The future for an effective centre party in New Zealand?

Winston Peters first appeared on the national political scene when he stood for Northern Maori in the 1975 election and lost. Almost half the voters in the 2020 election  had not been born then, another third of 2020 voters were too young to have voted in 1975. The next longstanding MP is Trevor Mallard, first elected in 1984. We can be reasonably certain Mallard will not be leading a party into the 2029 election.

Peters was first elected to Parliament in 1978. He fronted the National Party TV ads, questioning leader Rob Muldoon. Clearly he was seen as a promising young Maori.  He had grown up in the 1950s, the middle child of a not very well-off family of eleven children. He once said the welfare state had not reached the Northland of his childhood. He did not get to university until he was 25 (taking both law and arts degrees; he was already a qualified teacher). There he joined the National Party.

He is a working-class Tory (albeit a Maori one). Certainly he was outraged by the Richardson-Shipley attack on the welfare state in 1990 and 1991, and he walked out of the National Party in 1993 to form New Zealand First (NZF). (He had left National’s cabinet in 1991.) This ‘betrayal’ resulted in vicious portrayals of him, especially by the well-funded far right because he was attacking their neoliberal policies, He could equally say they betrayed the party of Holyoake-Marshall-Muldoon that he joined in the 1970s.

The purpose of this column is not to provide a critique, or defence, of Winston Peters. Its interest is the role of centre parties in New Zealand. But the fate of New Zealand First and of Peters have been so intertwined that it is difficult to disentangle him from the wider issue. In contrast, ACT (although it is certainly not a centre-right party), founded in the same year as NZF, has had seven leaders. United First, the other centre-right party, had only one, Peter Dunne; it collapsed with him. His parliamentary seat was gifted; National withheld its candidate and touted only for the party vote. (National used the same strategy in Epsom to support ACT.)

(For the record, Labour also has had seven leaders over the same period; National has had eight.)

NZF won seats under the Front Runner electoral regime in 1993 (so detested everyone was with the neoliberals), but its continuing existence has been a consequence of the MMP regime. As a result, it three times has been involved in government: in 1996 with Bolger’s National, in 2005 with Clarke’s Labour and in 2017 with Ardern’s Labour. You might well expect that of a centre party but, instructively, in each following election its support collapsed. Twice, in 2008 and 2020, the party lost all its parliamentary seats; in 1999 it held on only by Peters retaining Tauranga.

The existence of a long term viable centre party is a crucial issue in the parliamentary democracy. Otherwise we end up with the pre-MMP configuration of right-National and left-Labour butt up against one another, albeit with wing parties (currently ACT on the right and the Greens on the left). It is where we have ended up in 2020 (and 2008, but National did not have an absolute majority that time).

There is, of course, always enthusiasm for the moderating effect of a centre party – most strongly by those who are in opposition (membership of which switches over with a change of government). Thus there was a bitterness on the left when NZF sank the proposed capital gains tax, and approval from the right. Scrolling back to 1996 – if your memory allows – there was leftish pleasure when NZF redirected – even reversed – some of National’s neoliberal tendencies. Underpinning these concerns are that we have a Winner-takes-all system of government.

Yet NZF never really made the case for a centre party which moderated the WTA system, even if in the last three years its actions certainly did. But there was hardly any such message in its recent election campaign. (The closest anyone came was Judith Collins, who at one time in her campaign seemed to be telling her supporters to consider voting for Labour to keep the Greens out – perhaps they did.)

What NZF campaigned on in 2020 is even less clear. One persistent theme through its years has been a charismatic leader but, as the column began, many of those who were impressed in the 1990s are no longer with us. Being Minister of Foreign Affairs is not going to generate any electoral enthusiasm in New Zealand.

Because of what happened in 1996-1999, NZF has long dropped its interest in the Maori vote. It also seems to have lost interest in the elderly vote, for its Minister for Seniors, Tracy Martin, did absolutely nothing. Probably it got more than its share of the military vote – Ron Marks seems to have done a good job.

The initial new strategy was the ‘provincial’ vote from those in regions which felt they were being ignored by the centre. Key to this was the Provincial Growth Fund but it never seemed to function as envisaged; most of it appeared to be a slush fund for idiosyncratic projects rather than a stimulus to provincial growth. When Shane Jones proved not to have the votes in the Northland electorate, that strategy fell apart too. Jim Anderton’s Alliance party had also chased the provincial chimera, with as little success. (There are other parallels between Jim and Winston.)

Is there a place in the New Zealand political spectrum for a centre party? It is not easy to see how one might arise other than as a split off from National or Labour. Perhaps another charismatic politician to lead one may arise (presumably after Ardern retires). But he or she needs to learn from the NZF experience.

Even a charismatic leader can stay on too long. More fundamentally, the party has to have a strong message on the role of a moderating centre party together with an ongoing process of renewal. (ACT has renewed itself at least three times.)

Even so, the Maori boy from the backblocks of Whananaki has done well, even if we are unsure what his legacy will be.

PS. I have not mentioned the financial shenanigans that the New Zealand First Foundation is involved with. Like everyone else, I await the revelations in court but, in my case, more to understand the financing of small parties.