welfarism on a grand scale.   OR he may just get a Cabinet post and go away.

In either case it is better than the Greens driving public policy.

NZ election result: winners, losers

First the biggest loser:  

You, that's assuming you're not seeking to extract other people's money from the state.  

You, if you believe that freedom of speech matters, and that there shouldn't be a Harmful Digital Communications Act.

You, if you believe that you own your body and shouldn't be criminalised for what you put in it.

You, if you believe that government should stick to justice, law and order and defence, and should not be involved in the delivery of health and education, that it should not seek to be parent to everyone and should not respond to all of the calls to impose "social justice" (a euphemism for "take money from people we don't like and give it to people we do").

The news from overseas sources makes New Zealand seem like it still basks in the age of the reforms of Roger Douglas and Ruth Richardson.  However, that's only because if you look at subsidies, protectionism and regulatory rent-seeking, NZ looks better than Australia and the US.  If you look at taxation, NZ is much simpler than most economies.  Yet, that relative position doesn't make NZ a free-market haven, and certainly not on personal freedoms.  

So what about the parties?

National, optimistic but too soon to tell will think it won, and to be fair Bill English did shake off his reputation as the biggest loser as a party leader in generations.  He did it by being evasive, by focusing attention on his rival's spending plans, even though his own plans are not fundamentally different.  It is on form, as a party that doesn't really reform anything.  Riding on the back of an economy that gains from the reforms of the 80s and 90s, on high commodity food prices and the spending power of new migrants, its approach to most issues is not to change much.   At best it does seek to cut taxes, but at worst it rolls back virtually nothing Labour does.  The middle class welfare package instituted by the previous Labour Government was kept.  Yet, in an MMP environment the Nats did successfully frighten people into turning out and voting for it.  It deterred ACT supporters from voting ACT (and indeed some NZF supporters too).  Being in a position to get a fourth term is an achievement historically, but you have to ask for what?  Does National exist primarily to stop Labour et al from doing stuff?  The number of National supporters keen on governing with the Greens tells you exactly that.  Principles don't matter, the role of the state doesn't matter, nor is there interest in pushing back against a culture of dependency and statism.  National exists to stop Labour, this time we'll see if it worked.

Labour disappointed but too soon to tell  thinks it has won, because it could conceivably lead government with the Greens and Winston Peters.  Yet it did so mainly by consolidating the vote on the left.  It decimated the Maori Party strategically, it presented a leftwing manifesto and took the Greens back to its core.  Yet the widespread "Jacinda-mania" star status proved to be for little effect.  Few National voters were convinced that a young woman who has never had a job in the private sector, and has never even been a Cabinet Minister could be Prime Minister.  Labour did win the media narrative (along with the Greens) about relative child poverty and river pollution, all without much scrutiny about the statistics (or the causes or better yet, the solutions).  It has a chance at power, but has a long way to go to attract votes from groups other than public servants, beneficiaries, students,  Maori and Pacific Island voters and unionised workers.  It hasn't broken through in most regional towns and cities, nor significant parts of Auckland.  Yes Jacinda has almost done it, but if she does become PM, she'll be getting wagged by the tail of James Shaw and Winston Peters, and that is NOT a winning position to be in.  

Winston Peters won (I mean really, he runs it, it is his) lost seats, but is the master of political positioning.   Seriously, he has won, whilst Bill and Jacinda slut around him for the next few weeks.

 He puts himself in the centre, whilst being a populist who embraces the left (more money for pensioners and opposition to privatisation) and the right (sceptical about immigration, sceptical about higher taxes and opposition to identity politics by race if not nationality).   He leads the only truly fungible MMP party, in that he could support either main party and no longer would he really upset his base of supporters (like he did in 1996, but only because he broke up from the Nats to oppose them, and misjudged that his supporters cared about policy - when they are largely driven by gut emotion).  He'll get a good job and do little with it, he'll give a bunch of ne'er do wells (most of whom couldn't hope to get a job as "highly paid" as an MP) employment, and he'll one or two totemic legacies.  One might be the economically ridiculous idea of relocating the Ports of Auckland to Marsden Point, better would be a referendum on the Maori seats.   Winston won and why are you surprised?  He knows MMP better than anyone else, and no other politician is willing or able to replicate him.

