Two million voters in search of a rationale part 2

Continuation of paper to post-election conference

If these negatives for Labour were the issues, why didn't Labour do badly in the election? Because, I would argue, these "issues" were in fact "problems" and while problems are, of course, factors in people's voting, positives are also factors. And Labour had some positives, notably the economy. These arguably more than offset the problems.

I will divide the "substantive" issues into several groups.

There was, first, a group of personal security issues.

Top of these is the economy. Growth had been strong, unemployment was at 13-year low, real wages were firm and household balance sheets were in good shape. There was also widening, though not universal, approval for the government's attempts to lift investment through research and positive interventions. In fact, though he did not make much of it, English said he would keep some of them, though refocused.

English tried to make something of the fall in export prices and the consequent looming fall in farm incomes and slowdown in growth generally. But consumer sentiment remained resolutely high through the campaign. So did retail spending, especially of big-ticket items (though the pace of growth did begin to slow). Economic scare stories did not resonate.

In short, the economy was probably a big unstated positive for Labour. Some 65% told the TV1 Colmar Brunton pre-election issues survey the "outlook for the New Zealand economy is very good". (10)

The obverse of that was that Labour could not get the media to run its claims of excellent economic management. This is true but Labour's criticism was misplaced. First, a good deal of the good economic story was luck, not brilliant government management: it rained a lot, prices were high and a high American dollar kept New Zealand dollar returns from those prices high. Second, even if the media had carried Labour's claims, it is doubtful they would have added anything to Labour's vote because people knew without being told economic conditions were good: the positive for Labour from the firm economy was probably fully built in to its vote before the campaign began.

More relevant to the campaign were two personal security issues which are thought normally to work to Labour's advantage: health and education.

To the extent health was an issue it was probably a negative for Labour and National claimed its attacks on underfunding were scoring. But it was also probably only a small negative for a first-term government that could claim to have increased funding and cut waiting times for operations.

National tried to make much of secondary teachers' rejection of a pay offer and obstruction of the introduction of a new pupil assessment system. But it is moot whether that worked against the government; Labour claimed sentiment was moving against the teachers. And in any case the government and the union agreed to arbitration shortly before the election.

Genetic modification was much more talked about and reported on. This is a personal security issue because for most people it is a safe food issue. It was prominent in media coverage of the campaign because: (a) part of the excuse for the election was that the Greens had on 23 May walked out of Parliament in protest at legislation setting a sunset of October 2003 on a two-year moratorium on applications for commercial release of GMOs (genetically modified organisms), declaring they would vote to bring down any government that lifted the moratorium, and this walkout provoked an angry and stinging response from Clark; (b) the Greens made GM the centrepiece of their campaign, with scare ads that were classics of negative advertising; (c) on 3 July a new Sustainable Development Council, headed by a former Federated Farmers president, Sir Peter Elworthy, and featuring international movie star Sam Neil, former world squash champion Susan Devoy and noted biochemistry Professor Garth Cooper, was announced to fight for a five-year moratorium; and (d) the Hager "ambush" on 10 July.

In answers to two sets of questions, early and late in the campaign, NZ Herald DigiPoll found around a quarter of respondents wanted an absolute ban on release of GMOs. This was in line with the Green's position and this sort of reaction encouraged the Greens to persist in an intransigent stance and to hope for a vote above 10% as a result.

However, in the DigiPoll around three-fifths took the line of most other parties: they were in favour of strict controls but not an absolute ban. Polls of "important issues" never rated GM more than about 10%, well below the more traditional issues. And DigiPoll found only 7% saying GM would "absolutely" determine their vote and only half of those said they would vote Green. In the event, GM may have boosted the Greens' vote, though, if so, not greatly. The Greens had been running in the 5%-9% range for a year before the campaign. And the uncompromising stance may have cost the Greens votes among those who had been sympathetic to the Greens as an influence on Labour but then worried that the Greens might prove extreme.

GM may actually have obscured other issues from voters. In 1981 the then government's proposal for taxpayer-supported heavy industrialisation ‹ "think big" ‹ was the biggest issue in the media and noted by voters as the biggest campaign issue but it was not an issue they voted on. Its prominence, however, made it difficult for the government's opponents to get other issues up. (11) GM may have had something of that effect in the 2002 campaign. Certainly, that is Labour's view.

More clearcut was violence and crime. In office Labour had initiated legislation to lengthen sentences for serious crimes of violence in response to a growing incidence of such crimes and rising public alarm. But one element of the new sentencing law made it possible for offenders to apply for release after only one-third of their sentence and opponents latched on to that as going "soft" on crime.

National, ACT and New Zealand First took a harder line on crime than Labour. Of the three National was the least hardline; its promise of "life means life" applied only to two or three murderers a year. ACT ran billboards promising tough sentences from well before the election. New Zealand First made it one of its three issues (along with the "treaty industry" and immigration) which it could "fix".

