Winston Peters gave Jo Moir at RNZ one line this weekend that every political editor in the country should pin above their desk. Talking about last week’s televised Luxon and Hipkins’ debate, he asked: “Why have we seen these two leaders going head-to-head when they will not be deciding the outcome come election day, of that I can guarantee you.”
He is right and I suspect the broadcasters know it too.
Peters went further. “The first person gets up and says ‘The National Government’s going to do this.’ The other person says ‘The Labour Government’s going to do that.’ Neither such things exist any more – they just don’t exist.” Then he got to the media: “The tragedy is, deliberate or not, that the mainstream media are allowing a conversation to happen as though it’s first-past-the-post, when it was no longer the case for 33 years.”
His 33 years runs from the 1993 referendum that brought in MMP. The first MMP election was 1996, 30 years ago this year, and NZ First won 17 seats in it. Peters has been in parliament since 1978. The media coverage, to my eye, still reads like the 1980s.
Look at the calendar
TVNZ ran the first Luxon and Hipkins head-to-head on 6 October. The Herald runs its own leaders’ debate between the same two men on Wednesday, 14 October. Stuff runs another on 20 October. That is three nights of Chris against Chris.
The rest of the field gets a TVNZ multi-party debate on Tuesday night, 13 October, with Tova O’Brien moderating, and the Herald’s powerbrokers' debate on 21 October, which NZME bills as the leaders of the parties likely to be in coalition talks. Fair enough on that last one. It is the only billing in the schedule that admits how MMP works.
My read is that the format is the bias. Put two men on a stage and the audience is invited to pick one of them, as if the winner walks into the Beehive with a majority. Only once in 10 MMP elections, Labour in 2020, has a party managed that, and those were exceptional times. Under MMP the bloc that forms a government decides – and blocs are built by the parties the head-to-head format leaves off the stage.
What the voters are saying
The Taxpayers’ Union-Curia poll for October has Christopher Luxon as preferred prime minister on 21.2 per cent and Chris Hipkins on 21.0. Neither of them can get a quarter of the country to name him. Winston Peters is on 13.9, up 3.2, and his party is on 12.0 and 16 seats. The coalition only gets to 65 seats because of it.
So the two men who get three debates between them are statistically tied at about a fifth of the electorate each, and the man who decides which of them is prime minister gets a share of a crowded stage. If that is the story the gallery wants to tell, fine, but it is not the election you are voting in.
The team behind him
The other thing a Chris-off hides is who would actually turn up in a coalition cabinet. NZ First released its list last week. After Peters, Shane Jones, Casey Costello and Mark Patterson, the next five spots went to new faces: Alfred Ngaro, Michael Laws, Harete Hipango-Brownlie, Craig Stobo and Taine Randell. That is a former National minister, two former National MPs, a former chair of the Financial Markets Authority and a former All Black captain. Peters calls it the “best set of candidates we’ve ever had”.
Moir’s own read is that the party wants to look like it is drawing in the old National guard. I think it has. People who once wore blue are now standing for the party that keeps the centre right in office, while National’s finance spokesperson spends the campaign warning voters off it.
Peters told RNZ he thinks “things are going to be stabilised at the end of this event”, and that “the election is going to be decided in the next three weeks”. There are 26 days to go.
Vote for the government you actually get
None of this means Luxon and Hipkins should not debate. It means voters should watch the debates knowing what they are watching: two men auditioning for a job that a third party will hand out.
If you want a centre-right government, my advice has not changed. In your electorate, vote for the National candidate. With your party vote, tick ACT or NZ First. The electorate seats keep National in the room and the party vote decides who sits at the table with it.
Election day is not a Chris-off, and under MMP it never has been. Peters said it out loud and three more nights of television will not change the arithmetic of MMP.