Greens never really lose and were hit fairly hard, not least because it showed itself to be the party of welfare cheats.  Jacinda-mania attracted the airheads back to Labour, but it showed itself to still be a ginger-group of hard-left finger-waggers whose main instincts are to tell people off, tax what they don't like, subsidise what they like and virtue signal.  The good news for the Greens is that they still get an easy ride on most of their policy positions, particularly the constant false claims that "action on climate change" will save lives, the war on fossil fuels and their obsession with identity politics.  The media still loves them, even given the Metiria scandal (which actually exposed their fundamental belief that everyone owes everyone else a living).  Yes the Green Party has never actually been in a coalition, but it is very very influential and relies on new cohorts of optimistic state worshippers being recruited year on year.  

ACT lost badly in part due to the Nats successfully scaring voters on the right to voting National, but also because David Seymour moved too far away from having a coherent position on issues.  He was seen as backing National, but whether it was too hard for him to get traction on multiple issues or he lacked ground support to campaign, the only policy that got a lot of publicity was in increasing teacher pay.  ACT once had a coherent less government, lower tax position that promoted more competition in public services, was tough on law and order and rejected identity politics.  Yet Seymour couldn't break through with such a message.  The brand is mixed, he made statements about abortion which would alienate some, but he tried hard.  ACT needs to work out who it is targeting and what message it is giving.   There is a gap on the right, one that will open up large when a certain Maori ex. National MP finally retires.  ACT can't fill much of that gap, but it sure can grab some of it.

Maori Party is nearly finished as Labour branded it as National's patsies, which was unfair.  Maori are smarter than identity politics warriors fighting "colonialism" as Marama Fox implied. It will probably remain for some time, but looks like it is slipping back to be another Mana Motuhake.  It would have a chance if Labour gets power,  with the Greens, as it could position itself as the Opposition for Maori again.  However,  its real future is threatened by a referendum on the Maori seats, which if it includes Maori who choose to be on the general roll, could completely render the Maori Party obsolete.  

TOP did well for being led by a vulgarian.  For all of the rhetoric, TOP had policies based on a philosophical position, not simply "evidence led".  The philosophy was to penalise asset ownership as a solution to a market failure, rather than address the supply side element.  Everything else it stood for was a redistributionist/environmentalist agenda that competed with the Greens and Labour.  Gareth Morgan got the party attention, but also turned off many.  He topped it off by blaming voters for being selfish and stupid.  What more is there to say?

United Future has no future

The youth didn't turn out in the magical numbers to vote for the left, and if they did turn out they were not a single bloc (who is?).  After all the left is the mainstream.  Besides housing (which has become a problem because of the enviro-left approach to planning, through the RMA and the application of new urbanism to city boundaries in Auckland and Wellington), the narrative about child poverty was from the left (Beth Houlbrooke from ACT was hounded down when she suggested people on low incomes should not have children they expect taxpayers to pay for), the narrative around the environment was partially a banal question around "should there be fewer dairy cows" (the sort of nonsense seen in adolescent level policy debate).

What now?

Winston will make his choice, either Bill English will get to have three years of do little, conservative (literally) government.  Otherwise Jacinda Ardern will suddenly find she has gone from MP to PM without even having sat in on a Cabinet meeting, with Winston wagging her dog and the Greens on the sidelines providing confidence and supply.  I am uncomfortable with the latter, primarily because culturally the bent of Jacinda will be to support more identity politics based on race and sex, less freedom of speech and fewer private property rights.  Not that the Nats are practically better, but Labour and the Greens actually believe in state power and collectivising people over individual rights and individual responsibility.

ACT needs to refocus

For those who think government does too much, who think individuals alone or with others should have more power and responsibility to find solutions to the problems of today, there is little to offer.   The best hope might be for ACT to be in Opposition, regardless.  To campaign more clearly on principles, which should be around private property rights, everyone being equal under the law (including the abolition of Maori-only political representation), opening up education to choice and diversity, tackling the culture of welfare dependency, opposing state subsidies for business, more taxation and more state ownership.  ACT should firmly come down on limiting the scope and powers   of local government, on ridding central government of wasteful politically-correct bureaucracies and taking on identity politics.   Yes it should support other parties when it comes to victimless crimes, but there should not be a unified view on abortion.  It should be tough on real crime, tough on parental responsibility, but also take on measures that governments have done that increase the cost of living.  This includes the constraining of housing supply, and immigration policies that mean new migrants utilise the capital of taxpayer funded infrastructure, without actually paying for it.