My second group of substantive issues, cultural security issues, were also probably negative for Labour. These were of two sorts: to do with the Treaty of Waitangi settlements and other supposed advantages or special concessions to Maori; and immigration.

National, ACT and New Zealand all in various ways ran campaigns critical of the government on the Treaty ‹ either of the length of time settlement of Treaty grievances were taking, now 17 years after the law change permitting them; or of supposed advantages for Maori over other citizens (sloganed as "one law for all"); or, New Zealand First's preoccupation, the siphoning off of the spoils from the grievance negotations process and outcomes by lawyers and others in a "Treaty industry" and to leading figures in compensated iwi, not to ordinary, needy Maori.

Only New Zealand First added in immigration ‹ and drew criticism not just from the left but also from ACT and United Future, which had in the 1996-99 Parliament merged with two small ethnic parties, one representing Asians and one Pacific islanders. While mostly New Zealand First leader Winston Peters was ethnically unspecific in his allegations that the country was being swamped with immigrants, at one point he talked of "Asianisation by stealth". This stung ACT leader Richard Prebble, who is married to a Solomon Islander, to accuse Peters of racism. Other liberals of both right and left expressed abhorrence. Clark declared she would not work with Peters nor seek his support for a government she led.

Peters touched a nerve with some, especially older, people. No doubt some of those who flocked to him held racist views. But informal interviews with supporters suggested something more defensible: a fear, or at least a concern, that the cultural unity of their community was in danger of fragmenting. This same fear or concern was probably an important ingredient in drawing support to Peters on Treaty matters.

Liberals on both the right and left treated these fears during the campaign as in some way unclean or even un-New Zealand. That denies their reality in the minds of the generally decent folk who hold them. A dismissive or contemptuous reaction by liberals is also unlikely to diminish the possibility that cultural security may become a major issue in future elections, as it has in Australia and in some European countries, including the quintessentially liberal society of Holland ‹ where it is notable that the anti-immigrant party was led by man formerly of the left.

My third group of substantive issues might loosely be called values.

When the Labour-Alliance coalition came into office supported by the Greens in 1999, the three parties brought with them sets of values that seemed at odds with middle New Zealand and therefore potentially a limiting factor on the government's lasting power. A number of public utterances by some MPs in the government's first year reinforced this perception ‹ for example, proposing to ban cigarette smoking in bars and, by Tariana Turia, a junior minister, alleging a "holocaust" of Maori by British colonisers and their descendants.

Clark herself, purposefully childless, likewise seemed distant from ordinary folk, a member of an academic sisterhood. Proposals by backbenchers to legalise prostitution (Labour) and the moderate use of cannabis (Green) were said by opponents to be at odds with middle New Zealand's values.

But Clark proved adept at recognising and drawing back when the government or MPs were getting too far out of line with mainstream public opinion. Smoking in bars stayed. Turia was countermanded: lest there be any doubt, a "closing the gaps" programme designed to reduce social and economic disparities between Maori and the average population was renamed and the phrase expunged from government usage. By the time of the campaign, political correctness was effectively neutralised as an issue, except among those opposed to Labour and the left in any case.

In any case, political correctness was overshadowed by another value position which middle New Zealand did approve: Clark's repositioning of economic policy.

During the 1990s the electorate searched for a way of ending the neoliberal reforms. In 1990 it replaced Labour with a National party promising the "decent society" but in reality preparing to continue the reforms. In 1993, without an alternative government on offer, the electorate opted for electoral reform. In 1996 it awarded New Zealand First the balance of power in the mistaken expectation, encouraged by Peters' public utterances, that New Zealand First would eject National from government. In 1999 Labour and the Alliance joined forces to present an alternative government. How weak National's mandate was for its policy stance can be gauged from its 33% average vote in the three elections after it took power.

Clark's high-profile "correction" or "resetting of the compass" after 1999 resonated in part as a new set of values in policy. Moderate replaced radical; the "smart state" replaced "hands-off". This was as much a matter of tone as actual policy. However much Clark's personal values and the political correctness of her associates may have grated with middle New Zealand, the new economic and social policy values were in tune. And in everyday life, the latter counted much more than the former.

So, at the risk of getting lost in the unmeasurable, I want to suggest that tone was a campaign issue, at least as a subset of values. It was tone that turned the "worm" for Dunne. His repetition of "commonsense", coupled with his looking the part and his two-handed answers to questions ‹ not just for tougher sentences but for action on the causes of crime ‹ appealed to reasonable uncommitted voters drifting in a Sargasso sea of absolutes from the other parties. (12)

Dunne injected two other values. One was a welcome for multiculturalism, which won as strong an endorsement from the "worm" as Peters' anti-immigration declamations. The second was his emphasis on the family.

This can be read as reactionary, even repressive, a return to an age of discipline, of women confined to the home and authority resting with the man of the house. In the context of United Future's evangelical christian dimension, it was so read by many, including many in the media. It was notable that the only other party which made the family central to its platform was the fundamentalist Christian Heritage party.

