WELLINGTON: New Zealand’s National Party may have emerged from the weekend election with a pathway back to power, but voters also delivered it a bruising rebuke - deserting the party in droves, hollowing out its senior ranks and strengthening its partners on the right.
Most conspicuous is the loss of top lawmakers. Gone are Finance Minister Nicola Willis, Attorney-General Chris Bishop, Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith, who is a jack-of-all-trades and held 10 portfolios by the end of the term, and Parliament Speaker Gerry Brownlee.
Those losses are part of a poor showing for National, which shed six seats to 42. Its coalition partners ACT and New Zealand First gained six between them to hold 25, according to preliminary results. That could give the smaller parties greater leverage in coalition negotiations, including more influence over policy and ministerial positions.
The three centre-right parties together have 67 seats in an enlarged 131-seat parliament on the preliminary count, making them the most likely future government. The final result may still shift as special votes are counted.
"It’s going to be a very different government to the incumbent government,” said Richard Shaw, a politics professor at Massey University. "If the government has a majority, it won’t be large.”
National has been undergoing the same transition as the political right-wing around the world, moving away from the free-market, socially liberal model, said Ben Thomas, a former National government press secretary who now works as a political commentator and public relations consultant.
"This result probably accelerates it,” he said, noting that the departing Willis and Bishop were among the most socially liberal, or centrist, members of the National Party.
"That doesn’t mean National immediately becomes a super-reactionary conservative party,” he said, "but it will be more conservative, particularly with two of its leading liberal voices gone.”
‘Miss them tremendously’
The pair were also seen as future leaders of the party.
"It’s a huge blow,” David Farrar, a political commentator and founder of Wellington-based polling firm Curia Market Research, said about the loss of Willis and Bishop.
"It’s not that there aren’t other MPs who could become competent ministers. But there’s a difference between a competent minister and a powerful, strategic minister who can push a transformational policy agenda.”
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon was on Sunday (Nov 8) asked whether he took personal responsibility for the loss of so many of his cabinet.
"I do take responsibility,” he told reporters, "I feel it keenly.”
"These are my friends,” he added, "I’m going to miss them tremendously.”
A diminished National won’t enter coalition negotiations from the same position of strength it enjoyed after the 2023 election. Even then, Massey University’s Shaw said, Luxon was often outmaneuvered by ACT leader David Seymour and New Zealand First leader Winston Peters. This suggests the smaller parties may wield even greater influence this time.
"If we find ourselves back in that situation again with a diminished National Party minus Willis, Goldsmith, Bishop where’s the intellectual heft coming from?” he said. "It’s coming from the right of the National Party, and so this becomes a right-wing government, rather than a centre-right government.”
In that scenario, the policy prescription could be more austere, with further cuts to government spending and the public service, and renewed attempts to interfere with the race relations model and how the rights of indigenous Māori are handled, Shaw suggested.
Luxon said the current government ministers would continue in a caretaker capacity until the new government is sworn in. Though ACT leader Seymour has said he would like the finance portfolio, Luxon said that job will be taken by National. - Bloomberg
