New Zealand’s election returned a landslide victory for Jacinda Ardern’s Labour Party. Labour won 64 seats, with the closest party behind them the National Party with 35 seats. This is the first time that any party has won an outright majority in New Zealand’s 120 seat assembly since a new form of voting was introduced in 1996. The victory follows a 3 year coalition of Labour and the right wing New Zealand First, with the Greens providing confidence and supply. Ardern was also the Prime Minister of this coalition government.
Ardern ran on her leadership mantra of kindness, which seemed to resonate with New Zealanders. Perceived as compassionate and charismatic after the right-wing terrorist attack in Christchurch, an earthquake and now during the COVID-19 pandemic, she is a positive point of reference for many in New Zealand and internationally. However, with New Zealand in recession and the global pandemic and economic crisis continuing apace, one is left to wonder how far compassion and charisma can get Ardern.
Election in context of COVID-19
It is impossible to talk about this election without talking about the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time of writing, New Zealand has had a total of 1,973 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 25 deaths.
As the virus began to spread globally, the government was quick to place New Zealand under lockdown and close its borders. Only citizens and permanent residents could return and had to self-isolate for 14 days. People were asked to stay indoors and there was a ban on all non-essential travel and work, with schools, public venues and more all being closed. The fast and effective lockdown allowed life in New Zealand to return to near-normal in June.
After eliminating the virus and recording no new cases for 102 days, New Zealand faced new outbreaks and clusters after it was reimported from overseas in August. Those cases were caught and another 22 days elapsed with no further infections detected, before new clusters emerged late in October, again from being re-imported. This situation stands in stark contrast to other countries’ second waves, with only 70 active cases, numbers that reflect the approach the government took.
In the context of capitalist governments around the globe disastrously mishandling the covid crisis, brazenly placing profit before people’s lives, it is understandable that Jacinda Ardern and the Labour Party’s response stands out to many as a relatively good example of how to deal with the pandemic. Ardern leaned heavily on this during her campaign dubbing it the ‘Covid election.’
“Jacindamania”
The landslide victory is the latest instance of a sense of enthusiasm and momentum around Ardern. When elected leader of Labour in August 2017 she had behind her massive support dubbed “Jacindamania.” For many she has been seen as an inspiration, with the fact that she is a young woman dominating mainstream politics a key talking point.
Less than a day after she was elected leader of Labour she was faced by a journalist with a sexist question regarding when she was going to have a child — a condescending question many women face when talking about their career. But the fact Ardern did go on to have a baby during her first term as Prime Minister brought a lot of positive media attention and was widely promoted as being an inspirational example to women everywhere.
Ardern and Labour’s real record
Likened by some to Corbyn in the UK and Sanders in the US she has championed bills on child poverty and equal rights for LGBTIQ people. After the last election she also pledged to solve New Zealand’s dire housing crisis.
But unlike the bold campaigns of Corbyn and Sanders, Ardern has made it clear that she doesn’t want to break with the policies of New Zealand Labour who introduced sweeping cuts and privatisation as well as severe neo-liberal attacks on workers rights during the 80s and 90s.
Aside from working for avowed anti-socialist Tony Blair, she also worked for former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clarke who oversaw cuts to public services while allowing private profits to sky rocket. Ardern in the past has also ruled out reversing previous austerity policies.
Whenever she spoke on the previous government’s poor record on tax evasion, she managed to put tax evasion and so-called ‘benefit fraud’ on a level playing field, stating: “Of course we should pursue people who abuse social security. But we should take the same approach with those who misuse the tax system — the magnitude of that fraud is significant and is just as wrong.”
In the last government, Ardern’s flagship policy was on housing, pledging to solve the housing crisis time and again. The government’s initiative called KiwiBuild aimed to create 100,000 affordable homes within 10 years. Yet they had pie on their face when they failed to do this and fell short of their target of building 1000 homes in their first year, only constructing about 300!
KiwiBuild is nothing short of a failure. These so called affordable homes sell for an upper limit of NZ$500,000 (GB£256,240.96) for a one-bedroom home, NZ$600,000 (GB£307,489.15) for a two-bed, and NZ$650,000 (GB£333,113.25) for three bedrooms or more. Instead of the Government initiating a public building program to construct the houses itself and provide high quality jobs and apprenticeships, it handed over millions of dollars directly to for-profit developers! This “market based” non-solution is more evidence of Ardern’s neo-liberal anti-worker politics.
The failure to solve the housing crisis lays bare the nature of capitalism. Even those seen as on the more moderate end of capitalism, like Ardern, are not able to offer real solutions. Working class people’s faith should not be put into these politicians as they will just sew the seeds of future failure and allow capitalism’s brutal nature to continue.
