New Zealand’s next government looks set to veer to the left, with the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand getting its first taste of real power in New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s Cabinet.
Ardern’s New Zealand Labour Party is poised to sweep to victory in the Oct. 17 election and she is likely to enter a coalition with the Greens, forming the nation’s first left-leaning government since 1999.
The centrist New Zealand First Party, Ardern’s coalition partner for the past three years, is unlikely to be re-elected, removing a conservative brake just as the Green Party gains a greater say on policy.
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The party, which has not had a seat in the Cabinet in its 30-year history, says that the COVID-19 pandemic is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to tackle social inequalities, as well as the climate crisis.
Green Party coleaders Marama Davidson and James Shaw are pushing Ardern to boost welfare payments, introduce new taxes on the wealthy and do more to tackle agricultural pollution.
“Labour are still not offering proposals to meet the scale of the challenges at the scale that they need to be met,” Davidson said in an interview at the party’s offices in Wellington. “There is no reason for people to be living in any misery or poverty in this country.”
While the Green Party backed Ardern’s first administration, it was not part of the coalition and its three ministerial posts were outside the Cabinet.
Davidson and Shaw would not reveal what roles they want in the next government, but said they would push Ardern to focus economic stimulus on “the climate crisis, the biodiversity crisis and the crisis of deepening poverty.”
“We talk about in this next term being able to go further and faster than we have been able to,” Shaw said. “Labour won’t want to go as fast or as far as we will, but that’s quite a different proposition from the last three years.”
New Zealand’s political landscape has changed since Ardern’s stunning election victory three years ago, when she lifted Labour from the doldrums and pipped the larger New Zealand National Party with the support of New Zealand First and the Green Party.
The center-right has lost ground to the center-left, thanks largely to Ardern’s masterful handling of major crises — the March last year mass shooting at Christchurch mosques that killed 51 people and the COVID-19 pandemic.
By contrast, the National Party has been beset by scandal and changed leader three times.
Labour had 47 percent support in the latest opinion poll compared with just 33 percent for National. While the libertarian ACT New Zealand has risen to 8 percent, the Green Party is polling at 7 percent, giving the center-left a healthy majority. New Zealand First has slumped to 1 percent, well below the 5 percent needed to get back into parliament.
While full of praise for Ardern’s leadership, Davidson said that the prime minister has failed to deliver the social transformation she promised.
“Ours are the more progressive, bolder, more transformational changes,” Davidson said. “One of the most immediate things that needs doing and could be done overnight is lifting the incomes of the lowest income households.”
The Green Party’s poverty action plan calls for a guaranteed minimum income of NZ$325 (US$213) per week for students and people out of work, and significant boosts to welfare payments for low-income families and single parents.
It also wants new taxes on top earners, including a wealth tax on people with a net worth of more than NZ$1 million — a policy Labour has rejected.
On the environment, the Green Party has also been disappointed.
It was forced to watch as Ardern watered down plans to make the economy carbon neutral by exempting agricultural emissions. Instead of immediately including farming in the emissions trading scheme, the government allowed the industry to develop its own emissions pricing to be in place by 2025.
The Green Party says it would make sure a review is carried out in 2022 and if it is insufficient, farm emissions would be taxed.
Other priorities include more clean energy and a continued focus on improving the nation’s waterways by reducing the use of nitrogen.
Its transport policy, unveiled yesterday, calls for significant new investment in rail networks and cycleways, and a requirement that all new imported vehicles be zero-emission by 2030.
Labour might be polling close to 50 percent, but no major party has ever achieved an outright majority in parliament since New Zealand introduced proportional representation in 1996.
In any case, Ardern has signaled that she would prefer to work with the Green Party, even if she does not need it to govern.
The bigger issue for the Green Party is how to escape the usual fate of small parties in government — getting overshadowed by their partner, shedding support and sometimes being voted out at the next election. That would mean retaining the ability to disagree with Cabinet decisions that do not go its way.
“We are actually trying to defy history here,” Davidson said. “For us to survive, our political independence is as important as being able to show that we can work with Labour and get some stuff done.”
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