Danyl McLauchlan: NZ First & Te Pāti Māori capitalise on Labour’s silence

How do you govern alongside a party that holds the state itself in contempt? When asked about this, Labour’s strategists have jutted their chins, flashed their eyes and defiantly replied, “Who says Te Pāti Māori will even be in Parliament after the next election?”, citing their strategic goal of winning back the Māori seats.

The goal appears completely hopeless in the wake of the Tāmaki Makaurau by-election. Peeni Henare, former cabinet minister with a distinguished political whakapapa, backed by Labour’s allegedly formidable campaign machine and advised by Willy Jackson, Labour’s allegedly brilliant Māori caucus leader, was heavily defeated by Oriini Kaipara, a first-time candidate.

Labour’s campaign theory was that Māori voters were more interested in material issues – “jobs, home and health” – than Te Pāti Māori’s more radical policies: a separate Māori parliament and justice system, the abolition of prisons, the return of all foreshore and seabed, state-owned and conservation land to mana whenua.

This would have been convenient: most voters are worried about jobs, home and health. If the theory held, Labour could enter the general election campaigning on a single coherent message. But that model of contemporary Māori politics was defeated by a two-to-one margin. Now, there is talk of an accommodation between the parties – perhaps Labour contests the Māori seats but not vigorously, quietly pitching for the party vote, and Te Pāti Māori moderates its rhetoric to avoid scaring centrist voters back to National.

This would require rigorous message discipline from both sides. Te Pāti Māori could not, for example, describe the current government as worse than Nazi Germany, or attack Labour for engaging “Indians, Asians, Black and Pākehā” volunteers in its campaign team, statements made over the course of the by-election by party president John Tamihere and MP Tākuta Ferris respectively. And Labour’s Māori caucus would likewise have to moderate.

The by-election saw Henare vow to repeal the coalition’s gang-patch ban, foregrounding law and order – the only issue the public really trusts National with any more.

For the moment, Labour has settled on the hilariously empty line that it is not guaranteed to work with Te Pāti Māori in government.

The Tāmaki Makaurau defeat was not the worst thing to happen to Chris Hipkins’ hopes of prime ministerial resurrection that weekend. New Zealand First’s annual conference featured a sequence of ferocious attacks on Labour, alongside wokeness and transgender ideology, which joined Winston Peters’ traditional enemies – neoliberalism and global Marxism – as the existential threats to our fragile nation that only NZ First can deliver us from.

If the right-leaning coalition is to win re-election it must capture votes off the left. Christopher Luxon is unlikely to achieve this, so Peters has taken advantage of Labour’s strategic vagueness. If Hipkins and his MPs will not say what their party is for he will do it for them. And so they are for economic chaos, moral posturing and woke ideology.