Analysis - David Seymour is usually more a talker than a fighter, an ideas man; but he's been flexing his political muscles during this election campaign. Running as high 13 percent in major media polls this year (and even 18 percent in one Roy Morgan), ACT has been threatening to become the most successful minor party ever under MMP. (New Zealand First got 13.3 percent in 1996, in the first MMP election). But with two polls showing ACT slipping to 10 percent, has the mouse roared too much and is Seymour misreading the mood for change?
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In this week's Caucus podcast, we look at what the polls are suggesting a change of government may look like. Labour and the Greens are painting the picture of a National-ACT coalition as the most free-market, right-wing government New Zealand has ever seen. If New Zealand First is needed, they predict chaos. And as Guyon Espiner says in the podcast, Luxon's inexperience alongside Peters' and Seymour's belligerence could mean we are back at the polls in no time if the votes require that three-way coalition arrangement.
At this stage, voters don't seem to be concerned. National leader Christopher Luxon has caught up with Labour's Chris Hipkins in the preferred prime minister stakes as National has reached 39 or 40 percent in this week's polls. that suggests that, while New Zealanders may not be taking Luxon to their collective breast, he's passed a certain sniff test. He's not the liability Labour was hoping he'd be. Sure, he repeats lines like a parrot and his tax plan doesn't add up, but he's good enough. And he's working hard not to appear mean and scary. Just this week Luxon said, "I consider myself very much a centrist and I'm very much a pragmatist." So voters don't seem to be afraid of a hard swing to the right as in 1984 or 1990. And most of all, he's not the incumbent government.
Just as the British public voted out Winston Churchill within weeks of VE Day at the end of the Second World War and chose a new government to 'win the peace', so the New Zealand public seem to want to wash their hands of the pandemic government. So long and thanks for all the vax.
That puts the pressure on National to, as Lisa Own puts it, deliver the sunlight. Voters are wanting better times and any new government will be on the clock to deliver, which could be hard in this global economic (and literal) climate.
But to form a government, Luxon will almost certainly need ACT. Enter Seymour stage right. And he's very much not interested in propping up a centrist government. In a revealing interview on TVNZ's Q+A last year he said National tends to campaign from the right and govern from the left, never overturning Labour's reforms. "The ACT Party says that's just not good enough," Seymour told Jack Tame in July 2022. In the first 100 days, that's the litmus test. Are you prepared to take some of this stuff on?"
ACT knows minor parties only get so much time in government, and even less at 10 percent or more. He doesn't want to be what the Greens have been to Labour the past six years. Expect a full court press from a party motivated more by liberal principles than shiny BMWs. To quote Eminem, Seymour knows he's going to "only get one shot, do not miss your chance to blow".
Photo: RNZ / Calvin Samuel
Seymour does not want Luxon the centrist, he wants Luxon the Air New Zealand CEO going line by line through the budget to cut costs. By Christmas he wants many of the Ardern and Hipkins era reforms consigned to history, from Three Waters and gun laws to co-governance and fair pay agreements. Most of those National will happily concede or have promised to axe themselves. Seymour will want to go further. As the presumptive minister over-seeing his new Ministry of Regulation, he will look to shrink the size of government. And as Owen says in this week's episode, he's identified on Checkpoint that tax reform is top of his list; ideally a move to ACT's two-tier tax system (17.5 percent and 28 percent).
This week he floated the idea that if National and ACT are a majority of MPs after the election but National won't go far enough, he might offer a new minority government confidence, but not supply. That is, Luxon could go to the Governor-General after the election and say he has the confidence of a majority of MPs, but that he doesn't have the majority needed to pass the Budget next year. That negotiations were ongoing.
It's never been done before and it would likely never fly. While the Governor-General would likely have to accept such an unprecedented offer and let National form a minority government, in truth confidence and supply go together like a horse and carriage. I tell ya brother, you can't have one without the other (hat tip: Frank Sinatra). New Zealand's constitutional conventions say pretty strongly that if you can't pay the bills, you can't run the government. And it would be anything but the "strong and stable" government Luxon is currently promising on high-rotate.
Labour and the Greens want to use this prospect of instability and a swing right to fret voters into a rethink. So far Luxon and Nicola Willis are assuring voters - if they are in fact worried - that they can and will restrain ACT. But the questions will only grow in the next month.
Photo: RNZ/ Niva Chittock
That could spell risk for ACT. While the polls suggest a mood for change, it's hard to see a mood for a big liberal change. Not for the "real change" that Seymour wants. As is almost always the case in New Zealand elections, voters are signaling they want rid of the incumbent, not inviting massive policy shifts. As Espiner says, sometimes voters treat governments like a game of beach cricket - it's just someone else's turn.
Seymour risks overplaying his hand and pushing 'beach cricket' voters back to National (as we've seen in this week's polls) or even to New Zealand First. Because there stands Winston Peters, once again reassuring voters this isn't his first rodeo and he can be the centrist handbrake to ACT's promise to 'take this stuff on'. Peters hopes that - and a little race-baiting - is enough for NZF to reach 5 percent.
So does Seymour moderate his language or double-down? Do voters on the right swing back to National now they are looking stronger, consider NZF or do they go to ACT to encourage more substantial change?
Luxon for now parrots the line that he only wants to talk about National and anything else is hypothetical. But every political future is hypothetical. National's tax plan is hypothetical, but he still talks about it. Under MMP, voters deserve to know not just what single parties want to do, but what coalition governments might do. Luxon has ruled out some ACT policies and will be under pressure to take a position on more.
So the key campaign questions have become what National and ACT can agree on and whether New Zealand First reaches 5 percent on election day and is needed as part of any coalition deals.