New Zealand not immune to global recession
These trends seem set to continue. Whilst New Zealand and Ardern have been celebrated internationally for the response to the virus, many people in New Zealand are suffering job losses and serious poverty, in part due to the effect of the lockdown and the pandemic. New Zealand is now in its worst recession in 11 years, with GDP decreasing by 12.2% from April to June.
Speaking to supporters after the election results Ardern said “… I can promise you we will be a party that governs for every New Zealander.” However, looking at Labour’s record it appears this will not be the case.
In September UNICEF released a report which placed New Zealnd 35th out of 41 high-income countries in terms of child welfare, suicide rates and environment among other things. When Ardern promises to govern for everyone does she include the 13% of children living in material hardship? These numbers reflect 1 in 8 children in New Zealand and disproportionately represent Māori and Pacific Islander children. Nearly a quarter of Māori children and close to 3 in 10 Pacific Islander children live in material hardship.
Māori and Pacific Islanders face extreme hardship
Any illusions that New Zealand is some type of progressive bastion in a world in crisis can summarily be dismissed by looking at the discrimination and horrid conditions Māori people and people from Pacific Island countries face. Many have been forced into homelessness by low benefits and high rents. In official data Māori people suffer higher unemployment, higher incarceration and lower educational achievement.
The houses of many Pacific Island families are becoming overcrowded. This is because Auckland has now become one of the most expensive cities in the world to live in, coupled with high immigration from Pacific Island countries due to the effects of climate change.
New Zealand First, a right-populist party led by a Māori man Winston Peters, tap into the disillusionment many Māori people have with the establishment, opposing ‘foreigner’ influence in New Zealand, especially East Asians. Therefore on top of the capitalist class stoking up divisions between workers of European descent and Māori people, there is also xenophobia whipped up against East Asian immigrants. While it is positive that this election reflects a certain rejection of these views, if Ardern’s Labour doesn’t actually solve the mass poverty affecting Māori people (which it won’t), then some may be drawn toward Winston Peters-style politics.
Who pays for the crisis?
Labour winning such a landslide could be seen by many as a step in the right direction, especially with Ardern at the helm. While many recognise their handling of the Covid crisis as positive, their economic policies and neglect of minorities do not stand the test of time. Ardern is the seemingly friendly and progressive face of the same old big business establishment. She cannot be expected to fundamentally change anything, and her and Labour’s record shows that this majority government will not be of any benefit to working class people, whether they are Māori, Pacific Islander or otherwise.
Due to the early wrangling of the virus New Zealand’s crisis may be shallower than in other countries, but despite this there is still a very serious recession. The question now is, who will Ardern thrust the bill for the economic fallout of the Covid crisis onto? The answer to this is quite clear — the entire working class. Ardern’s entire political history points to neo-liberal anti-worker measures, and not toward asking big businesses to pay more taxes.
Working-class and anti-racist struggle points way forward
As such, working class and young people should not stand back and pin hopes for real change on to Labour and Jacinda Ardern. Only struggle from below will deliver relief.
Ardern’s last term saw significant strikes take place and trade union membership grow. In 2018 nurses in the New Zealand Nurses Organisation (NZNO) went on strike over pay. Around 30,000 members were involved in the dispute. Two significant strikes took place in 2019. Primary and secondary school teachers took action over wages and workload. Bus drivers struck and won a national living wage for themselves. The strike wave didn’t stop there though, and hit many other industries such as hospitality, retail and manufacturing.
Similarly, the Black Lives Matter movement that re-emerged in June of this year in the wake of the police murder of George Floyd quickly spread to New Zealand. Tens of thousands came out, showing solidarity with the BLM movement in America and calling out the racism suffered by Māori and Pacific Islanders in New Zealand.
The only alternative to austerity, privatisation, cuts, and Māori and Pacific Islander oppression in New Zealand is a socialist one. This would work in the interests of all working class people by taking major sections of the economy into public ownership to be run democratically by the workers themselves. It would also ensure the protection of all minority rights and honour genuine self determination. It would make sure Māori and Pacific Island peoples are not the subject of discrimination or racism and are guranteed safe, well paying union jobs.
This can only be achieved through working class solidarity and struggle, like the recent strike wave and the increase in trade union membership and activity, coupled with other working class struggles such as Māori and Pacific Islander rights movements. Activists in trade unions and on the left must link up with others such as the Māori activists that occupied Ilhumatao — the earliest Māori settlement in New Zealand — to protest against planned construction work in the area. As long as Labour remains committed to capitalism it poses sharply the need to consciously build a genuine working-class organisation that stands firmly on socialist policies and brings together various struggles in a united movement to break with our current crisis-ridden system.
