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# Well, Somebody Has to Lose
- URL: https://goodoil.news/well-somebody-has-to-lose/
- Published: 2026-11-08T20:30:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-11-08T20:30:00.000Z
- Description: An ugly campaign. A close election. Can we win and lose gracefully?
- Author: Reproduced with permission
- Tags: NZ Politics, Election 2026

[**Ani O’Brien**](https://aniobrien.substack.com/p/somebody-has-to-lose-tomorrow)  
*Like good faith disagreements and principled people. Dislike disingenuousness and Foucault. Care especially about women’s rights, justice, and democracy.*

By the first ad break in the last people’s debate, I realised how well and truly over this election I am. Thankfully, it was our very last debate until next election. After just a few moments I had shouted at every person on screen with the exception of Kieran McAnulty and he only missed out because of how successfully he was keeping his head down. Even the ideologically homogenous audience members who asked the questions did not escape my wrath.

The people on stage looked as exhausted as the country feels. This has been an ugly campaign, conducted against a background of Kiwis struggling and a very uncertain world. It is difficult to say who has emerged from the campaign looking best. We have had accusations, allegations, counter-claims, sanctimony, gang photographs, personal nastiness, and an irritating endless pious insistence that everyone else is responsible for lowering the tone.

![Party representatives took to 1News' panel in tonight's People's Debate mediated by Jack Tame.](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!x6QP!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F58d7905a-8217-491d-b24b-b03153b5f13d_767x431.jpeg "Party representatives took to 1News' panel in tonight's People's Debate mediated by Jack Tame.")

\[1News\]

But the last debate was instructive in that each representative managed to convey a core part of their party’s essence. Nicola Willis looked almost manic as she desperately fought for her political life, trying to defend her record and correct dodgy characterisations from her opponents. Her clash with Qiulae Wong over research funding captured the gulf between the reality of governing and the aspiration of those looking in from the outside. Wong confidently asserted that research and development spending should reach three per cent of GDP while Willis asked her where the funding would come from and what should slip down the priorities list as a result. Education? Health? Welfare? Wong suggested taking it from oil and gas exploration which caused Shane Jones to emit noises akin to an excavation machine.

Wong has grown in confidence and is getting better at the rough and tumble of the debates, but she was caught out multiple times suggesting super sensible sounding solutions that are indeed already in place. Her lecture on lobbying also rang a bit hollow, given we all are finding out how much power the small group of wealthy Opportunity board members could wield over our election result. Opportunity’s rules allow two of the seven board members to block a coalition agreement even if the MPs who negotiated it are happy with it. So, Wong wants to convince us that lobbying is bad because people outside parliament should not influence the decisions being made even though her party operates with exactly that structure.

McAnulty reflected Labour’s term in parliament by playing a small target strategy. He offered just enough to remain present and made a few well-timed jokes but did not offer up anything that would allow an opponent to get their teeth into it. David Seymour was meticulously on message as he has been all campaign concisely bringing every answer back to ACT policy. Shane Jones was clearly tired from his party’s tour of town halls up and down the country, but he was on form winding everyone up and remained gloriously unembarrassed about wanting to dig things out of the ground.

Swarbrick complained about the absence of consensus and collaboration while shouting, rolling her eyes, accusing others of lying, and behaving as though any disagreement was a personal affront to her. Apparently everyone else must be nice while Swarbrick reserves the right to deliver hyperbolic accusations from the podium. There were some moments of cross-party agreement though. The Greens and ACT share some overlapping objections to the under-16 social media ban, for example.

I found it physically uncomfortable to watch Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke at times. She just was not across her brief and struggled to give coherent answers. She clearly resonates with her electorate. She is polling well and should easily return to parliament, but her performance in the debate was abysmal. Yes, she is young, but at 24 she is not a child and has been a Member of Parliament for three years. There is a basic level of preparedness and competence that she should be able to meet.

The campaign finished up with one more scandal courtesy of New Zealand First candidate Michael Laws and comments he made on his radio show about female candidates from the Opportunity Party. There was nothing wrong with him comparing them to school teachers. If Laws thinks that Wong sounds like she is addressing a room of naughty six-year-olds he is entitled to do so. I am pretty sure many of us expressed at some point that we felt like Jacinda Ardern spoke to us like kindergarten kids. Politicians can be mocked and we should not get so precious that this can no longer be part of political discourse. Satire, humour, sarcasm, all of it can be used to convey that a politician is officious, condescending, or unbearably pleased with themselves.

However, the line was crossed when Laws made it sexual. There is no political insight or value in inviting listeners to imagine a female opponent is bad or good in bed or if she might approve or disapprove of one’s sexual performance. Winston Peters immediately called the remarks inappropriate and said he would be speaking with his candidate and his disapproval was echoed at the debate by deputy leader Shane Jones.

It was a self-inflicted wound that the centre-right did not need in these late stages and the left absolutely went to town capitalising on it. While I totally disagree with those trying to argue that the sexual comments were justified or *‘nothing to see here*’ the calls from the left and the pressure from the media for Laws to be sacked is opportunistic and disingenuous. One final beat up for the campaign.

