Senior Labour MP Megan Woods has been reselected as the party’s campaign chair for the 2023 election. She tells political editor Jo Moir one of the biggest challenges will be debating political ideas without it dividing the nation.
A theme of the local government elections currently underway has been the number of candidates coming forward with conspiracy theorist views.
Labour’s campaign chair Megan Woods says she hopes for the sake of politics and the country that people with anti-vaccination and conspiracy views don’t become part of the candidate landscape at next year’s general election.
“I hope that as a New Zealander just as much as the campaign chair for Labour because I just don’t think that’s where we want to be as a country or a people in terms of that level of division and polarisation within our country.
“This is something we are going to have to think about as we think about what the campaign will look like,” Woods told Newsroom.
In 2020 Labour won an unprecedented single-party majority at the election - a landslide victory never seen under MMP and at a time when Covid dominated the debate.
“This election will be a return to MMP as usual. Whatever poll you look at, it’s looking like most MMP elections - it’s tight and it’s going to be a drag race between the two main parties and what happens with minor parties will be critical,” she told Newsroom.
“I think the world has changed and New Zealand has changed quite a lot since 2020.
“I think there are more keenly felt divisions and the ability to disagree with each other without it being divisive or being divided is something that has changed a lot since the 2020 election,” Woods said.
The challenge will be how to “navigate our way through having a contest of ideas which is actually constructive … rather than becoming something that’s polarising and divisive”.
“I think New Zealanders will want to see without the pandemic there, what it is that Labour has on offer this time.” - Megan Woods
Woods says cross-party relationships are crucial in any MMP environment, evidenced by New Zealand First’s kingmaker position in the past and Te Pāti Māori regularly featuring in recent polls in the same position.
While no formal conversations have taken place between Labour and Te Pāti Māori, Woods says “the ability to work with colleagues across political parties is really important and it’s what voters demand”.
“We can look at our terms of record in government and we’ve actually got through a term with minor parties that have remained intact - that’s not always the case in New Zealand.”
New Zealand First didn’t return to Parliament at the 2020 election so there is no formal ongoing relationship between Winston Peters’ party and Labour, but Woods says there continues to be long-term relationships with some in the party.
Covid was so dominant at the 2020 election - voting even got pushed out by a month due to a Covid outbreak in Auckland right at the start of the original campaign period.
Woods describes Covid as “sucking up all the bandwidth’’ during that election and into this term of Parliament.
“I think New Zealanders will want to see without the pandemic there, what it is that Labour has on offer this time.
“Imagine what we can do now when we don’t have lockdowns and things grinding to a halt. Or the fact that as a government - from politicians to the public service - there have had to be other priorities as we got through a global pandemic,” she said.
“None of us came into politics to manage a global pandemic, that was never the plan." - Megan Woods
It isn’t the typical path of going into a potential third term of government, Woods said, given there has been “this bit in the middle for us where the focus has been on something other than our work programme”.
But as a result, the senior leadership team of Labour is what Woods would call “battle-hardened”.
“In terms of what we’ve dealt with over the five years we’ve been in government; I don’t think any of us could have imagined that on the day we were sworn in as ministers.”
Woods said her attention and that of her Labour colleagues is turning to the party’s manifesto and what they want to achieve now that the country is in a new post-Covid phase.
“We’re looking forward to the next phase where we get the opportunity to talk to New Zealanders about the things that many of us came into politics for.
“None of us came into politics to manage a global pandemic, that was never the plan,” she said.
Cost-of-living, poverty and health are going to be three of the big pillars for Labour’s campaign, and the party plans to leverage off the “strength of the rest of the team”.
“If you compare that to what National is going to put on offer, I think that’s a comparison we will want to be drawing. You take away Christopher Luxon and Nicola Willis and there’s not a lot of strength there,’’ Woods said.
There has been both public and political criticism of the exposure the Prime Minister had during the Covid-19 response, with some suggesting Jacinda Ardern’s daily presence at the 1pm press conferences reached saturation levels.
Woods disagrees the public has seen an “overload’’ of Ardern, instead pointing to it being her role and job to lead during what was an “unprecedented set of circumstances”.
“She is an asset that I think any political party in the world would like to have, so we certainly value and cherish that.”
