If, as some polls are beginning to whisper, the unthinkable happens this Saturday and Victorians finally break free of the Cult of Dan, one person who should be very, very worried is Jacinda Ardern.
What on Earth does a state election in Australia have to do with next year’s New Zealand general election, I hear you ask? As I wrote some time ago, Ardern and Dan Andrews are the idiot twins of the Antipodean left. Not only do Victoria and New Zealand have similar populations and landmass, they’re both run by socialists with absolutely no experience outside politics and living off the public purse.
More importantly, both hung their political fortunes and fortified their cults of personality with pandemic despotism. Ardern was lucky enough to make hay while the pandemic sun was still shining and a great many voters were still blindly convinced that they had been “saved from Covid”.
Those scales are well and truly off the public’s eyes, though. Fast forward two years and Covid authoritarianism is a political albatross, not a gift horse. Now, “Dictator Dan’s” star appears at least tarnished, if not falling precipitously. Ardern’s is falling to Earth even faster. If Andrews does indeed crater on Saturday, it will likely be nothing compared to the catastrophic impact that awaits his conjoined twin across the Tasman.
Even some generous polling analysis shows Ardern in deep trouble. Certainly, the days of majority government will be over […]
Oddly, the issues that could lead to Arden’s downfall next year are the same ones that led to the stunning 2020 victory. What was then perceived as safety-first pandemic management is now seen as a case of government overreach.
Then there are the scandals. Oh, the scandals. “Teflon Dan” he might be, but no less than five corruption investigations carry with them a stench that can’t just be hand-waved away.
Ardern has had her fair share of political scandal, too, the latest after a Labour MP, Dr Gaurav Sharma, accused the party’s senior parliamentary members of bullying. Rather than deal with the accusations, Ardern yanked Sharma’s party membership and dispatched him to the crossbenches.
But, in the end, it all comes down to the economy, stupid. Victoria’s economy is in free fall, with state debt already higher than the rest of the nation combined and set to exponentially explode thanks to a raft of panicked, multi-billion dollar promises.
Then there’s New Zealand.
Inflation is at 7.1 per cent in the Shaky Isles, government debt is running at 30 per cent of national GDP and economic forecasts for 2023 and 2024 reveal a fishnet stockings and high heels flirtation with recession.
A likely possibility on Saturday (oh, how those words may come back to haunt me!) is some form of minority government. With “Other” parties polling higher than the Greens and the Independents who faithfully toed the Dan line for the last three years, Andrews may well find that a difficult proposition, to say the least.
A return to minority government for Ardern will also be fraught, as the wily Winston Peters weighs up the consequences of having supported Ardern’s first term.
In further bad news for Ardern, leader of the centre-right NZ First Party, Winston Peters, who had formed a coalition government with Ardern and Labour after the 2017 election, pronounced that he would never again join up with Labour and gave the government a verbal slap while he was at it […]
Across the ditch, the 78-year-old former Deputy Prime Minister’s pronouncement barely rated news. Peters is no longer a member of parliament being one of the nine NZ First’s parliamentarians sent packing in the 2020 election.
On early polling, NZ First might not trouble the scorers at the next election either […] but that’s not really the point. In the numbers game of politics that is another three and a half per cent of voters that Ardern knows she cannot count on.
The Australian
And under New Zealand’s MMP system, that 3.5% can make or break a government.
Especially one with a leader so widely, and viscerally hated that she rarely dares make anything other than heavily controlled public appearances anymore.
Ask not for whom the bells of Victoria toll, Jacinda; they toll for thee, too.
