STRICTLY 4 THE ISLANDS: THE ELECTION SPECIAL

Weekly Pacific Politics with Otis Whinney

We still have quite some time before November 7, our beautiful election date, and yet I am already sick to death of polls and surveys. I don’t know how many times I can see a series of numbers and percentages that tell me no one is happy before I consider disengaging from politics and picking up a new hobby like fly fishing or crocheting. But I would miss Christopher Luxon’s exceptional oratory skills too much to ever do that. One survey, however, caught my attention. The PMN News-Horizon Research Pacific Issues Election Survey, released July 14, has attempted to portray a clear overview of what issues matter most to the Pacific community of Aotearoa as we prepare to choose our next government, and the results are not all that shocking.

The survey indicates that the issues at the forefront of Pacific minds are not too far off from what everyone else is thinking, and if anything it shows just how important these issues are to Aotearoa at large. When asked what matters when deciding how to vote, the cost of living was an answer for 90 percent of respondents, with jobs and wages the second most common answer with 75 percent. The survey also reinforces a long-running trend for Pacific voters being consistent Labour supporters, with 50% of respondents indicating that they intend to give them their vote. Labour has always been able to rely on the broad support of Pacific people, with Pacific-strong electorates like Māngere and Manurewa being shoe-ins for the party most election seasons. National’s infamous legacy amongst these communities regarding their overtly racist policies targeting Pacific migrants in the late 70s and 80s probably doesn’t help.

National has always struggled to win over this side of the country, and has struggled to shake their reputation as a party who don’t care about Pacific people. Despite the hiring of a few Pacific MPs over the years, I think it's safe to say that National’s priorities are elsewhere at this point. The party is in a bit of a crisis of support, with even their traditional allies in the business world turning their eyes to other options. As Luxon hosts his regular confidence votes (as any strong leader does) and his numbers tumble, it’s only natural for the party to focus on keeping their core audience if they want to retain the seat of power. I guess that's why the task of running the Ministry for Pacific Peoples has been dumped on Paul Goldsmith’s doorstep, along with ten other portfolios. While Luxon tries desperately to win the hearts and minds of the loyal tax payers of middle New Zealand, Goldsmith can display his boundless cultural acumen amongst our Pacific diaspora in between meetings with veterans, astronauts, RNZ, and several aggrieved iwi and hapū. A winning strategy if I've ever seen one.

Labour shouldn’t get complacent, however. The fact that Chris Hipkins is campaigning against the political mastermind of Christopher Luxon and still cannot swing public opinion to his side is more than enough proof of that. The 2023 election should have also been ringing some alarm bells for Labour. A piece by Madeline Chapman in The Spinoff released after that election revealed that, while Pacific voters have yet to turn to a separate party en masse, the last election saw voter turnout in Pacific-majority electorates go down. And while those who voted for other parties remained steady in their numbers, the Labour vote took the biggest hit. Whatever good will Labour has built up, it has been waning, and it contributed to their loss last time around. Labour has announced policies aimed at tackling the cost of living crisis, which remains as the most reported issue in the survey, and yet there doesn’t seem to be any indication that anything their doing is making a real difference for the voting public. If last time is anything to go by, Labour may be saying a slow, disappointing goodbye to another one of their key bases of support.

It's not irrelevant to ask why they should even attempt to win the hearts and minds of Pacific people anyway. And most parties have also made the calculated decision that it actually isn't worth it. ACT, for example, can’t really publicly campaign for specific ethnic groups without disregarding their entire platform regarding ‘race-based decision making.’ Despite whatever inequities Pacific people (or any other racial/cultural group) may be facing, ACT will remain committed to removing this consideration from the equation when it comes to targeted assistance. They have also previously campaigned on disestablishing the Ministry for Pacific Peoples, a move that probably wouldn’t play well to the people that ministry is supposed to benefit (regardless of how effective you may think that ministry has been in the past). Indeed, with ACT’s poll numbers struggling to reach the level of support they enjoyed in our last election, they have to be smart about who they want to appeal to, so obviously a group they’ve never tried to win isn’t going to stay high on that list.

The Opportunity Party is in a similar situation. Opportunity has become the hot topic for politics nerds across the country ever since they got a fresh new leader in Qiulae Wong and a burst of publicity soon after. The fact that a party other than NZF could become the ‘kingmaker’ and decide our future government just goes to show how unprecedented these times really are. But Opportunity has a specific appeal, being a ‘centrist’ party, and isn't going to break into the big leagues any time soon. As mentioned prior, Pacific people have tended to remain strong Labour supporters, leaving little room for a minor party to saddle in and change that without some intense targeted campaigning, and Opportunity still has to justify themselves to the New Zealand public at large before they can consider expanding their supporter base like that. Qiulae seems to be running a campaign built on recognising how disaffected people are with our current establishment parties without presenting themselves as too radical, as to avoid getting lumped in with the cookers and the communists. Aiming for as wide a reach as possible as opposed to targeting specific communities would make sense on that front. 

Te Pāti Māori is a unique case. Māori and Pacific people are often found at the negative end of many of the same statistics, whether it’s health outcomes, poverty or incarceration. The groups are a natural pair, and Te Pāti Māori’s advocacy for rectifying these uneven outcomes for Māori usually also includes how they will affect Pacific people as well. Their foreign policy, while unlikely to see the light of day, also explicitly mentions their focus on Pacific/indigenous global connections and military neutrality, which aligns with the ‘ocean of peace’ rhetoric many Pacific nations use when describing their vision for the moana in the modern world. But anyone who's been paying attention has seen the turmoil that Te Pāti Māori has gone through, and in their current form they have abandoned the party vote and turned their attention to getting their candidates in the Māori electorates into parliament. Like other parties facing a crisis of support, it seems like Te Pāti Māori are aiming to retain their core audience more than anything.

Which leaves us with New Zealand First and the Greens. A few weeks back I wrote about NZF’s electoral strategy in South Auckland; mobilising a series of Pacific MPs who are deadset on appealing to Pacific voter’s faith and conservative values to realign them away from Labour and towards NZF. The Greens are also battling it out in this arena. Fresh candidate Michel Mulipola (or ‘Bloody Sāmoan’ as he’s known on the internet), for example, is vying for the electorate of Māngere, going up against NZF’s Vicky Hau. Others like the Green Ōtāhuhu candidate Te Whatanui Skipwith have made their presence known in the area through attending local events and meeting Pacific voters on their terms, turning South Auckland into a bit of an ideological battleground between competing visions for the future of our Pacific community. The draw of religious conservatism should not be underestimated, as the Church has always played a hugely important role in the Pacific communities of Aotearoa since their inception. But Winston Peters and his consistent attacks on immigrants could potentially hurt the chances of NZF gaining this audience. NZF and the Greens both have diametrically opposed solutions to our cost of living crisis, with the Greens advocating for taxes on the wealthier and a turn to renewables, while NZF want to buy back the BNZ and start drilling for more oil. Whether either of these approaches appeal to South Auckland remains to be seen.

More than anything, this survey reveals that the wants and needs of Pacific people have not moved much since the last election. For a group already suffering through disproportionately high rates of poverty and hardship in several areas, this government’s track record of high unemployment and outdated justice policies can only serve to keep it that way. The only through line I can find amongst these electoral strategies is that there really isn’t any single option that can speak directly to the Pacific community at large. You could argue this is reflected in the general public as well. As election day slowly marches towards us, it seems no one is able to provide a platform or movement people can get behind, so it seems we’re walking into another messy coalition agreement. And it seems the Pacific community will remain at the back of the major party’s minds, leaving the door open for the small ones to possibly pick up what’s been left behind.