Category: Labour

The difference between Green and Labour: a tale of two Finance Ministers

Photo source: Newshub

So the Greens co-leader James Shaw recently made a mistake. In his role as Associate Finance Minister approving funding for “shovel-ready” projects, he fought hard for a private “Green school” to get funding to expand their buildings and, therefore, their student capacity. There are many problems with what he did: forgetting to oppose private schools as per Green policy; supporting an approach to environmentalism based on individual education of wealthy elites’ children, rather than systemic change; finally showing some spine around the cabinet table and for this; being so out of touch with his party’s kaupapa and membership that he actually thought his actions would be seen as a “win” for the Greens. It was a big mistake and it doesn’t say anything good about Shaw’s political judgment.

But here’s what happened next: the Greens’ membership, supporters, and former MPs flipped out. They rightly criticised what Shaw did, instead of sycophantically defending his actions because he’s the party leader. And Shaw called an emergency meeting with members, admitted it was a mistake, apologised unreservedly, and tried to do whatever he could do to reverse his actions.

Meanwhile, Grant Robertson, Shaw’s fellow Wellington Central-based MP and carpool buddy*, was working on an announcement of his own. Robertson is also effectively the second most important leader of his party, and he’s also a Finance Minister… and not just an associate one, but the proper one.

Robertson’s announcement was that his party, Labour, are finally going to increase tax on the rich. First, they’ve brought in a new top income tax rate of 39% on income above $180,000. And second… there is no second. That’s it. In this country of notoriously low taxes on the rich, in the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression, their revenue policy is: Bringing back the Helen Clark/Michael Cullen top income tax rate of 39c, but to qualify for that top tax rate you have to earn as much as someone working 183 hours and 10 minutes per week on the minimum wage. No wealth taxes, just a small income tax change that even right-wingers think is too low. Australia, the UK, and other OECD countries have higher income tax on the rich, lower taxes on the poor, and of course capital gains taxes, even before the COVID recession… but Labour’s pathetic approach is literally lower taxes on the rich than what Don Brash proposed as National leader in 2005.

So what happened next after Robertson’s announcement? Well, there was dismay and anger from the left and from the centre (this example from No Right Turn is characteristically concise and well-reasoned: If not now, when?). But did Labour’s membership and supporters revolt? Did Robertson, like Shaw, call an emergency members’ meeting, apologise profusely for his massive misjudgment, and do everything in his power to rectify his mistake? Nope. None of that. The leader of the country’s biggest union, the PSA, even welcomed the announcement. The policy stands, and will probably become government policy after the election, unless polls change and the Greens get some leverage. Yet another opportunity for Ardern’s and Robertson’s promised “transformational change” has been wasted.

And therein lies the difference between the Green and Labour parties.

* “carpool buddy”: My partner saw Robertson giving someone a ride in his Labour car during the 2017 election campaign, and she’s like 76% sure it was Shaw.

Special votes are increasingly turning towards Labour, away from National

So the final election results are out. The results weren’t too surprising… They produced the second of the two likely scenarios I outlined in my last blog:

  1. Golriz Ghahraman (Green) and Angie Warren-Clark (Labour) are in. Nicola Willis and Maureen Pugh (both National) are out.
    • Winston remains king/queenmaker. A Nat-NZF government would have 65/120 seats. A Lab-NZF-Green government would have 63/120.

I’m pleased to have Ghahraman and Warren-Clark in there, as they both seem like good people. They also make the Greens’ caucus 75% women and Labour’s caucus 45.65% women (but meanwhile National’s caucus is lowered to 30.36% women):

Screen Shot 2017-10-07 at 7.55.20 PM.png

Here’s how everyone did in the end (for similar numbers for previous elections, see my previous blog):

Screen Shot 2017-10-07 at 6.58.14 PM

In 2020 we could have even more seats swinging from National to Labour after special votes are counted, if the following four trends continue:

