On 2025-01-01, Crash <
nogood@dontbother.invalid> wrote:
So we have had a full 12 months of the Government we elected in 2023.
Its a work in progress.
For the Greens - business as usual. While James Shaw has moved on,
the party has had major issues with MPs not making it through the
current Parliamentary term. Not too much of a concern because they
are a minor party, but it indicates their lack of stability long-term.
For Labour - they are stuck with their recent history. The legacy of
the Ardern leadership will pollute their credibility. Their current
leader was PM for a short period but could not shake the legacy from
Ardern as leader and for good reason. Under Ardern, the 3-waters
reforms were enacted when they had no previous indication of such a
policy prior to the 2020 election. It will take a long time for
Labour to fully recover their mojo, and they deserve this fate. Much
as I hate to say this, I believe they have become the political party
of left-wing academia (the source of their current senior MPs) rather
than their trade union worker support base. Trade Unions in recent
decades have been forced to adopt a far more politically-balanced
focus to retain a reasonable membership base after the abolition of compulsory union membership. Hipkins does not have what it takes to
ever be PM again - that will require new directions from a refreshed
MP base and that will not happen until after future elections.
At this stage of the cycle the defeated party has to clean out all of the existing ministers, PM down. The voters will see these as needing to go.
The Covid narrative/mandates/lockdowns also will have an effect.
For National - they are also stuck with recent history. Under the
leadership of Luxon they have demonstrated they are not the reforming powerhouse needed to address the major issues created by Labour under Ardern's leadership. While they have fixed the most major immediate
problems Labour handed to them they have proven impotent to tackle the
hard issues such as judicial Maori preferential treatment. With Maori dominating crime stats, National have not found an answer that does
not involve appeasement to Maori interests and the denigration of colonisation.
For NZ First, its business as usual. Without Winston as leader they
will head into political oblivion just as TOP has without Gareth
Morgan because Shane Jones is not Winston Peters II.
For ACT, they are a minor party that will never get any further
forward because after all these years of MMP they simply cannot
supplant National as the centre party of NZ politics. They do have
some good MPs but the career options in Parliament of said few are
either as a support party to National or as National MPs.
It is a surprise that the current coalition has held together as it
has - a first for any government with NZF as a part of it. It looks
like this government may well run full-term but such NZF-supported governments have disintegrated fast in the past for unpredictable
reasons. Winston Peters is to Politics what Bishop Tamaki is to
Christianity - a personal financial success in a fringe organisation -
who will not leave an enduring legacy when they are gone.
So what does 2025 bring? National will muddle on and probably be
re-elected in 2026 - but only because Labour are still post-Ardern
toxic to voters that Hipkins cannot counter.
Hipkins is part of the issue of Labour being re-elected. An Andrew Little sucessor.
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