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One of the curious things about the last couple of days is the high I am on. Unlike previous elections, this is the first New Zealand one (I also felt the same after voting for Donald Trump in 2016) I am ‘feeling’. It is the first one where I am experiencing genuine elation. Even the victories by Jim Bolger and John Key left me feeling a bit ‘hmm, yes well’. But in 2023 genuinely good guys won and genuinely bad guys lost by the truckload.
On social media I had followed the campaigns of three National candidates in particular; Carlos Cheung in Mt Roskill, Angee Nicholas in Te Atatu, and Paulo Garcia in New Lynn. For there to have been a clean sweep was a magnificent result for the National party, and it bursts the century-old Labour party delusion about a supposed “heartland”. It goes without saying that three real ‘pieces of work’ have been ejected from Parliament, which perhaps indicates the man in the street does pay attention and can recognise bad people when he sees them.
Due to time constraints and the sheer number of new chums, it wasn’t possible for me to follow closely other National candidates around the country outside of the Taieri electorate. The huge swings to National in places like Takanini, for instance, may well have been expected by those involved.
What was intriguing was the underlying accuracy of the opinion polls in the final week (except the silly fake one putting Labour on 30%); Labour mid-20s, National late 30s, Winston soaring, ACT in high single digits is roughly what they were saying and so it proved to be. They are to be congratulated for getting it right.
Overall the election has merely confirmed a long-term trend of where New Zealand public opinion was going. Once again the Hamilton West electorate party vote is basically the nationwide average – for the 8th election in a row. The by-election in December saw a 21% swing to National, and on Saturday the swing across the country was a spectacular 18.5% swing from Labour to National. No amount of spin or name calling or grasping at straws can erase the fact of an 18.5% swing; almost by definition it says “you are no damned good”.
The only disappointment on Saturday was the bizarre result in the Taieri electorate; lots of ghastly working-class people in south Dunedin (who mostly hail from a certain religious group) moronically voted Labour yet again: so frustrating. It was the same in 1990 when Dunedin was the only city in the country not to see National make any gains.
But on a positive note, the election result is a ‘return to normalcy’. Having conservative, Tory rule is the default position in New Zealand. A long list of failed socialist Prime Ministers – Savage, Fraser, Nash, Kirk, Rowling, Lange, Moore, Palmer, Clark, Ardern – is proof of this. Each time there’s been a Labour Government there’s something a bit ‘smelly’ about it; something unnatural, unseemly. It has always fallen to their apparatchiks and apologists in the media and academia and lefty historians to try and put lipstick on the pig (read Denis Welch’s hilarious fantasy about Norman Kirk which was recently published).
New Zealanders have always preferred rich, self-made Tory Prime Ministers – Holland, Holyoake, Bolger, Key – and now Luxon; men they can trust, men to look up to, men they can rely on to be a safe pair of hands who will do the right thing and not run everybody’s life, farm or business. Rejoice now that things are back to normal.
