‘It’s the cost of living, stupid’

Friday, 21 March 2025

Martin van Beynen is a senior journalist with The Press

OPINION: I had a brilliant, if not entirely original, theory on why National, and to a lesser extent ACT and NZ First, decimated the Labour vote in the 2023 election.

I thought National won because it profited handsomely from a punishing backlash against Labour’s apparent embrace of progressive positions on race, diversity and equality. With its support of Three Waters, a separate Māori Health Authority and other policies that would make a feminist academic proud, it both worried and brassed off major sections of the electorate.

National benefited from a global trend. The anti-woke backlash helped right-wing parties in Europe and contributed to Trump’s victory in the US election last year.

“We’ve turned into what I call the ‘shame on you’ party: You can’t drive that car, you can’t eat that food, you can’t use that word, you can’t work in that industry,” observed Adam Frisch, of Welcome PAC, a group that aims to elect moderate Democrats in difficult districts.

The National-led coalition very quickly rolled back the progressive regime, pared back the public service and started on a programme to make the economy more business- and foreign investment-friendly. It gave their voters what they seemed to want.

Its reward was Te Hīkoi mō te Tiriti in November, ostensibly about the Treaty Principles Bill but in many ways a reaction to the direction the coalition was taking the country. Whether the massive protest was a reflection of more widespread dissatisfaction - blowback against the backlash - or a tribute to how Te Pāti Māori was able to mobilise the troops is an interesting question but the polls since certainly don’t give National cause for celebration.

The latest polls suggest that if an election was held today, Labour could narrowly form a government with Te Pāti Māori and the Greens. So what’s happening? Have the pollsters picked up buyer’s remorse or is the opposition doing such a great job that it is getting back the support it lost in the last election?

Many obviously feel Luxon hasn’t gone far enough. Amy Brooke, a fierce right-wing commentator who writes for Spectator magazine, feels Luxon has let the country down by not supporting the Treaty Principles Bill.

“Nothing could be more divisive than Luxon ignoring the feeling of the country, which has had enough of cultural bullying, posturing, intimidation and threats of violence by a small but aggressive minority of part-Māori descent,” Brooke says in a March missive.

But maybe the discontent harnessed by New Zealand’s conservative parties wasn’t really about the woke agenda. Sophisticated polling in the US by Democratic pollster David Shor suggests we might all have been over-estimating the influence of the culture wars.

Shor suggests that while diversity, equity and inclusion programmes were unpopular, they didn’t emerge as a “major explanation” for Trump’s decisive win. Polling showed the most pressing concern, no matter how the data was sliced and diced, was the cost of living - by a long shot.

“There has definitely been an overemphasis on DEI, wokeness and trans issues,” Shor says in an interview with New York Times podcaster Ezra Klein.

“Many people see the Trump administration as a break that shows that all of the traditional rules of politics no longer apply. To some extent, that’s wrong. A lot of what’s happening is actually easy to understand.”

Of course it’s drawing a long bow to conclude the same trends are affecting New Zealand politics but the rhetoric of both Luxon and Labour leader Chris Hipkins suggests their polling is saying much the same thing.

Luxon, who charts a fairly safe course through the culture war minefield, is a one-track record on fixing the economy because people are “doing it tough”.

When the Labour leader outlined his party’s key priorities in early March, two of the three were economic ones - jobs and homes.

“The cost-of-living crunch is still hitting New Zealanders hard. Prices are going up, wage growth is stagnant, and more people are unemployed or about to lose their jobs,” Hipkins said.

There wasn’t any talk about diversity or social justice or a partnership with Māori, but maybe that wouldn’t have hurt.

I’m not sure Winston Peters has got the message. He has proposed new legislation to remove the requirement for the public service to promote diversity and inclusiveness as part of being a good employer. He also last week stopped the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade from recruiting a “tikanga” manager. These moves are consistent with his long-declared stances but they look more like a bit of brand reinforcement than zeal for reform.

Even Te Pāti Māori appears to have toned things down and could be coming out with some credible economic policies. If their MPs want to see Labour return to power, they will need to make sure they don’t frighten the horses.

The current polls favouring Labour will not be worrying the coalition unduly, especially since the election is next year’s problem. Some global trends are going the coalition’s way. The working class is moving towards the right and young people are becoming more conservative. When it comes to the economy, voters tend to feel conservative parties are the better managers.

The battleground next year is far more likely to concentrate on the economy than be fought in the culture war theatre. We are coming back to a variation of an old adage:

“It’s the cost of living, stupid.”