  1. Labour did their best ever on special votes: 18.91% better than on preliminary votes. Their previous best was last election, where they did 14.16% better.
  2. National did their worst ever on special votes: 21.12% worse than on preliminary votes. Their previous worst was last election, where they did 16.86% worse.
  3. There were more special votes than ever, even more than the Electoral Commission predicted: 422,094 or 16.29% of votes.
  4. This was the worst election ever for minor parties. National and Labour together won a massive 81.34% of party votes: the highest since party votes have existed:

Screen Shot 2017-10-07 at 7.21.49 PM

Meanwhile, TOP did an impressive 63.18% better on specials than on preliminary votes. Only a few parties have done better than this on specials:

  • Internet Mana in 2014 (97.58% better),
  • Mana in 2011 (77.34% better),
  • Māori in 2005 (68.76% better),
  • Green in 2002 (85.52% better).

This brought TOP up to 2.4% of total votes. This was towards the upper end of what we could have expected based on the polls, but it isn’t anything like the massive polling error that would have been required for them to crack 5%.

One fact from the final results that could give some hope to left-leaning people: The combined National-ACT vote has dropped below 45% for the first time since 2005.

Anyway, now that the final results are in, Winston claims he’ll finalise a coalition agreement within the next five days. Will he do it? Who will he go with? How productively will he work with them? Only time will tell… I can’t predict Winston Peters’ actions with spreadsheets.

Realistic possibilities for Parliament post-specials (all two of them)

You, like me, may be wondering what will change in the parties’ seat numbers when the final vote count (including the special votes1) is released on Saturday. Well, I’ve crunched the numbers, and…

Short answer: There are only two likely scenarios for how the preliminary seat allocations in Parliament will change after special votes are counted:

  1. Golriz Ghahraman (Green) is in. Nicola Willis (National) is out.
    • Winston remains king/queenmaker. A Nat-NZF government would have 66/120 seats. A Lab-NZF-Green government would have 62/120.
  2. Golriz Ghahraman (Green) and Angie Warren-Clark (Labour) are in. Nicola Willis and Maureen Pugh (both National) are out.
    • Winston remains king/queenmaker. A Nat-NZF government would have 65/120 seats. A Lab-NZF-Green government would have 63/120.

Warning: by reading any further you are entering into the spreadsheet dystopia that is Caleb Morgan Day’s mind.

Long answer: On the basis of past election results since 19992, there are only two likely scenarios for how the preliminary seat allocations in Parliament will change after special votes are counted:

  1. Golriz Ghahraman (Green) is in. Nicola Willis (National) is out.
    • This is what will happen if the special vote results are like what they’ve been most MMP elections in NZ.
    • On this scenario, A Nat-NZF government would have 66/120 seats. A Lab-NZF-Green government would have 62/120.
  2. Golriz Ghahraman (Green) and Angie Warren-Clark (Labour) are in. Nicola Willis and Maureen Pugh (both National) are out.
    • This is what will happen if the special votes are like what they were like last election.
    • On this scenario, a Nat-NZF government would have 65/120 seats. A Lab-NZF-Green government would have 63/120.

The spreadsheets to back this up:

Preliminary, final, and special vote %s for the four main surviving parties (plus “other”), 1999-2017:

The important figure is “% diff”. This is how much better or worse a party does on special votes than it did on the preliminary count: ie its relative special vote performance.

specialvotes1

What would happen if the special votes act like five “average” scenarios:3

The five “averages” are:

  • mean of past special vote performance (1999-2014),
  • median of past special vote performance (1999-2014),
  • each party having the same special vote performance as what they did in the election where they got the closest to their 2017 preliminary result (different elections for different parties),
  • each party having the same special vote performance as what they did in the 2005 election, which was arguably the most similar to the 2017 election, and
  • each party having the same special vote performance as what they did last election (2014).

specialvotes2

What would happen if each party did as good as it’s ever done before on special votes, and its rivals did as badly as they’ve ever done before:

Note that each of these still only produces the two basic scenarios of seat numbers.3

specialvotes3

There are a few other technically-possible scenarios, but all would be surprising.

First, the spreadsheets!

