A moderate millennial newcomer could decide knife-edge New Zealand election

By Todd Symons, CNN

New Zealand is set for one of its tightest elections in years, with the incumbent conservative coalition facing an uncertain path to power and polls pointing to a millennial newcomer becoming the kingmaker.

Support for two parties that have dominated Wellington politics for almost a century – the center-right National party and center-left Labour party – has cratered below 30% respectively in public polling, with voters turning to players entrenched further to the right, the left, and to a centrist party that could enter parliament for the first time.

Frustrated with soaring living costs, stubbornly high unemployment and a stagnant economy in recent years, voters on Saturday are looking beyond their traditional choices.

Shaking up the race is the centrist Opportunity party, led by Qiulae Wong, an articulate 38-year-old former sustainable business consultant and mother of two, who goes by ‘Q’ for short. She entered politics just a year ago by responding to a job advertisement for the party’s leadership role.

Her party, pitching itself as both business and climate friendly and promising a land tax as well as a universal basic income to replace welfare payments, looks set to secure enough votes to cross the 5% threshold required to secure seats in parliament, on current polling.

That would make it the first total outsider party (not involving established political figures) to do so in 30 years –– a “super significant” feat according to Lara Greaves, an associate professor in politics at Wellington’s Victoria University.

“There’s not been really anything like it, and we’ve seen a number of well-funded attempts,” she told CNN, explaining that the party was finding appeal with people “frustrated with the status quo.”

If Saturday’s results mirror the polls, Opportunity would hold the balance of power – with both the incumbent right and the opposition left coalition groupings in need of their support to secure a majority.

Effectively, that means Wong could have her choice of government, and her party is happy to work with either side.

But Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, who leads the right-wing National-led coalition government, has already ruled out a post-election deal with Opportunity. He may yet face the stark choice of walking that back or losing power.

Neither Luxon, who faced-down two caucus confidence votes in his leadership this year, nor his key opponent Labour’s Chris Hipkins (a former prime minister himself) have been able to endear themselves to the public like former leaders Jacinda Ardern and John Key.

Their relative unpopularity has shattered a decadeslong trend of battle royale-style campaigns between the major party leaders, giving the minor party contenders more attention and putting them in a position to have significant influence over the direction of the next government.

Coalitions are a near constant under the South Pacific nation’s mixed-member proportional (MMP) voting system, but the minor parties have traditionally been supporting players, being granted a tiny proportion of cabinet posts and limited policy concessions.

The powerful position the minor parties find themselves in this year is “unprecedented territory,” says Greaves. “This is going to be the first time we’re going to see these coalition agreements where the minor parties are really going to be saying: ‘Hey, we got a big chunk of the vote. You have to stop treating us like children.’”

But that makes it “really hard to know what you’re voting for,” she said, explaining that fringe policies that get little attention during the campaign can ultimately end up on the government’s agenda after negotiations.

The incumbent National-led coalition – New Zealand’s most right-wing government in a generation – could be pushed further to the right by its emboldened partners, who have touted deepening Culture War-style policies at times on the campaign trail.

For example, the right-wing-libertarian ACT party has vowed to end affirmative action schemes at the country’s medical schools, while the nationalist New Zealand First party has promised sweeping immigration changes and its populist leader Winston Peters has voiced support for a review of the ban on gay conversion therapy.

“With the 2023 government, a lot of people argue that that was already a huge lurch to the right, especially in terms of (indigenous) Māori rights… So that’s potentially concerning for more moderate voters,” said Greaves.

Conversely, parties on the right have warned voters would face a raft of new taxes if a leftist coalition were able to form a government – with Labour promising a capital gains tax, and the leftist Greens touting taxes on the “super rich” and big tech companies who take New Zealand earned profits overseas.

“If the left bloc were to win, they would have this real concern about exactly how they get the money to do what they want to do,” said Greaves.

In recent decades, New Zealand elections have typically been easy to predict, but even the experts are struggling to foresee what voters will deliver on Saturday.

“What’s going to happen? No idea,” said Greaves.

Should Luxon’s National-led coalition lose, it will become the first single-term New Zealand government in more than half a century.

The-CNN-Wire
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