There seems to be agreement that the campaign is ugly, but only if one is judging their opponents. And sure, it has been scrappy and perhaps more negative at times than we are used to, but it is laughable to call it dirty if you compare our campaign to the American mid-term elections. Now that is ugly.

In particular, National has copped it for their focus on Chlöe Swarbrick and her ambitions to be finance minister. The pearl clutching about this has been pretty unfair, given it was all pretty straight up messaging that stuck to the fact that they believe she would be a bad finance minister. It wasn’t personal. They did not, for example, even point out that Swarbrick spent the early years of her career talking regularly about suffering from dyscalculia, which is a specific learning disorder that makes it hard to understand, learn, and work with numbers and maths concepts. It used to be on her Wikipedia page but seems to have been removed.

Labour was also doing basically the same thing with David Seymour anyway. They were telling their voters that Seymour could be finance minister with the suggestion being that would be disastrous. No one accused Labour of “*cyberbullying*” or wrote opinion pieces about how Seymour was being targeted. Swarbrick seems to think that everyone is required to take her as seriously as she takes herself and gets very upset when people challenge her on what she has decided is “*evidence*”.

The negativity is measurable however, and Victoria University researchers examined 2,222 Facebook posts from parties and their leaders between 5 October and 1 November. They classified 65.8 per cent of National’s posts and 51.4 per cent of Labour’s as negative, compared to about 13 per cent across the posts analysed in 2020\. The Advertising Standards Authority received 25 billboard complaints this campaign compared with none in 2023\. The left are more quick to complain with 90 per cent of the concern being raised relating to ads attacking the left.

The desperation coming from both sides is palpable. As I wrote in ‘[*Who gets to run your life?*](https://aniobrien.substack.com/p/who-gets-to-run-your-life)’, people are treating this election as existential because we really do have fundamentally different futures on offer. Some desperately want to get rid of this government. Others are terrified of handing power back to the parties who they believe made the country poorer, more divided, and harder to live in. And desperation can make humans do stupid and cruel things.

Speaking of which, to my mind, the worst attempted exercise in dirty politics all campaign was Nicky Hager’s book *Dirty Work*. It was presented as an exposé of the very thing it was doing itself. It was seeking to shift the political dial in favour of the left not long before an election by smearing and attacking opponents, including me. Thankfully, the media and anyone with a functioning brain quickly realised that it was not a sweeping political indictment on its subjects, but rather a poorly executed hit job that skipped the crucial step of fact-checking claims. Nonetheless, it has been eagerly touted as of biblical importance by people whose conclusions and beliefs it props up. The Greens carried the book around parliament and hosted reading sessions on their social media pages. It was nasty and defamatory. They did not cover themselves in glory.

While it did not blow up the campaign as intended, Hager’s book did see Labour and the Greens withdraw from the Taxpayers’ Union debates. This was a real shame as they are fantastic events with a host from the left (former Labour MP Anna Lorck) and the right (Damien Grant). The debates went ahead anyway and I attended the Tāmaki one last week. It was packed and very entertaining. The candidates were on form and National’s supporters were very vocal.

It seems we are now destined to spend each election campaign talking at length at Harry Tam and the Mongrel Mob. As I wrote in ‘[*Thumbs up for the Mongrel Mob. Middle Finger to its victims*](https://aniobrien.substack.com/p/thumbs-up-for-the-mongrel-mob)’ the Greens may have been too principled to attend debates hosted by the Taxpayers’ Union, but they were happy as clams to be photographed grinning and posing with gang members at a Mongrel Mob pad. Hūhana Lyndon and Michel Mulipola of the Greens joined Te Pāti Māori’s Oriini Kaipara and Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke for the campaign visit to the “*whero whānau*”.

Then photos of Labour’s Kerrin Leoni emerged at a different Mongrel Mob event after she had denied attending one. She resigned from Labour’s candidacy, but quickly decided to run anyway as an independent. The whole thing got very messy and descended into everyone hunting for photos of their opponents standing next to gang members. Te Pāti Māori put out one of its *only* press releases of the campaign accusing everyone of racism for suggesting gangs are bad. The thing is though, it wasn’t any of the coalition parties who outed Leoni for her gang photos. It was Te Pāti Māori’s Oriini Kaipara who accused her in the middle of a televised debate. Never let the truth get in the way of a good accusation of racism.

![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!m6fe!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb24ecc3f-ba63-4ffd-b474-71c8cc9e94c4_600x600.png)

No one campaigned harder this election that the unions. They started their campaign the day after the 2023 election and have not let up for a moment in their attack on the coalition government. In health in particular, they have successfully manufactured a crisis when data shows that all metrics are improving under this government. The government was sworn in on the 27th November 2023 and three days beforehand the New Zealand Nurses’ Organisation had already announced roughly 40 paid union meetings, starting the day of the swearing in, to put the incoming government and Health New Zealand on notice. Their press release supplied journalists with details of placards, buses to transport members, and who local spokespeople were. By the 30th of November the Public Service Association was already prophesising doom and public sector cuts. They mobilised immediately.