What Winston does as his possible swan song is of minor interest, what matters is there being a party that stands up for something different.  For now, only ACT can do that.

Asset sales bad, asset purchases good?

A simple, impertinent question, to ask all those on the left of the political spectrum in New Zealand.  Labour, the Greens, Mana, NZ First (socialism can be nationalist) and the Maori Party.

You are all trying to scaremonger, use barely shrouded xenophobia to frighten the average voter into being opposed to the government selling assets.  The first thing you all emphasise is that "foreigners" will take over, with the implication that foreigners will be out to rip off consumers.  Even in competitive sectors (like electricity, which has five suppliers, or aviation where Air NZ ran 100% private for 12 years, including 4 years under a Labour government).  The implication being the foreigners are devils, unlike the benign, beloved New Zealand government.

The second thing you do is contradict yourself.  Whilst you imply that the assets you want to keep provide cheaper services (and goods if you include Solid Energy) than they would if owned by foreign devils, you then say the government will be losing out on lucrative revenue.   Hold on.  This lucrative revenue comes from the consumers you don't want ripped off.   Are you implying the government could make more money from consumers that it does now from these assets (given you think the government making money from selling goods and services is a good thing), or that taxpayers (the people who effectively carry the liabilities, but don't directly carry the benefits) are getting a lower rate of return than they would have done, had you simply gone out and bought them shares on the stockmarket on their behalf (or better yet, let them invest the money themselves)?

However, your biggest contradiction is in your attitude to the two sides of the government asset ledger.  The government buying assets has considerable costs.   

Labour bought Kiwirail at a price well in excess of its market value, and subsequently Labour and National have spent over NZ$750 million - which is greater than the purchase price itself, in buying more "assets" for the business.  This is money that has come from borrowing, it is money from taxpayers pockets, and is money that is almost certainly never going to be recovered ever from them.  The main beneficiaries of this are the foreign (devils they are not now) businesses who manufacture these assets (don't even start claiming you can make tiny short runs of trains in New Zealand when mass production of cars is grotesquely inefficient on the scale of a country this side), and the small number of New Zealand businesses that benefit from rail freight being effectively subsidised (Fonterra, forestry companies, Solid Energy, freight forwarders, shipping companies).  Why is this good?  Don't use words like "strategic", "environment", "future-proofing", use financial measures, like you use for asset sales.   Why can't you?   Why don't you consider the enormous transaction costs of that purchase, and the Air New Zealand transaction? 

Beyond that obvious example, there is Kiwibank, Air New Zealand and indeed any capital expenditure by the state in any sector.   You don't seem to care when the state increases its pool of "assets" (regardless of whether they raise revenue, most don't), you don't care whether consumers get a good deal from those assets or their owners,  you don't care whether taxpayers make money from them.   

In other words, you don't apply the same standard to asset purchases as you seek to apply to asset sales.

Is that because you are all really full-blown socialists who believe in public ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and like the growth of government ownership of the economy?  (surely you don't all think like that?)  

Or is it because you are conveniently using this rather modest policy (yes National doesn't have many that are easy to argue or communicate), one that in almost every OECD country would be considered relatively benign and inconsequential by the political mainstream (far-left and far-right excluded), to bait the rather deep seated xenophobia and "tall poppy" suspicion of quite a few New Zealanders, who are inately suspicious of foreign business people, and subscribe to the Muldoonist paternalistic feeling that you can't really trust business people to "see you right"?

You want to frighten people into thinking that foreigners will rip them off, will "asset strip" these "great assets" and the country will be "worse off" because people like you don't control them and don't spend the money raised by them.  You like them to believe you are better at spending their money than they are, and that you're a kinder gentler business person than they are.

In other words, aren't you all just playing the Winston Peters card?