New Zealand swings to the right in post-Ardern era

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New Zealand’s Labor Party has suffered a crushing defeat in the country’s elections, with early results showing it has half as many parliamentary seats compared to Jacinda Ardern’s victory in 2020.

With more than a third of the votes counted, Christopher Luxon’s center-right National Party is expected to lead the country with support from the liberal ACT Party. The alliance is expected to have 64 seats in the 120-seat parliament.

Just three years after “Jacindamania” swept the country, the right-wing shift has exposed the fragility of a policy agenda focused on issues such as climate change as New Zealand voters face rising inflation and a cost-of-living crisis.

Crucially, the expected outcome means National does not need the support of veteran politician Winston Peters’ populist New Zealand First party to form government.

Chris Hipkins, who has been prime minister since Ardern stepped down in January, conceded defeat earlier in the evening as the scale of Labour’s losses became apparent. “I tried my best to turn the tide of history, but unfortunately it was not enough,” he said.

Labor also lost to left-wing rivals such as the Greens and the Maori Party, which advocates for Aboriginal rights.

In the Auckland seat of Mount Albert, a Labor stronghold vacated by Ardern and once held by former prime minister Helen Clark, National’s candidate holds a narrow lead in the votes counted. .

Finance Minister Grant Robertson told broadcaster 1News his government had been grappling with the sentiment among voters that “it’s time for a change”.

Bryce Edwards, a political analyst at Victoria University of Wellington, said the election results represented a vote to oust the current Labor government rather than a successful National Party campaign.

Edwards said two Labor governments in power for six years, half of which had supermajorities, had failed to deliver on their promises. He said the unusually large 2020 election victory under Ardern had been a “blessing and a curse” for her government: it gave a strong mandate for reform but led to a sense of complacency . “They wasted it,” Edwards said.

Hipkins has made significant progress in the general election since Ardern resigned as prime minister in January. He has sought to refocus Labour’s policy agenda towards what he calls “bread and butter” issues such as the cost of living. Ardern holds near-celebrity political status on the world stage, but her popularity is fading at home, where long lockdowns during the Covid-19 pandemic have eroded support.

Luxon said he would scrap unpopular Labor policies, including the creation of a separate health agency for Māori. He also promised to cut taxes and crack down on crime.

The 53-year-old former Air New Zealand chief executive, who also worked for Unilever, is a blank canvas for voters given he only served one term in Parliament.

Edwards said it would help the National leader to run a convincing campaign because he was not seen as a career politician.

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