OLIVER HARTWICH: On borrowed calm
- Administrator
- Jun 13
- 2 min read
Across the Tasman, anger has propelled Pauline Hanson’s One Nation from a fringe outfit to the most popular party, on 31 percent in a recent poll, ahead of both Labor and the Coalition. Yet Australia’s preferential voting, which redistributes losing candidates’ votes, could still return a Labor government.
The same anger is loose across the democratic world, the product of a decade of crises that squeezed household budgets and loosened party loyalties. What it does to each country’s politics depends partly on how votes are counted.
In Britain, Nigel Farage’s Reform leads on 27 percent, while the Conservatives and Labour, who once took turns in power, now muster little more than a third between them. First-past-the-post rewards whoever leads in each seat, so a quarter of the vote would hand Reform far more than a quarter of parliamentary seats and possibly a majority.
Germany shows a third system producing a different result. The hard-right AfD leads on 29 percent, ahead of the Christian Democrats and Social Democrats, the rough equivalents of our National and Labour. Proportional representation gives the AfD a proportion of seats that matches its vote, but the other parties refuse to govern with it.
New Zealand uses Germany’s system, yet our politics looks much calmer than elsewhere. National and Labour are weak by past standards but still hold more than sixty percent combined.
New Zealand has faced nothing like the mass, often uncontrolled immigration fuelling anger abroad.
Part of the reason is a built-in valve for disquiet.
New Zealand First has long played the role of shock absorber, drawing off disquiet and turning it into a moderate parliamentary force able to govern with both sides.
There is no guarantee it will always work like that. Britain, Germany and Australia each had a party order that looked permanent.
Public anger is genuine, the product of years of watching the cost-of-living climb and of rapid social change. What the populists offer in return, closing borders and intervening in markets, would fix none of it.
Political stability rests on something no electoral system can supply. It needs a government that delivers price stability and the prospect of a better life, and voters who see it doing so. That is what a decade of inflation and stagnant incomes stripped from voters elsewhere.
Democratic politics must deliver on these bread-and-butter issues. If it does not, voters will look for answers elsewhere, and no electoral system or shock absorber will hold them here.
Dr Oliver Hartwich is the Executive Director of the New Zealand Initiative
There seems to be an illness in our and other western societies. There are social and economic signs and symptoms of that illness that we keep talking about and trying to deal with.
The main way we think the signs and symptoms should be dealt with with is expecting some people called the government to do it for us. It should be obvious that these people called the government can't do it becasuse the signs and symptoms keep getting worse. Treating signs and symptons of an illness only seems to work if the illness is minor and resolves on its own.
Effective Interventions have to be based on understanding the cause of the pathology and how it developed over time. One has to go…
With my tin foil hat on firmly, consider this hypothesis. We are run by a Uniparty. Democracy is an illusion. What voters want, is to see a future where they prosper from hard work, or in the case of others they prosper at the largess of the government using taxpayer funds. The political class are by nature liars and spin merchants with a few exceptions. Human nature is to take care of oneself regardless of any protestations of “public service “.
A politician flip flopping or outright lying, would once have been tenure ending is today almost expected as members of the parties, represent their party not their constituents.
Globally economics scale up to power and control of energy, productive…
The writer implies that we are exempt from the unsettling effects of mass immigration . Hello !
Where have you been living ? Obviously he hasn’t read the latest trade agreement with India .
Does he not read all the serious court cases on all matters and note the large numbers of our new immigrants that are appearing ?
I can hear the howls of racism as I write but sooner or later we must face the facts . Sadly I fear it is too late .
Let’s not mention the adverse effects of the Treaty .
“New Zealand First has long played the role of shock absorber, drawing off disquiet and turning it into a moderate parliamentary force able to govern with both sides.”
But if they go with Labour, I suspect that’d be a shock amplifier…
Money only grows on trees in Sunny Stories, because the last Government splashed money, overstaffed the public servants, encouraged racial division. The present government has been slow to turn things around. We the public have to listen to the Waitangi Tribunal performing and pretending it is superior to the Government, and the government not doing what it should have done, close the Tribunal down. House prices are coming down thanks Chris Bishop, and going up in Australia which is good news for young people here. No one with any common sense would ever want to go back to the last Government with labour and Winston. Commenters can abuse and swear as much as they like, but we need a sensible…