Not a lot of clucking in lacklustre Tauranga by-election

Thursday, 16 June 2022

Q+A presents exclusive Kantar polling on the Tauranga by-election, and ask the candidates why they're the right choice to take the seat vacated by Simon Bridges.

Josie Pagani has worked in politics, aid and development. In 2011, she stood as a Labour candidate in Rangitikei.

OPINION: It was the chicken that won.

My first by-election was Taranaki-King Country in 1998, when Jim Bolger quit to be ambassador to the US.

I was working for the Alliance and our aim was to draw Labour and National into a scrap. We dressed a volunteer as a chicken and placed him outside meetings to illustrate they were '’too chicken to debate’'.

Before long you had Cabinet ministers arguing with a clucking chook puppet, the cameras turned up, and Jim Anderton was on the phone to Helen Clark to end a civil war on the left. The resulting government was sworn in a year later.

* 'It won't be me': Tapsell rules herself out of Tauranga race

* It would take a big storm to blow National out of the water in Tauranga

* Tauranga by-election: Jacinda Ardern doesn't expect Labour to win, will set date soon

* Race to be Tauranga's new MP begins

Labour’s Jan Tinetti – ‘’Her hoardings give no reason to vote for her,‘’ says Josie Pagani.

By-elections are like Celebrity Survival. Contestant politicians are dropped into small towns with their cellphones and hand sanitiser.

But the by-election in Tauranga on Saturday has been to excitement what Trevor Mallard is to diplomacy.

ACT Party leader David Seymour with Tauranga by-election candidate Cameron Luxton.

Jan Tinetti seemed to concede quickly. ‘’Labour hasn't won this seat since 1935,’’ she said, managing expectations with a modesty that overlooks that Labour won the party vote there in 2020. She was only 2000 votes from securing the electorate.

Labour could have used the by-election to crystallise a national issue and change the topic of conversation.

For an example of the dark art, see Boris Johnson, who is distracting the UK from looming by-election defeats by trying to send refugees to Rwanda, and denouncing the courts, which say the plan is unlawful. No-one is talking about the lawmaker who broke the law at his boozy lockdown-breaching parties now.

With Tinetti, a respected former school principal, about to step up to a big ministerial role in education, Labour missed a chance to focus politics on our kids' achievement. Not sending the kids to Rwanda, though tempting, but maybe sending them to school? Truancy rates are soaring.

The Labour candidate has been burdened by an election machine that seems unable to strategise and unwilling to persuade. Her hoardings give no reason to vote for her.

Consequently, she has compressed a lot of words into the smallest ideas. I heard her talk about a ‘’'multifaceted’’ approach to crime and Tauranga being ‘’on a journey’’ with ‘’positive pathways’’.

Sam Uffindell entered Parliament through the Tauranga by-election.

Knowing Labour wasn't trying, National might have sought to make the election a referendum about the government, or crime and gangs. Instead, it waited until less than a week before the vote to announce its crime policies, which looks opportunistic. I'm surprised they're not sending the gangs to Rwanda.

ACT's Cameron Luxton has been the Energiser bunny of the campaign.

He also builds houses and lays concrete, which has helped him connect with voters worried about housing and, um, concrete.

Commentator Ben Thomas tweeted that the National candidate, Sam Uffindell, ‘’is so wooden he probably counts towards the government's billion trees target’’.

He will win, and may yet grow into a mighty kauri.

By-elections are perfect for small-party insurgencies.

Tariana Turia launched Te Pāti Māori by winning Te Tai Hauāuru back in a by-election after leaving Labour. Winston Peters launched NZ First after winning Tauranga back from National in a by-election.

When he won Northland in 2015, against the odds, Peters boosted NZ First back into Parliament, which led to his selection of Jacinda Ardern as PM in 2017.

There has been no insurgency this year. Anti-vaxer Sue Grey, standing for the NZ Outdoors and Freedom Party, won’t fracture the vote on the right.

By-elections can launch political careers even for the losers.

In Britain, a young Tony Blair first stood for parliament in 1982 in the Beaconsfield by-election when Michael Foot was Labour leader. He lost miserably. Fifteen years later, Blair was prime minister. Foot quipped, “No-one who joined the Labour Party while I was leader could be called a careerist.”

Twelve prime ministers in New Zealand won their seats in by-elections, including David Lange, Geoffrey Palmer, Keith Holyoake, Walter Nash and Bill Rowling. Another six have won by-elections later in their parliamentary careers: five you have never heard of – and Ardern.

Michael Wood, Matt Doocey, Willow-Jean Prime, Kelvin Davis, Melissa Lee, Julie Anne Genter and Jan Logie have all previously lost by-elections and are MPs today. Even if you've never heard of some of them, either.

Sometimes by-elections have perverse outcomes.

A young Don Brash stood for National in a by-election in the Auckland seat of East Coast Bays. Rob Muldoon was having none of his free-market ideas and sabotaged National's campaign by increasing harbour bridge tolls, gifting the seat to Social Credit.

In a 1992 by-election in Wellington Central, the Alliance chose a political commentator as its candidate, which I would describe as an inspired selection. He lost.

To mangle a Groucho Marx quote: ‘’I've had some wonderful by-elections. This isn't one of them.’’

You haven't heard much about Tauranga. National and Labour have been chicken. But the lacklustre campaigning still tells us a lot.