What it would take for each of these scenarios to come true:

Figures in bold involve a party doing better or worse than it’s ever done before. I’ve tried to approximate the most likely way for each scenario to actually happen.

specialvotes4

Then, the text summary that doesn’t really deserve the term “summary”! In order of likeliness (to my mind), here are the other technically possible scenarios:

  1. Labour gain not one but two seats from National (Green also still gain their seat from National).
    • This is somewhat unlikely. This would require National to do 25% worse on specials than on normal votes. The worst they’ve ever done is 16.86% worse, so this would be a surprise, though National are trending downwards in their special vote performance. It would also require Labour to do 25% better on specials than on normal votes, and the best they’ve ever done is 14.16% better. This is more likely to happen, as Labour are trending upwards in their special vote performance, and they’ve probably taken some Green voters this time.
    • On this scenario, A Nat-NZF government would have 64/120 seats. A Lab-NZF-Green government would have 64/120.
  2. The status quo: nothing changes from preliminary results to final results.
    • This is unlikely. It would require the Greens to do only 15% better on specials than on normal votes. The worst they’ve ever done is 38.2% worse (in 2011). However, they didn’t do that much better (43.37%) in 2005, which was arguably the most similar election to this one. It’s also possible that the Greens’ usual special vote effect will be largely swallowed up by Labour and TOP this time.
    • On this scenario, A Nat-NZF government would have 67/120 seats. A Lab-NZF-Green government would have 61/120.
  3. National retain all their seats, and the Greens gain their one from Labour instead of from National.
    • This is very unlikely. It would require National to do equally well on specials as on normal votes, and the best they’ve ever done is 2.23% worse, in 2002. Each election since then they’ve done at least 10% worse. This scenario also requires Labour to do as badly on special votes as they did in 1999, ie doing 4.87% worse on specials than on normal votes. Each year since then, Labour have done better on specials than on normal votes, and this has been trending upwards.
    • On this scenario, A Nat-NZF government would have 67/120 seats. A Lab-NZF-Green government would have 61/120.
  4. New Zealand First gain one seat from National (Green also still gain their seat from National).
    • This is very unlikely. It would require New Zealand First to do equally well on specials as on normal votes, and the best they’ve ever done is 1.71% worse, in 1999. Every other election, they’ve done at least 15% worse, and they’re trending downwards in their special vote performance. Finally, to balance out the numbers, it requires “Other” to do 70% better on special votes than on normal votes. We can’t rule this out because TOP are an unknown quantity, but TOP are less than half of the “Other” votes, so to push the overall “Other” figure up by this much, they’d have to do even better than the Greens’ amazing 2002 special vote performance.
    • On this scenario, A Nat-NZF government would have 66/120 seats. A Lab-NZF-Green government would have 63/120.
  5. The Greens gain two seats from National (Labour don’t gain any).
    • This is very unlikely. It would require the Greens to do 110% better on specials than on normal votes. Only once have they come remotely close to this (2002, when they did 85.52% better). All other elections they’ve done 38-55% better. This scenario also requires Labour to do as badly on special votes as they did in 1999. As discussed under #3, this is unlikely. Finally, to balance out the numbers, it requires “Other” to do 65% better on special votes than on normal votes. As discussed under #4, this would be amazing.
    • On this scenario, A Nat-NZF government would have 65/120 seats. A Lab-NZF-Green government would have 63/120.
  6. New Zealand First gain one seat from Labour (Green also still gain their seat from National).
    • This is extremely unlikely. It would require New Zealand First to do even better on specials than on normal votes, and as discussed under #4, even doing equally well is unlikely. It would require Labour to do even worse than they did in 1999, and as discussed under #3, it’s unlikely they’ll even do equally badly. Finally, to balance out the numbers, it requires the highest TOP/Other vote yet. As discussed under #4, this would be amazing.
    • On this scenario, A Nat-NZF government would have 65/120 seats. A Lab-NZF-Green government would have 63/120.

You’ll notice that on both the likely and the unlikely scenarios, NZ First always has the balance of power. (Unless the “teal deal”4 the media are frothing at the mouth over comes to pass. And it won’t.)

