Chris Trotter: Election 2026 - when the tail is growing large enough to wag the ideological dog

From the perspective of New Zealand’s two largest parties, the first MMP election in 1996 was also the worst.

Between them, National and Labour accounted for just 62.06% of the popular vote. Pundits opined that this historically low two-party share reflected in more-or-less equal measure the novelty of the new electoral system and a substantial minority of the electorate’s emphatic rejection of politics as usual.

David Harvey: The Limits Una Jagose KC Cannot Name

Why Parliament, Not the Courts, Must Prevail

When former Solicitor-General Una Jagose KC told a Law Association breakfast on 2 July 2026 that New Zealand risks “sleepwalking” towards a collapse of the separation of powers, she framed herself as the constitution’s anxious guardian. The framing deserves scrutiny.

Chris Trotter’s Dire Warning Of A Centre-Left Election Win

Chris Trotter talks to Sean Plunket on The Platform about his fear of a Centre-Left Election Win in 2026

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Chris Trotter: Hard Choices.

If she is serious about balancing the books, and restoring Pay Equity, Labour’s finance spokesperson, Barbara Edmonds, cannot avoid imposing austerity on her party’s own voters.

LABOUR COULD WIN IN 2026, but the fiscal and monetary conservatism of its finance spokesperson makes victory increasingly unlikely. Barbara Edmonds promise to “balance the books” hasn’t just handed over Labour’s hopes of electoral victory to Fortune as hostages, it’s sold them into slavery.

Chris Trotter: Promises, Promises.

Labour's Future Fund recalls KiwiBuild, but with even less detail.

THE FUTURE FUND. Crikey, that sounds promising! How long has it been since a political party gave the future a first thought? Second thoughts are a dime-a-dozen in politics, but setting a firm priority, that’s a lot rarer. If nothing else, “Future Fund” is guaranteed to capture the voters’ attention.

And it just gets better. According to Labour (the party that’s just launched this brand-new policy) the Future Fund is intended to ensure that the job of securing New Zealand’s prosperity in the decades that lie ahead will be undertaken “by us, for us”.

Chris Trotter: Opponents, Not Enemies.

People's homes are for visiting, not picketing.

Winston Peters has every reason to be aggrieved. The protesters who turned up outside his house earlier this week crossed a line. Every citizen, be they a Minister of the Crown or street sweeper, has the right to return to their home and family in the confident expectation of being left in peace. There is a public world, where politics takes place; and a private world, where it doesn’t – unless it is invited in. The pro-Palestine activists who turned up on the Minister’s doorstep arrived without an invitation.

Chris Trotter: By Any Other Name.

THE GREENS remain a persistent political puzzle. In spite of espousing ideas and promoting policies that would keep any other party well below the five percent MMP threshold, recent polling places the party between 12 and 14 percent. If replicated in a real election, that level of support would earn the Greens 16-18 seats, making them an indispensable player in any putative government of the Left.

Chris Trotter: The sound of the majority making up its mind....

The one sound loud enough to be heard above even the most determined of political noise-makers, is the sound of the majority making up its mind

Are we living in a world where, increasingly, “noise” is drowning out “sound”? A world in which it is getting harder and harder to distinguish the discrete voices of reason from the angry roar of the crowd. Where we are assailed by the deafening racket of bad political actors determined to drown out any and all opinions but their own.

Chris Trotter: Judge Not.

FOUR HUNDRED AND FORTY men and women professing the Christian faith would appear to have imperilled their immortal souls. The second of the Ten Commandments could hardly be clearer: Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image. And yet, in their open letter to the nation’s legislators, these 440 clerics have made it equally clear that, by their adoration of te Tiriti o Waitangi, idolatry is precisely what they are guilty of. Worse still, by publicly bowing down before te Tiriti, and serving it so aggressively, they have called down upon their heads the wrath of a self-confessed “Jealous God”, whose punishments extend – even unto the fourth generation.

Then again, citing the Old Testament probably cuts little ice with these Christians. They do, after all, introduce their attack on Act leader David Seymour’s, Treaty Principles Bill with a quote from the Gospel of Matthew:

Chris Trotter: Friends Or Enemies At The Gates?

THEY WERE CALLED THE “WINGED HUSSARS”. In 1683, at the gates of Vienna, these elite Polish cavalrymen, sporting feathered “wings” designed to give them the appearance of avenging angels, provided the vanguard of the largest cavalry charge in history. Emerging unexpectedly from the forested heights above the capital city of the Hapsburg Empire, they swept down upon the besieging Ottoman army of Sultan Mehmed IV and swept it from the field.

Chris Trotter: Wooing The Masses – A Green Fairy Tale?

CHLOE SWARBRICK has embarked on a brave, but almost certainly doomed, political experiment. She has set out to build a mass movement on the foundations of a political party that rejects majoritarian decision-making, and which, by elevating the particular above the universal, makes the social solidarity that fuels mass action impossibly difficult to achieve. If the transformational movement Swarbrick is hoping to build is ever to eventuate, then she will have to fundamentally remake her party.

