The most common and cutting critique of Jacinda Ardern’s Labour government was that it couldn’t get anything done.
Transport was the best cudgel for this attack. Ardern came to power promising a light rail line in Auckland that six years later nobody has started to build. Tens of millions were spent on planning a bridge across the city’s harbour that ended up scrapped.
But there were serious policy achievements managed by the Labour government, led by Ardern and then Chris Hipkins, which was brutally swept from power on Saturday. The problem for that legacy is that much of it is on the chopping block of the incoming National-led government.
In welfare and poverty reduction, Ardern made global headlines for slapping the word “wellbeing” before “budget”. Less noisy but far more effective were a series of new benefits, welfare increases, and changes to the way welfare was administered. The new benefits and existing boosts appear fairly safe - a Winter Energy Payment that tops up incomes and a “best start” payment for all new parents.
But National has indicated that it will reverse a change Labour made to link working age benefit rises to wages, instead going back to the old formula of linking them to inflation. Since in normal times wages rise faster than inflation, this will mean over the long term benefits fall, especially in relation to the state pension, which will still be linked to wages. It’ll save National about NZ$2bn but mean a pretty serious material change to beneficiaries’ lives – including disabled people.
In housing Ardern’s government made a host of reforms National has promised to undo. Landlords will again be able to evict tenants without cause, deduct their interest payments from their tax bill, and sell their property investment after two years without incurring any tax on the capital gain. Foreigners will again be able to buy residential property - but only houses over NZ$2m, and this specific policy might fall foul of potential coalition partner NZ First.
It will also be harder to build medium density housing. Despite National actually co-authoring the government’s landmark zoning reform, which gave developers a right to three-storey townhouses on most urban residential land, the party was put pressure on by Act and its own constituents in leafy low-density suburbs to scrap the policy, and replace it with a far weaker proposition. Councils will once again have the power to stop a lot of new housing being built. On the plus side for Labour, the state housebuild programme it super-charged looks set to continue under National.
The workplace is the traditional fighting ground of Labour and National, so much of Ardern’s moves here will be reversed. ‘Fair Pay Agreements’ - an attempt to bring sectoral bargaining which would set floors for pay and conditions in certain sectors - is bound for the scrap heap. Ninety day trials of incoming employees will be re-introduced.
But there are changes here that National aren’t keen to undo - like the doubling of sick leave to 10 days a year and the introduction of the new Matariki public holiday. Act would like to go further on these policies, but the fight the government would have getting rid of a public holiday or reducing sick leave would probably not be worth it.
It will not be a complete rewind of the clock to 2017 when National were last in power. The Ardern government legalised abortion and eventually a members’ bill instituted safe zones around abortion clinics. Incoming prime minister Christopher Luxon might be anti-abortion, but he won’t go anywhere near that issue. Act will want to get rid of the gun control measures brought in after the 15 March attack but will find it hard to roll things back as far as it would like. The Zero Carbon Act with its legally binding carbon budgets is supposedly safe, as is the beefed up Emissions Trading Scheme which now features a cap on the total amount of non-agricultural emissions. Hundreds of other small policies instituted over these six years will survive in some form.
But when compared to the last Labour government, which lasted three terms instead of two, a lot less of it will survive. The red tide came in very high in 2020, but it is on its way out.
Henry Cooke is a freelance journalist covering New Zealand politics
