How populism comes to NZ, minus the identity politics

Saturday, 24 January 2026

A community meeting in Tokoroa in late 2024, to discuss the planned closure of the Kinleith paper mill. The country’s ongoing failure to support and progress infrastructure and industry could be at the heart of a political realignment, Josie Pagani argues.

Josie Pagani is a commentator on current affairs and a regular opinion contributor. She works in geopolitics, aid and development, and governance.

OPINION: For a long time, National MPs said that if the market was driving up the price of houses, that was a good thing. The higher they went the richer everyone who had a house became.

They’ve been on a journey since.

Next, house prices were high because local councils wouldn’t let new houses be built on vacant land. Remove planning rules, and houses would sprout like sprinkled daffodils.

Then they got back into government and decided it’s not just farm land that can have thousands of new cookie-cutter boxes, but also that villas and bungalows in Epsom, Remuera and Tāmaki can be replaced.

Voters in those seats are joyful.

“Oh yes, we’re all about freedom. If you own property, it’s yours. You should be able to build whatever you want.

“Welcome to our community.”

The owners of Auckland’s character houses haven’t warmly embraced the prospect of being surrounded by three-storey housing complexes, and have found allies on the political right.

As if. No one at the golf club likes it.

Along Ladies Mile and St Stephens Ave they’re not having a bar of three-storey Kāinga Ora flats and shadows over the swimming pool.

“Cheaper housing? How dare they.”

ACT, the only party ever to write “property rights” on a billboard, wants big government to butt in and stop owners using land how they like.

Around the world the centre right is being upended, but it’s mainly ethnic nationalists giving grief to conservative managers of the status quo, not big government, property rights and development.

In the UK, the Conservatives are being demolished by Nigel Farage’s anti-immigration Reform.

German Christian Democrats are being challenged by the neo-fascist AfD, who could win office in some of the old East Germany this year.

France’s mainstream conservatives have been steamrolled by National Rally.

In the US, MAGA has swept away the old “free trade, strong on defence” right.

In Australia, the Liberal party is deeply divided between the old fashioned establishment and anti-establishment insurgents who care about immigration, pronouns and climate (they’re against it - all three).

In the Sherlock Holmes story Silver Blaze, the detective solves a mystery by noticing that a watchdog didn’t bark. The silence meant the dog knew the real culprit.

An identity politics split hasn’t occurred on the right here. Why hasn’t that dog barked?

I know you’re thinking Winston Peters and ACT, but they are not anything like the national ethnic identity parties overseas. The closest we have to an ethnic nationalists party is Te Pāti Māori. Strip away the word Māori and focus on its nationalism, its attraction to Russia, its disregard for establishment conventions, its vague and unserious promises of redistribution in favour of its supporters, and TPM would fit into the mainstream of radical right parties anywhere.

Reform Party leader Nigel Farage with former senior Conservative Party politician Nadhim Zahawi who has defected to Reform, as it continues on its path of demolishing the Tories, with an agenda built on anti-immigration politics.

In New Zealand, identity politics has been bigger on the left than the right. No-one was sad to see Peak Woke go, and no-one wanted the polar opposite of cultural conservatism.

Apart from a few burps, we have avoided implacable polarisation, resentment and hatred.

But what if there’s a serious idea at the heart of populism: the return of economic class as a fault line?

The anti-establishment parties in the Western world find their strongest support among struggling workers. The more educated you are, the more likely you vote for the parties of what used to be called the left, Labour and the Greens.

You can imagine a fracture on the right here.

On one side, the pro-development nation-builders, who want to use the government to build houses, roads, water pipes and ferries.

Their supporters would be working people who have worn the cost of the deindustrialisation of New Zealand, their jobs destroyed by running out of gas, and the closure of timber mills and manufacturing in provincial New Zealand.

On the other side, the establishment, defending the rigged status quo.

Voters rather than parties could drive this fracture.

A recent poll found 74% of people across the UK, EU, US, Canada and Japan believe the world is “hopelessly rigged for the rich”.

The populist playbook rejects both “woke” and surging inequality. President Trump’s enabler, Steve Bannon, has the same view as New York mayor Zohran Mamdani that the super rich should be taxed more.

Labour could trigger a fissure on the right with a strong pro-development message. Promise to carpet every part of Auckland east of Queen St in high rises, or whatever owners of the land want to build.

They won’t because Labour is just as divided over development. One Greenish, de-growth side always says they want to build, but then foot-trips plans with rules: insulation standards, car park bans, even limits on the amount of electricity a new house can use. Then they consult every conceivable interest until they find someone who says no. The other half support an abundance agenda, that just wants to get stuck in and provide new development.

So there is the faultline of a new political realignment in New Zealand. Less the identity politics that is shattering the rest of the world, more about the story that has long been our biggest weakness: our success at not getting much done.