PETER WILLIAMS: Splitting your vote - It’s the only way

The latest 1News poll tells us what we’ve known for a while. National can only get back to power through its electorate MPs

The arrogance of the National Party is reaching peak level nonsense. There was the still revered former leader John Key at the campaign launch telling the faithful that anything other than “two ticks National” could result in cabinet ministers from parties other than National.

Well blow me down with a feather. Isn’t that the whole point of a coalition government?

The National Party of 2026 still seem to think it’s 1976, that they are the ruling party by right and that if they’re not in power then maybe Labour can have turn for a few short years before it’s back to blue.

But a combination of dreadful leadership, uninspiring policy and a significant departure from the party’s founding values means that National can never regain the past glory of support from more than 40 percent of New Zealanders, as they received as recently as 2017.

The latest poll puts them at 28 percent. It’s a pattern now. Here are the National numbers going back to polling starting on August 14:

28 (1News-Verian)

27 (Post-Freshwater)

30 (Anacta-Talbot Mills)

29 (Taxpayers Union-Curia)

31 (Roy Morgan)

29 (RNZ-Reid Research)

In case you can’t do the arithmetic quickly, the average is 29.

That means they’d be entitled to 35 seats in the parliament. They currently have 44 electorates. If they work hard in some tight races they could win 40 this time and create a five seat overhang.

It is a an utter no-brainer that if National wish to be the lead party in the next coalition government they must encourage voters to split their ballot. Return as many National electorate MPs as you can and party vote Act or New Zealand First to ensure an overhang and a majority of centre-right MPs to form a government.

The alternative is just frightening.

Green Party cabinet ministers and state owned supermarkets ? Please.

Te Pati Maori as part of the executive with their racist and separatist ideas? No country has ever succeeded as a civilised nation with that thinking.

Anyway John Key, what would be so wrong about having some cabinet ministers who aren’t members of the National Party? It’s worked for the last three years.

For a start let’s think about the second most important role after Prime Minister, the Minister of Finance.

Nicola Willis has been dreadful in the role. She inherited a mess from Grant Robertson and the Labour Party and has done precious little to correct the slide. She started with tax cuts we couldn’t afford. She has failed to rein in government spending and borrowing to the stage where in actual dollars she’s borrowing more than the profligate Robertson was in 2022-23.

She’s just scared to make significant structural changes to our economic settings and incredibly wants to interfere in private business with an ill conceived policy to change the way Foodstuffs operate.

If National were to be the lead party of government again Nicolas Willis won’t be back. It’s no great loss but then who becomes Minister of Finance?

With no Willis, and no Chris Bishop, the National Party would surely punt for Simeon Brown with his law and commerce degrees and a brief career in banking before becoming a baby faced politician nearly a decade ago.

But wouldn’t the person in the parliament most qualified to become Minister of Finance be sitting as rookie in the New Zealand First caucus?

Craig Stobo was ousted from the chairmanship of the Financial Markets Authority because of a personal vendetta against him conducted by a now disgraced Chief Executive.

After an inquiry into his behaviour, the only sin Stobo was found guilty of was that he made political statements!

He’s about to become a high ranking member of the New Zealand First caucus and his background in finance and banking make him by far the most qualified person to run the country’s finances.

He’s already had a significant influence on the way we save as it was Stobo who developed the concept of a portfolio investment entity or PIE, the basis of the KiwiSaver scheme and it’s efficient tax regime.

Then we have his work in local government finance, in building a major finance business and chairing public companies. That sounds like the kind of economic brain I’d like as the Minister of Finance.

And to those who say, you can’t go straight into such an important role in your first term in parliament then think of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney. His first job in politics was as the Liberal leader and then, when elected as an MP, he became the Prime Minister on the basis of his work as an economist and as Governor of the Bank of England.

The problem is that Christopher Luxon has such an ego that he won’t want anyone from another party in the Finance role. But then he’s the same guy who has said he doesn’t want “numpties from other parties” around the cabinet table.

As Darryl Kerrigan famously said all those years ago “tell ’im he’s dreamin.’ ”

When you’re leading a party that is not going to crack 30 percent in the party vote on election night there is only one way to be in government and that’s to have strong coalition partners.

New Zealand First and Act have the momentum, based on that 1News poll to each crack double figures this election. That means around 21 or 22 percent together and about 25 seats.

Put that with National’s 40 electorates and you have 65 MPs from the centre right. In a parliament that could have up to 127 or 128 MPs because of the National overhang and the Te Pati Maori overhang (maybe 4 electorates with 1 percent of the party vote) that number of 65 is just enough to ensure a small majority.

We know it’s going to be a nail biting contest.

But National are not moving the dial between now and November 7 and gathering momentum into their party vote. That boat has sailed with the Luxon leadership.

Getting as many National electorate MPs over the line is now the only way to electoral success.

Blind Freddy can see it. The refusal of the National Party hierarchy to acknowledge the obvious is painful.

Do they actually want to lose ?

Writer and broadcaster for half a century. Now watching from the sidelines. Subscribe to Peter William's Substack here