The
National Party convincingly won the general election on November 8th attracting 45.45% of the party vote giving them 18 list seats as well as
winning 41 constituencies: 4 short of a majority in the House of
Representatives. Therefore National will be able to form a
government under the MMP system with the right wing Act New Zealand Party and United Future, and the possibility of extra support from
the Māori Party.
|
Party |
Votes |
% Party Vote |
Electorate MPs |
List MPs |
Seats in the House |
|
National |
951,145 |
45.45 |
41 |
18 |
59 |
|
Labour |
706,666 |
33.77 |
21 |
22 |
43 |
|
Green |
134,622 |
6.43 |
0 |
8 |
8 |
|
New Zealand First |
88,072 |
4.21 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
|
Act |
77,843 |
3.72 |
1 |
4 |
5 |
|
Māori |
46,894 |
2.24 |
5 |
0 |
0 |
|
Progressives |
19,536 |
0.93 |
1 |
0 |
1 |
|
United Future |
18,629 |
0.89 |
1 |
0 |
1 |
Table
of results New Zealand general election 2008
At present, the National Party is
cobbling together a parliamentary majority by securing supply and
confidence votes from the minor parties. In particular Act and United
Future who indicated during the election campaign that they would
support a National led government. No doubt the price for this will
be a few ministerial posts in the new government. This will see Sir
Roger Douglas – the architect behind the neo liberal economic
reforms in the 1980’s – return to the government benches as an
Act list MP. Most workers will find abhorrent the fact that he is
back in government. Additionally, the Māori Party have said they
would not rule out doing a deal with National which has been
advocated by their co-leader Tariana Turia during the campaign.
The
Māori Party
The
Māori
Party
had hoped to win all 7 Māori electorate seats but instead they had
to settle for 5, which was an improvement of 1 on the last election.
Labour retained the other 2 seats. Interestingly, the Māori Party
is looking to do a deal with National. As I write the Māori Party
is in talks with National and it is extremely likely that they too
will give support to a National led government by abstaining in
supply and confidence votes no doubt for a ministerial post or two.
To qualify what an abstention vote is it is in fact a cowardly way of
voting for the National Party! Let’s be quite clear if this deal
occurs the Māori party will collapse as their electoral support
disappears. This can be deduced from the fact that most Māori are
workers and they will rue the day they voted for the Māori Party.
This is further backed up by the party votes in the Māori
electorates, which Labour won over 50%, the Māori Party 28% and
National 7%. There is no mandate for such a deal to happen.
Minor
Parties
The
Greens managed to pass the 5% threshold in the party vote to secure 8
seats in parliament. This was 2 seats more than in 2005 and it is
anticipated that the Greens may gain one more list seat when the
special votes are counted. Obviously they were able to capture some
disillusioned Labour voters, but they were disappointed that they
didn’t do better. The Greens advocating green taxes as a solution
to climate change and putting the burden on workers is an explanation
as to why the Greens didn’t poll better as well as the swing to the
right during the election.
New
Zealand First failed to secure 5% of the vote and will not return to
parliament. The National Party exacted its revenge on Winston Peters
for the ‘wine box’ scandal in the 90’s. The Owen Glen affair in the
run up to the election exposed the murky waters in which all major
political parties obtain donations from wealthy people. New Zealand
First was found by the Serious Fraud Office, Police and Electoral
Commission to have no real case to answer for. However
the court of public opinion on that issue, in combination with more
general political factors, was enough to decide New Zealand First’s
fate. The other main factors were National’s perceived moved to the
left under Key together with disenchantment with the Labour-led
government and New Zealand First’s role in it.
Because
New Zealand First got 4.2% of the vote instead of the required 5%,
this was effectively a wasted vote. However, it is difficult to say
who these people would have voted for if they had known that in
advance. New Zealand First voters were mainly elderly ex-National
voters disenchanted with National’s lurch to the neo liberal right in
the past, but who could never bring themselves to vote Labour. Some
of them reverted to National this time. If they had got 5%, that
would have been enough to keep National out of government.
Bankruptcy
of the Labour Leadership:
It
was a disastrous night for the Labour Party and the working class as
a whole. Labour has been reduced to constituencies in the cities of
Dunedin, Christchurch, Wellington and Auckland (albeit with the loss
of traditional Labour constituencies of Waitakere and Auckland
Central), as well as being reduced to winning only Palmerston North
in the provinces. In Auckland’s Maungakiekie, as well as the
provincial constituencies of Rotorua and Taupo, boundary changes
helped National win these seats. However, it is doubtful that with
such a swing against Labour whether or not Labour could have held on
to these seats.
