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Tuesday, July 11, 2023

Point of Order: Government looks an “utter shambles”



So why does it still have a chance of re-election?

After a succession of ministerial stumbles, some of them fatal for the respective political careers of the stumblers, the Labour government is still buoyed by its own polling. And even independent commentators think the parties of the left are level-pegging with those on the right.

How could this be? There is little argument NZ has been hit by a cost-of-living crisis, families are going hungry, hospital emergency departments are overflowing. Others cite ministerial fumbling for the failure to deliver on policy announcements. Economists point to the deficits in the public accounts getting worse and net debt climbing.

Wherever voters look, the Labour government has a dismal story to present.

So why aren’t Opposition parties racing ahead?

Appearing on AM’s political panel, Newstalk ZB’s senior political correspondent Barry Soper and Newshub’s Patrick Gower slammed the current Labour government.

Soper said earlier this year he told Chris Hipkins, who took over the reins from Jacinda Ardern, his government is going to “fall apart” because of “the numpties that surround [him].”

“He had a bonfire of policies but he needed to have a bonfire of the numpties,” Gower replied.

“His government looks like an utter shambles. It has been a terrible year…. They look like an arrogant, out of ideas government in its third term rather than one in its second term.”

Given that both journalists have long experience in tracking NZ politics, why aren’t the polls showing Labour sinking fast? Admittedly, even on what the polls are saying Labour currently stands to lose 25 of its MPs, but could still hold on to the Treasury benches.

Maybe the parties on the right need to study a new Australian research paper “Generation Left: young voters are deserting the right”, an analysis of demographic voting behaviour released by the Centre for Independent Studies, in Sydney.

Ross Stitt, a Kiwi in Sydney, summarised this paper for the NZ Herald. He wrote that for many years, there has been a fundamental rule in politics in the Anglosphere that most voters move right on the political spectrum as they age. This rule reflects the old adage that if you don’t lean left when you’re young, you don’t have a heart, and if you don’t lean right when you’re older, you don’t have a brain.

This rightward shift has always been attributed to economic self-interest in people who acquire a home and other assets as they age.

Matthew Taylor, the author of the “Generation Left” research paper, provides compelling evidence that this rule is now breaking down in Australia.

It still applies to Baby Boomers (born between 1946 and 1964) and to Generation X (born 1965 to 1980). As those generations have aged, they have voted in higher numbers for the centre-right Coalition.

However, a very different trend is emerging for Australia’s Millennials (born 1981 to 1995) and their successors, Generation Z (born after 1995).

The evidence indicates that these two demographic cohorts are starting out on the ideological left but they’re not heading right as they age.

In fact, in the case of Generation Z, they’re heading further left.

That’s good news for the Australian Labor Party and the Greens, and bad news for the Coalition.

“We saw the result in the 2022 federal election when only one in four voters under the age of 40 gave their primary vote to the Coalition,” the paper says.

Stitt writes:

“In something of an understatement, Taylor concludes that this change in generational voting behaviour could have politically important ramifications if it continues. In short, it would make it increasingly difficult for Australia’s centre-right parties to win elections.

“What’s causing this upheaval in demographic voting patterns? In the Australian context, many younger voters believe centre-left parties offer better solutions for the problems that concern them – from economic insecurity and climate change to healthcare access and housing affordability.

“Crucially, those concerns do not appear to be going away for Millennials and Gen Zers as they age.

“Therefore, their voting preferences are also not changing”.

It would take a brave, or foolish, National Party politician to think that what happens in Australia isn’t applicable in NZ, Stitt says.

However, the report from the Centre for Independent Studies offers some hope for conservatives amid the gloom.

It states that “if a political party finds itself swimming against the structural tide, it will require pivotal blunders on the part of its adversaries to regain the political advantage”.

“Pivotal blunders” from Luxon’s adversaries? You wouldn’t rule that out,” Stitt says.

Point of Order is a blog focused on politics and the economy run by veteran newspaper reporters Bob Edlin and Ian Templeton

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Australian millennials etc. have lived through a long period of tired right-of-centre coalition governments. Wait until they've experienced 6 years of unparalleled incompetence from the left, as we have!