The outgoing National MP lost her Banks Peninsula seat in this election. She says people in her electorate told her they hated, that's her word, hated National in the lead-up to the election.
She's told reporters those people complained that National was listening too much to its coalition partners. She says her party has been dragged too far to the right and that part of her is relieved not to be in that coalition anymore.
Now, you could be forgiven for being somewhat shocked that a National MP would be so scathing of her own party but there's a little bit of context I think you need.
Vanessa readily admits she is a centrist. She was previously a member of the Labour Party and her electorate is fairly left-leaning. I mean, other than the past three years that Vanessa held the seat, Banks Peninsula had been Labour, Labour, Labour, Labour, Labour since 1999. And at this election, it's gone back to Labour.
Now, because of that, I think Vanessa Weenink has misdiagnosed National's problem.
National's problem, I don't think, is that it's gone too far to the right. I think it's that it hasn't gone far enough to the right. It's tried to resist that.
Have a look at what happened to National's vote. Between 2023 and 2026, National lost 8.85 percentage points. Maybe only 2.5 points of that went to Labour because that's roughly how much Labour went up. Most of the rest of it, around six points, went to ACT and New Zealand First, which together gained about six points.
You could argue that both of those parties, on different issues, sit further to the right than National.
Now, I personally think that tells you voters are looking to the right and they're not finding it in National.
I also think the days of straddling the centre ground are over, at least for now. Maybe not forever but for now. Things in this country are too broken for a political party to effectively do nothing about them, which is what the centre often becomes. It is the do-nothing space.
There will be recriminations and there will be examinations of what went wrong for National, causing it to slump from the high 30s to 29 percent. In the weeks and months to come, they'll dissect it and try to figure it out.
But I do not think National's problem is that it went too far to the right. At least not from the perspective of its own voters, who left it to go further right.
Heather du Plessis-Allan is a journalist and radio broadcaster who hosts Newstalk ZB's weekday Drive-Time Show – where this article was sourced.
4 comments:
One of the reasons many people didn't vote national was because it didn't fulfill its election promises in 2023. If those promises were too far right for National, why did they make those promises in the first place?
Her use of the phrase "my God" implies a personal relationship with an anthropomorphic Creator, which should be considered along with her equally improbable views on the Treaty
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/politics_election-2026/2493501/god-it-hurt-us-as-a-country-outgoing-national-mp-on-luxon-s-treaty-compromise
Everyone I know who voted for the National electoral candidate and gave ACT or NZFirst their party vote did so because of outright fury at National for refusing to tackle Treaty excesses and the authoritarian tendencies of the left parties. We had voted for National 3years ago because we wanted government to step away from those things. It didn’t do as promised in its campaign, and so it forfeited our trust and support. Without a shift to clean up these things and restore one law for all, I do not think National is going to last long in the future.
Thanks Heather - the context the msm omitted explains everything.
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