Chris Hipkins refers to 'bread and butter issues', and Christopher Luxon fails to get beyond platitudinous National positions – why are our politics so dismal?
Opinion: October is an exhaustingly long time away in politics and life. Given the fraught state of the world and the feverish state of the country, no end of unpredictable things will happen between now and then. Thus, any prognostication about our next election seems premature, if not foolish.
That said, some aspects of our political culture are deeply entrenched. We can be sure, for example, the party in power will defend its record; and the party in opposition will say that’s all rubbish – only we know how to make New Zealanders wealthier and happier.
Two problems arise. Labour has achieved more in the past six years than most voters believe. For example, among OECD countries last year, we had the fourth fastest growing economy and the fifth lowest unemployment rate; and housing approvals under the Ardern government have averaged twice the rate under the Key government.
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Yet Labour’s efforts to make its case for the good elements of its economic management are feeble. Thus, the dominant narrative is about its failure, for example, to curb house prices or to help guide economic transformation.
National has once again squandered its time in opposition fighting among itself then rehashing simplistic old policies. Cuts in tax, spending and regulation were inadequate in simpler times. Worse, they fail to address the intense new complexities of economics, politics, society, culture and the environment.
Moreover, Labour and National are now led by middle-aged, risk-averse Pākehā men with narrow backgrounds in politics and business respectively. That said, Chris Hipkins has advantages over Christopher Luxon. He has a stronger grip on policy, more acute political instincts, and a more spontaneous sense of humour.
Yet Hipkins is struggling to effectively frame issues in his first few days as Prime Minister. He talks of focusing on “bread and butter issues”. That suggests simple, everyday things affecting most people. But what about the complex, long-term issues such as climate breakdown or child poverty that require government to create strong public support for complex, long-term solutions?
He talks of a “cost of living crisis” but will he have the political courage to help push real solutions such as greater competition between supermarkets, construction efficiency in housing and infrastructure, and much greater investment by businesses in technology, training and more sophisticated strategies so they can pay higher wages?
Likewise, Luxon fails to get beyond platitudinous National positions. He’s promising policy substance close to the election. But if he was confident he had something new and appealing to offer, he should reveal it now. National needs to show it has some big, attractive plans and start building support for them.
Instead, Nicola Willis, National’s finance spokesperson, offered only back-to-the-future views in an interview this week with Bernard Hickey on The Kākā. As she describes it, National would revert the Reserve Bank’s economic mandate to the single task of fighting inflation. It was successful at that over the past 30 years, she said. Labour adding full employment to its mandate had been a distraction. That simplistic understanding of the RB’s role, though, fails to acknowledge the vast global, interconnected economic complexities the RB has to respond to these days.
Similarly, Willis is worryingly wrong-headed on climate. She identified “the big subsidies going into the likes of Fonterra to meet its climate change obligations” as an example of government spending “we think should not be justified at a time when inflation's running hot”.
First of all, Fonterra and the rest of the primary sector currently have minimal obligations to reduce their on-farm emissions. Should this government, or National if it succeeds it, reach such an agreement with farmers to do so, moderately large sums of money will flow as an investment. It will encourage them to finally begin catching up with agricultural climate leaders overseas such as Nestlé and Danone.
Second, National has just changed its climate spokesman yet again – from Scott Simpson back to Todd Muller. That’s a good choice in one sense – Muller knows more and has a better sense of the big picture than Simpson has.
But it’s also a worry. Muller ran Fonterra’s government relations before he went into politics. It’s hard to imagine him being tough enough to crack the dairy and meat sectors’ climate defensiveness, which is increasingly a major threat to their international competitiveness.
Third, National just simply doesn’t get the five most fundamental things about the climate crisis: it’s right here, right now; it’s accelerating rapidly; it sets the timetable for our responses; we can’t keep putting off action hoping for a better time to act later; and the right action now helps us build a more resilient, more sophisticated and wealthier economy and society.
Here are two recent reports that detail how rapidly the energy and industrial responses to climate are ramping up globally. The first is from the International Energy Agency.
“The energy world is at the dawn of a new industrial age – the age of clean energy technology manufacturing – that is creating major new markets and millions of jobs but also raising new risks, prompting countries across the globe to devise industrial strategies to secure their place in the new global energy economy,” the IEA says.
The second is from the World Resources Institute and some of its technology and science partners. Its title is: The Breakthrough Effect: How to trigger a cascade of tipping points to accelerate the net zero transition.
It gives detailed analysis of decarbonisation efforts across all major sectors globally. From these it picks three – EVs, plant-based protein and green ammonia – which it argues are "super-leverage points" that could trigger a cascade of decarbonisation in sectors of the economy that generate 70 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions.
Those are just examples of the intense ambition and action globally across two areas in which humanity’s greatest challenges and opportunities lie. And there is similar engagement on every other issue too.
So, why are we so moribund? Why are our politics so dismal?