Chris Trotter: Victims of abuse in care are, at last, receiving recognition, apologies and compensation

Victims of abuse in care are, at last, receiving recognition, apologies and compensation, but Chris Trotter asks if the Royal Commission has given them a credible explanation of why their suffering was inflicted, and how it was able to go on for so long?

Reading the abuse in care reports, two questions requiring clear and compelling answers remain unanswered: Why? and How? Why were so many children and young people abused in such awful ways? How was it possible for so much and such appalling abuse to continue unchecked for so long? Without satisfactory responses to these two critical questions, the chances of history repeating itself must remain unacceptably high. For some reason, however, the Why and How of Abuse in Care were not made the prime focus of the Royal Commission’s investigations. Its reports tell us the Who, When, Where and What of this horror story, but, those two key questions, Why? and How?, are not adequately addressed.

Chris Trotter: Harsh truths

Like the US, New Zealand is in decline, and political elites won’t stop our infrastructure, economy, and social cohesion unravelling

THERE ARE LESSONS to be learned from the Biden-Trump debate/debacle. Important lessons, which New Zealanders would be most unwise to ignore. The first and most important of these is the need to face some harsh truths.

Chris Trotter: Going For Bloke

THE DANGERS of designing a prescriptive constitution are currently on stark display in the Green Party. No doubt with the best will in the world, and anxious to be seen as a good Tiriti partner, the Greens have burdened themselves with a constitutional requirement that at least one of their co-leaders must be a woman, and one a Māori. Confronted with the sad news of current co-leader Marama Davidson’s cancer diagnosis, and the possibility of being tasked with choosing a new co-leader, Green Party members are left facing a self-inflicted conundrum.

Chris Trotter: The Illusion of Power - How Local Govt Bureaucrats Overawe Democratically-Elected Councillors

A DISINTEGRATION OF LOYALTIES on the Wellington City Council has left Mayor Tory Whanau without a reliable majority. The cause of this disintegration has been identified by those whose loyalty has been tested to destruction as Council staff. Not only do WCC employees and consultants stand accused of pushing aggressively for the sale of the Council’s shares in Wellington Airport, but also of intimidating and threatening Councillors opposed to the proposed divestment. If these accusations are proved, then serious questions will need to be raised about the authenticity of local democracy right across New Zealand.

Chris Trotter: The Disease That Didn't Spread.

TELEVISION NEW ZEALAND’s re-screening of the documentaries it commissioned from Kindred Films in 2022 continues. Last night (26/5/24) it was “No Māori Allowed”, the bitter story of the racist South Auckland town of Pukekohe. Co-produced by Megan Jones and Reikura Kahi, and directed by Corinna Hunziker, the documentary was awarded the Best Documentary prize at the 2022 New Zealand Television Awards.

Only the most churlish and, dare I say it, racist, of viewers would refuse to acknowledge “No Māori Allowed” as anything other than a deeply moving documentary. Important, too, not merely for describing the profoundly shameful state of affairs that prevailed in Pukekohe, a town less than an hour’s drive from New Zealand’s largest city, for the best part of a century; but also for making clear the challenges facing those determined to write New Zealand’s history.

Chris Trotter: Like it or not, the Kiwis are either going into 'Pillar 2' – or they are going to China

Had Zheng He's fleet sailed east, not west, in the early Fifteenth Century, how different our world would be. There is little reason to suppose that the sea-going junks of the Ming Dynasty, among the largest and most sophisticated sailing vessels ever constructed, would have failed to make landfall on the Pacific coast of North America half-a-century before Columbus. The colonisation of the Americas, from East to West, would have consolidated China’s global hegemony irreversibly. The cramped and fratricidal states of the European peninsula would have remained minor players in a Chinese world.

In the worst geopolitical nightmares of the United States and its Pacific allies, a China grown as powerful as the empire which sent forth Zheng He’s mighty fleet, threatens to transform the Pacific into a Chinese lake.

Chris Trotter: Comity Be Damned! The State’s Legislative Arm Is Flexing Its Constitutional Muscles

THE CONSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLE of “comity” acknowledges the susceptibility of what should be complimentary state functions to dangerous entanglement. It enjoins the three branches of government; executive, legislative and judicial; to demonstrate a mutual respect for each other’s functions. Without “comity”, not only is the smooth functioning of the three branches of government put at risk, but also the political legitimacy of the state itself.

Chris Trotter: Something Important - The Curious Death of the 'School Strike 4 Climate' Movement.

THE YOUNG MAN is every centimetre the twenty-first century revolutionary: youthful, indigenous, and draped in the keffiyeh of martyred Palestine. Like so many of his generation, raised with-on-by the smart-phone, he communicates faultlessly with his audience. And what he says is every bit as revolutionary as his looks.
Except … Except his message is aimed at an audience that until this week had not, generally, been associated with the Palestinian, or the Toitū te Tiriti o Waitangi, causes – secondary school students.

Chris Trotter: Fair Enough!

DOING THE GREATEST GOOD for the greatest number has long been the ethical rule-of-thumb for New Zealand politicians. At least, that is how they would argue if challenged to justify their own, or their government’s, actions. What’s more, if they present their crudely utilitarian arguments with sufficient force, then most New Zealander’s will nod decisively, and bestow upon them that supreme Kiwi benediction: “Fair enough!”