By the way, here are some other scenarios which are so impossible that I haven’t even bothered spreadsheeting them:

  1. NZ First lose a seat.
    • Actually I did spreadsheet this one (see the comments section). This is extremely unlikely, because even on their worst precedented special vote performance, NZ First still get almost 7.5% of the effective party vote, and 9 is 7.5% of MPS. They’d have to do a LOT worse than ever before on special votes to be rounded to 6.67% of the party vote for 6.67% of MPs (8 MPs). And by “a LOT worse” I mean unrealistically worse (see the comment for the deets).
  2. TOP cross the 5% threshold.
    • This would require TOP to more than double their party vote from the preliminary count to the final count. I.e. it would require them to get more votes from the 15% of special votes than from the 85% of normal votes.
  3. ACT get a second seat.
    • This would require ACT to more than double their party vote from the preliminary count to the final count. I.e. it would require them to get more votes from the 15% of special votes than from the 85% of normal votes.
  4.  Any other parties make it into Parliament as a result of a change in an electorate vote result.
    • Howie Tamati and then Te Ururoa Flavell (both Māori party) are closest to achieving this, but they’d have to get at least 60-70% of the electorate special votes. Ain’t gonna happen. Marama Fox (Māori party), Hone Harawira (Mana) and Raf Manji (independent) are even further away, no TOP candidates even came close to second place, and Damian Light (United Future)… well, it seems cruel to even link to his results.
  5. Any other electorate seats change hands.
    • I can’t be bothered crunching the numbers, but the closest seat was Ōhāriu and it’s unlikely Brett Hudson (National) would win on specials as the specials tend to favour Labour and disfavour National. There aren’t any seats where the Labour candidate is close enough to have a hope of knocking out the National candidate on specials. Winston Peters isn’t close enough either. And even though Metiria Turei did the best of any Green electoral candidate, she wouldn’t even catch up if she won every single electorate special vote 😦

Don’t say I didn’t warn you about that spreadsheet dystopia.

Footnotes

  1. The Electoral Commission estimates that there will be about 384,072 special votes (about 15% of total votes). I’ve estimated that 90.77% of these will have a valid party vote, as was the case in 2014. (In 2005 it was 92.55%, in 2008 92.78%, and in 2011 92.26%. I couldn’t find the figure for 1999 or 2002. The Commission hopes this number will be higher this time because they think they communicated better about the need to enrol in advance or enrol at the same time if placing an advanced vote. However, I chose the most conservative estimate.) This produces an estimate of 348,603 valid party votes from the special votes. ↑
  2. I couldn’t find 1996’s preliminary results. ↑
  3. You may notice that the totals under “% special” and “% final” don’t actually add up to 100%. In practice, on most of these scenarios, at least one party’s special vote performance (e.g. TOP, included as part of “Other”) would have to be higher than what is listed for the scenarios to actually be possible. ↑
  4. I’m pretty sure I came up with this phrase first. I’m not just a spreadsheet nerd, I’m also the kind of nerd who comes up with the kind of rhyming pun that journalists love!  ↑

 

The “teal deal” is not going to happen, and it’s not the Greens’ fault

“National and the Greens should work together” sentiment seems to have reached an all-time high. This is not because the two parties have moved closer together in policy or philosophy. It’s because after the election, this is the only way—short of a Nat-Lab grand coalition—to lock Winston Peters out of any role in government.1

I can’t be bothered to list examples because I’m sure you’ve all seen or heard people calling for a blue-green government arrangement (or “teal deal” if you will). Perhaps you’ve even suggested it yourself.2

What I want to talk about is the suggestion that usually comes after “National and the Greens should work together”. This is how former National PM Jim Bolger puts it:

“the Greens might be quietly reflecting on whether they, unique in the world of Green parties, should only link themselves to left-wing politics, whereas the environment is neither left wing or right wing, frankly. The environment is the environment; it’s Mother Earth we’re talking about.”

The idea is that the Greens would be more effective in pushing environmental policy if they stuck to that, and got rid of their insistence on left-wing socio-economic policy. This way, it is suggested, they would have a better chance of being able to find room for compromise and cooperation with National. Other Green parties in countries like Germany have been willing to form coalition governments with right-wing parties.

The Greens’ usual response is to give reasons why environmental justice and socio-economic justice (or environmental sustainability and socio-economic sustainability) are inextricably linked. Ever since they were the Values Party they’ve pushed both, and they don’t intend to stop now.