Their own records make nonsense of their claims that health crisis is the responsibility of this government alone. In ‘[*Scaremongering unions have a bad case of amnesia*](https://aniobrien.substack.com/p/scaremongering-unions-have-a-bad-case-of-amnesia)’ I went through the headlines and the press releases and compared them to the actual data. I found that the recent news coverage about staffing on a specific oncology ward in Starship Hospital was being amplified by the unions and Labour had even worse staffing back in 2023 before the government changed. NZNO’s own communications showed 791 shifts on that ward that year were below staffing targets. An Infometrics report from NZNO also showed that across the hospitals in the report, the average aggregate nursing staffing shortfall per shift was 684 in 2023 and that dropped to 587 in 2024\. And yet, under improved staffing and better wait times, NZNO’s Paul Goulter still accused the coalition government of eroding the health system through spending restraints and frontline cuts.

Back in July, I wrote ‘[*Politicising a Tragedy: PSA takes the gloves off*](https://aniobrien.substack.com/p/politicising-a-tragedy-psa-takes-the-gloves-off)’ about the PSA’s response to the tragic death of a man in Waikato Hospital’s emergency department. National Secretary of the Public Service Association former-Labour candidate Fleur Fitzsimons described the death as a *“damning snapshot”* of health under this government. She went on to explicitly use Labour talking points blaming the government for giving *“tax breaks to landlords and big tobacco”* and finished by urging New Zealanders to “*vote to change the government for one that properly funds health”*. It was a cynical use of a tragedy and signalled that the PSA would do anything in their power to take down this government.

The unions have sourced the stories and written the reports and laundered them through the media. Labour has had a preset narrative of government health failing to base their campaign and their flagship health policies off. Press releases from the unions and Labour have been coordinated and very clever. There is nothing illegal about this, however it is fundamentally dishonest and a decent media would not take the union press releases and reports at face value.

Off the back of a very long election campaign in which truth and trust were treated with cavalier disregard by all sides at different times, it is easy to see how desperation can grow. The thought of the *other side*, who you have seen behave so badly, winning when they don’t (in your view) deserve to, can feel wrong, unfair, illegitimate.

The voting has ended, though whether we are able to discern a final result is up in the air. I suspect it might be too close to call. And what worries me now is whether, after all we have endured in this campaign, everyone will accept the result the election produces. There has been a concerning amount of grumbling and posturing about unfounded claims of “*voter suppression*” and complaints about overhangs. While it is fine to voice unhappiness with the process and the system, we do not want to go down the track of losers not conceding elections. The dark cloud of eroded trust in democracy is not what we need at all.

It is utterly reckless to promote rhetoric that undermines the population’s trust in elections and democracy. People like former Speaker Trevor Mallard should be ashamed of themselves for laying the foundations for claims of an unfair election in order to score points on social media.

![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!DkJU!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F641aa638-2196-4e50-8114-4a604e181c70_1204x310.png)

![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!aSgh!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa8858bc1-b46c-43d4-bcab-54c7e5dd1af7_1208x334.png)

The enrolment figures do not justify the yarn that is being spun about voter suppression. Approximately 93.6% of the eligible population is enrolled. Yes, that is slightly down on last election’s 94.7%, but Māori enrolments are up with 603,968 enrolled compared with 567,012 in 2023\. And in the first three days of advance voting, 309,876 voted compared with 235,515 at the same point last time. These are solid levels of participation and not remotely a sham election.

I suspect that if the overhang comes into play in impacting the result of the election there will be cries of illegitimacy also. In my view, both sides are simply operating in the system we have now. Te Pāti Māori is polling at almost zero per cent but they will likely win four electorate seats. Likewise National will probably have additional overhang seats. What’s good for the goose has to be good for the gander and whatever outcome is produced must be accepted. 

If after the election, a result produced by an overhang is viewed as unfair we should have a conversation about whether the system needs to be fixed or changed, but the existing rule cannot be deemed illegitimate depending on who it benefits. I am pledging to use my platforms to support the legitimacy of our election even if the outcome is not the one I would prefer. I hope others, especially political leaders will do the same. The processes of conceding defeat, transferring power, or seeing the existing lot continue on, are key in the validating of our system. And we are all custodians of this precious and unusual thing: democracy.

New Zealand has a proud history of democracy. Voting eligibility via property rights applied to both British and Māori men from our first election and all women got the vote in 1893, long before many other countries. We honour that history by taking voting seriously, including the votes of those who we think are making the wrong choice.

So let’s accept the cards as they fall. We can complain and bemoan, or celebrate, the result, but unless there is video footage of Chris Hipkins or Christopher Luxon dropping off boxes of dodgy ballots, let’s leave the electoral conspiracies to tinpot democracies like the United States (kidding).

This article was originally published by [Thought Crimes](https://aniobrien.substack.com/p/somebody-has-to-lose-tomorrow).