But there is another way "family" can be read. This is well illustrated by the way Jenny Shipley, whose family seems from the outside to be genuinely well-knit, nevertheless always acknowledged as a minister and Prime Minister the co-existence of many other types of families.

On this reading "family" encapsulates values of nurturing and mutual help. In early 21st century society, fragmented and fractious, with much of the responsibility for cohesion and assistance to the unfortunate, underprivileged and unloved shucked off on to the impersonal apparatuses of the state, such "family values" may have a subterranean appeal as signifying stability and unity. (13)

Also as part of values, there was an issue of extremism. The great majority of the New Zealand electorate is non-extreme and even anti-extreme.

Part of Helen Clark's success in capturing the centre ‹ and National's plight in the campaign ‹ was because her policies were a counterpoint to what large numbers of voters saw as ideologically-driven neoliberal extremism in the 1990s under National's rule. (Ironically, this cut the other way among some National-leaning voters who thought National had lost the neoliberal plot.) This also cut against the Greens. Labour attacked the Greens as extremists and after the corn affair this appeared to stick. As the NZ Herald DigiPoll found, few were prepared to go on the Greens' GM limb.

ACT, defending 7%, seemed to have taken this on board. In the campaign it attempted to present itself as less extreme. Whether it succeeded is a matter for conjecture. At least some of its vote came from National-leaners who wanted a sharper economic policy.

Conclusion

In an election as bizarre as that of 2002, how does one disentangle the influences on the result?

I would sum it up in two parts: there was an underlying satisfaction with the government, a sense (underlined by poll findings) that the country is heading in the right direction, buttressed by good household balance sheets; and this was disturbed by two remarkable media events. Sleepwalking to victory is no longer an option, it seems.

But there have been two interesting outcomes.

One is a step nearer to a genuine MMP election and result. The third MMP election, while bizarre and still exhibiting hangovers from FPP, looked and felt more like an MMP election than the first two. So does the third MMP Parliament.

The second interesting outcome is the shape of that Parliament. Helen Clark's formation of a support arrangement with United Future from the centre-right has opened the possibility of a long-running left government ‹ though an MMP minority, not an FPP majority.

If she succeeds, MMP will almost certainly become embedded. (14) If she failsŠthat is for the next election, whenever it might be. (15)

And none of what I have said says anything about how, or if, Helen Clark and her government will deal with the great overarching issues which this election only touched on: wealth production fast enough to meet personal aspirations; re-engineering the factory state to reflect modern expectations of customisation that is reshaping private sector production and distribution; reaching agreement on the power-sharing dimension embedded in biculturalism; and responding to the mass movement of peoples. But that is for another paper in another place.

NOTES

9 This was in answer to the questions "which one of these [nominated] issues do you personally believe is most important to you, your family and your life personally right now?" and "which other four issues do you personally believeŠ", etc. Similar, though slightly different, results were recorded to near-identical questions as to which issues were "most important to New Zealand as a country". Likewise, the rankings were similar, though again slightly different, when the question was phrased as "issuesŠyou personally believe will have the most influence on your decision of which party to vote for".

10 Though only 16% told the NZ Herald DigiPoll post-election poll they expected "a year from now you and your family will be better off", 2% more than expected to be worse off. To this needs to be added, however, the 64% who expected things to be the same.

11 This was a significant finding of a panel of 50 Kapiti electorate voters, who were interviewed periodically on issues of the day for six months leading up to the election. The survey, which I organised, was funded by, and periodically reported on in, the National Business Review.

12 Clark's policy repositioning, her own cautious (conservative) style of prime ministership and the reduction in the temperature of political debate may have been factors in the TV1 Colmar Brunton pre-election issues survey's finding that only 35% agreed strongly with the proposition that "you cannot trust politicians or the government" compared with 50% in 1999; 31% agreed, compared with 25% in 1999. Some 87% agreed "New Zealand is the best country to live in" (60% in 1999); 93% agreed "New Zealand is a great place to raise a family" ; 70% disagreed that "New Zealand does not offer a lot of opportunities" (48%); and 53% were "happy with the direction New Zealand is moving in" (30%).

13 The TV1-Colmar Brunton pre-election issues survey recorded 49% agreeing strongly with the proposition that "people don't put enough effort into families and relationships any more" and another 27% agreed slightly.

14 The NZ Herald DigiPoll post-election poll found 54% preferring MMP to 30% FPP, with predictably higher pro-MMP ratings amongst Labour, Green and United Future voters. Some 71% said the "MMP system of two votes worked well on Saturday", again with higher positive figures among Labour, Green and United Future voters. Notably, however, only 55% thought the result would produce a stable government (Labour voters were 73% confident).

15 Helen Clark's opportunistic calling of an early election against tradition means that, quite apart from possible instability among her partners, no confidence can be placed in the present Parliament running full term. It is perhaps interesting that some ministers are sympathetic to a fixed term.