The
victory
of
the National Party at the polls is entirely due to the bankruptcy of
the Labour Party leadership, who conducted a lack lustre campaign
based on trust. After all, the right wing
leadership
of the Labour party has worked within the confines of capitalism for
the past 9 years and had no real meaningful reforms to give workers
as the government coffers are now in deficit. Despite vague
suggestions of useful public works to help ride out the recession and
attempt to mop up raising unemployment plus the pitiful policy of
introducing13 weeks unemployment benefit, as of right, for people
losing their jobs a lot of the manifesto was pared back due to it
being unaffordable!
This
resulted in the lowest turnout since 1978 and the second second
lowest turnout in a general election since 1902, with a 77% turnout
reported on election night. This was down 3% on the 2005 general
election. Additionally only 55% of voters on the Māori roll voted.
Quite simply a large proportion of workers didn’t vote Labour or just
didn’t vote. There was no enthusiasm for workers to vote Labour
and this added more weight to the idea it was time for a change.
Added
to this was the Labour government passing ‘trendy’ legislation such
as the ‘anti smacking’ Bill etc. Whilst we do not support violence
against children or within the family per se, it does not begin to
tackle the issues that working class families face and the bill
was seen by many as ‘ state interference’ and telling people what to
do. Certainly such legislation however well meant is mere
‘window dressing’ and does not tackle the real cause of the problem
capitalism itself.
Clark’s
resignation
Helen
Clark resigned as leader of the Labour Party when she graciously
accepted defeat on election night. This came as a surprise to most
in the labour and trade union movement. Clark accepted
responsibility for the defeat and ‘fell on her sword’ . This was
swiftly followed the next day by the resignation of the deputy leader
Michael Cullen. Clark’s resignation was to stop faction fighting in
the parliamentary Labour caucus and to some extent this appears to
have worked.
Already
the Labour caucus has unanimously elected right winger Phil Goff as
leader and Annette King as deputy leader. This exposes the complete
lack of democracy in the party and denies the rank and file of the
movement any say in the matter. Fundamentally, nothing has changed
as they have no answers to the problems that workers face and will
continue with the same policies of working within the confines of the
capitalist system. Phil Goff says he wishes to win the 2011 general
election on roughly the same policies that lead to defeat in 2008.
However the pressure of events will fall on them and cracks will
appear in the seemingly unified right wing Labour caucus as the
labour movement as a whole demand action against the National
government and the capitalist system.
Sects
The
Workers Party stood as an alternative to Labour in an attempt to
build a ‘revolutionary party’ outside of the traditional mass
organisations of the working class. There is no alternative for
workers outside of the labour and trade union movement and future
events will shake the mass organisations from top to bottom as the
capitalist crises unfolds. The fact that the Workers Party secured
0.04% of the party vote says it all. It polled well behind other
parties for instance the Bill and Ben Party who secured 0.51% of the
party vote!
National
government.
John
Key’s National government will be a government of absolute crises.
John Key went into the election promising to bring in change without
fully defining it. He offered a ‘bright future’ and ‘Labour lite’
policies. In fact the best description that comes to mind is the
policies of Tweedledum and Tweedledee. It is expected that when the
government books are opened the country will be NZ$2.6 billion in the
red this financial year and that this will probably increase by NZ$1
billion per year for the foreseeable future.
John
Key describes his government as being in the centre ground. However,
it will not take long for this smokescreen to be blown away with the
country in a fiscal nightmare. The National government will use the
financial crises to off load the capitalist crises onto workers and
no doubt the Act Party will urge them on to do so.
Certainly
on the agenda is an undermining of workers’ rights, workplace pay and
conditions, collective bargaining as well as the introduction of the
90 day rule whereby the employers can sack workers for no reason
without recourse in their first 90 days of employment. It is highly
unlikely that the minimum wage will be increased.
Additionally
to this is cuts in public services dressed up as culling unnecessary
bureaucrats out of the public service and possible sale of state
assets.
In
such a climate as this with growing unemployment, inflation and
undermining of workers rights, workers will have no option but to
struggle and transform their traditional organisations. This will
first take place in the trade unions as they transform them into
militant trade unions and at a later stage in the Labour Party itself
as they push it to the left to meet their socialist aspirations. The
blue touch paper has been lit!