Another response could be to say that New Zealand is not Germany. Germany has a democratic socialist party called The Left which pushes left-wing policy even if the centre-left parties (the Greens and the SDP) don’t—even if they form grand coalitions with the centre-right. In New Zealand, the Alliance and Mana have disappeared as left voices in Parliament. Moreover, Labour kickstarted neo-liberalism and haven’t really repented from it. Until Labour make a significant change from Clark/Blair-esque compromise to Corbyn-esque social democracy, the Greens are the only party significantly trying to push New Zealand in a leftward direction.

However, both of these responses to the challenge accept the terms of the challenge (like Labour accepted the terms of National’s “dead cat” “fiscal hole” challenge). These responses accept the assumption that it’s the Greens’ left-wing socio-economic stance that blocks them from working with National, and that they’d be able to find common ground on the environment.

However, I don’t think this is correct. Certainly the Greens’ socio-economic stances—making welfare more of a livable UBI and less of a punitive control mechanism; raising tax on the rich and introducing it for property investors; returning the minimum wage to 2/3 of the average wage; reducing imprisonment—are all basically the opposite of what the Key-English government have done. However, I think Bill English is actually more likely to accept these policies than to accept Greens’ environmental policies. If Bill could be convinced these socio-economic policies are good “social investment”, he could get behind them. Of course, he won’t. (This is largely because National’s vision of “social investment” is so limited by a pathologically individualist mindset, and so tantamount to Minority Report in its instinct to control the risk factors rather than healing the determinants.) But it’s not outside the realms of possibility.

The Greens’ environmental policies, on the other hand, would require National to actually seriously challenge farm owners, drilling/mining companies, and other capitalists. Currently the costs of these capitalists’ activities are largely falling on the environment, and therefore on the present and future public. The Greens want to stop these business activities destroying our shared home by preventing and internalising these external costs. They’ll ban some unjustifiably polluting business activities, such as drilling or mining or exploring for more fossil fuels at a time when even burning the fossil fuels already dug up will make the Paris target impossible. They’ll tax other business activities for their pollution—making those who produce the costs pay the costs, instead of externalising them. And they’ll use the tax revenue to clean up the damage and to subsidise farmers and other businesses moving to more sustainable ways of doing business.

Do you really see National doing that? The party whose base is farm owners and other capitalists? The party that think climate change is only an issue for “elites”, and that it’s not a “pressing concern”, and that we should adapt to climate change rather than mitigating it? The party who scaremongered on a small water tax for some big farms that are currently destroying the quality of Aotearoa’s awa and wai?3

So how should the Greens respond to this “helpful suggestion” to the Greens—and this implicit congratulation of National for their supposed hypothetical willingness to “green up”?

Well, I wonder if they should make an offer to National this election: If you let us have our way with the environment, we’ll give you confidence and supply to do everything else you want to do as the Government for the next three years. We’d pass a zero carbon act and introduce the Greens’ policies for actually getting to zero carbon. We’d follow the Greens’ ideas to clean up our rivers instead of pretending National and the “hard-working farmers“4 already have the issue under control. We’d build sustainable transport instead of roads, roads, and more roads.

And maybe we’d have to tax the rich at least a little more to pay for some of this—and/or take slightly longer to repay the Key-era debt. Bill’s choice.

National would refuse this offer. And then maybe people would stop trying to make the teal deal happen. Or at least realise it’s not Green stubbornness stopping it happening. It’s National’s near-total lack of concern for the environment.

Footnotes

  1. Special votes are extremely unlikely to change the basic possibilities. ↑
  2. Someone who can always be bothered finding, listing and summarising examples is my hero Bryce Edwards who has subsequently done one of his legendary political round-ups on the teal deal. ↑
  3. These points I’m making are not new—here‘s basically the same point made three years ago on the No Right Turn blog. ↑
  4. It was shrewd of National to portray criticism of National’s record on rivers as criticism of farmers who are working hard to clean up rivers, because it’s deeply ingrained in the NZ psyche to pretend we’re really farmers at heart. We all lie about being the rural type. ↑