Change ahead for Godzone?
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| A new dawn for Wellington? |
The Radio New Zealand website
headline seemed a must-read: Myrtle Rust Found In Waikato.
Yet another overseas tourist lost
in a snowstorm? Anticipate tales of heroic
search-and-rescue. Or maybe she’s a notorious bank robber on the run in the
North Island region named after the longest river (425 kilometers).
Neither. Myrtle Rust is a plant disease discovered on
two trees now legally cordoned and rapidly felled. That this yawn was deemed national news reveals
much about the small South Pacific nation now considered a safe retreat should
nuclear warheads explode in North Korea.
Another factor was dollars. Apart from tourism NZ leans heavily on agricultural
exports. So an alien bug should be feared by all, even one with a benign
forename.
Myrtle aside there’s an even bigger
event underway and getting international coverage– an election which looks
increasingly likely to be lost by the incumbent National Party headed by Bill
English, 55, a competent economist but a bland politician.
His Labour Party challenger is Jacinda
Ardern, 37, fun, young but untested. Straw-grabbers have compared her to French
President Emmanuel Macron, 40, another fresh contender from behind.
Ardern has been in Parliament for
less than a decade and before that in backroom politics – including the UK
where she was on the staff of Labour PM Tony Blair.
That a woman might become PM
without the sky falling shows the cultural gap with the US. NZ was the first
nation to give women the vote in 1893; two decades ago voters put National’s
Jenny Shipley into the top job.
She was succeeded by Labour’s
Helen Clark. She held on for three terms
(each of three years) till unseated by banker John Key in 2008.
Clark then joined the United
Nations in New York as head of its development program. Last year she stood unsuccessfully for the
secretary general’s job.
Kiwis believe a woman’s place is
everywhere so few journalists dare ask gender-based questions. Voters may want
to know Ardern’s marriage plans and dress tips; she accepts the reality but
prefers policy talk.
For the record her father Ross is
NZ High Commissioner to the Pacific Island of Niue. She lives with her radio
presenter boyfriend. No kids. Though
raised a Mormon she’s now an agnostic. In NZ these traits are no handicap,
though her opponent is a married Catholic with six children.
Two months ago middle-road National
looked certain to win based on its record of economic stability and few major political
crises. Yet housing problems caused by rising migration, high prices and few
new builds have forced families to rent, not buy, putting pressure on social
services.
There’s been some resentment towards cashed-up arrivals
from China (12 per cent) followed by the UK (many said to be Brexit refugees)
and Australia at ten per cent each. The rest
are Indians, Pacific Islanders and returning Kiwis according to Statistics NZ.
About 74,000 immigrants a year is an entree in Europe
but a main course in a nation with only 4.7 million people - and 30 million
sheep.
National’s fortunes collapsed followed Ardern’s sudden
leap to Opposition leader last month when her boss, charisma-free Andrew Little,
accepted he’d been ineffectual.
Overseas Aotearoa (the Maori name
for NZ) is known as a milk-and-honey progressive state. However not all is
clean and green. Although crime is falling the jail rate of 212 for every 100,000
citizens puts NZ alongside Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.
More than 40 per cent of those
behind bars are Maori, yet the original occupiers represent just a seventh of
the population; this suggests many ethnic, education and employment issues
still resist resolution.
NZ was a global pioneer in
welfare for all; hospital care is free, medicines subsidised and pensions not
means tested as they are in Australia where wages are higher and taxes lower.
Yet by comparison with its big
northern neighbor NZ is doing well; economic growth is three per cent and the
budget balanced. The Great South Land is being ravaged by a mining slump, factional
fights over global warming, and moral storms about same sex marriage.
NZ passed that law four years ago. Visitors expecting Sodom and Gomorrah will be
disappointed; last year just 465 local same-sex couples got hitched while
almost 20,000 opposite sex pairs followed suit.
The change was easier because NZ
is a unicameral state so no upper house to reject laws. It uses the Mixed-Member Proportional
representation voting system.
Electors get two votes, party and
candidate. The Electoral Commission says MMP’s ‘defining characteristics are a
mix of MPs from single-member electorates and those elected from
a party list.’ A party's portion of
the 120 seats ‘roughly mirrors its share of the overall nationwide party vote.’
This gives the five minors more clout.
The Greens dominate but this year imploded over welfare policies.
Unlike Australia there’s no compulsory
voting. The Saturday 23 September
election is in spring but NZ’s fickle weather could keep voters indoors.
Traditionally the elderly exercise
their democratic duty. In the last election 22 per cent of electors couldn’t
bother. Labour strategists hope Ardern’s feisty independence and bright
countenance will stir youngsters to vote.
The issues have been largely
domestic and so far the debates generally civilised. National is free market,
but not US extreme. Labour is socialist, but not UK radical.
The country has a small defence
force and relies on the ANZUS Treaty with Australia and the US. Having a
massive arid continent between Godzone (God’s own country) and the world’s
trouble spots helps calm nerves.
NZ has been pushing into
Southeast Asia to boost trade and opening new consulates in Indonesia. However NZ
harbors a small but vocal group supported by seven Pacific Island states alleging
human-rights abuses in West Papua.
Their campaign has been annoying Indonesia. Should Labour win on 23 September their calls
for greater transparency could find a more supportive government. * Disclosure:
The author is a registered NZ elector.
(First published in Strategic Review, 14 September 2017:
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