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Would our political parties get past the Fair Trading Act? Chris Trotter assesses how each political party in Parliament differs between what they promise and what they deliver

Public Policy / opinion
Would our political parties get past the Fair Trading Act? Chris Trotter assesses how each political party in Parliament differs between what they promise and what they deliver
Opening a can of worms
Image sourced from Shutterstock.com

By Chris Trotter*

What if our political parties were subject to the Fair Trading Act? What if they, like the nation’s businesses, were prohibited from misleading their consumers – i.e. the voters – about the nature, characteristics, suitability, or quantity of the products – i.e. the policies – on offer? Would they pass muster? Or would MBIE be sending them a letter? 

Let’s begin with the smaller parties.

The unlikelihood of ever finding themselves in a position to implement their entire policy agenda significantly reduces the political incentives for small parties to obfuscate and mislead the voters.

Such honesty is both refreshing and alarming. Small parties like Te Pati Māori, NZ First, Act, and the Greens are not, as a rule, reticent about their plans for the country. They rightly intuit that ideological candour attracts more serious interest than political evasiveness. Their preference is for the narrow temple over the broad church.

So, Te Pāti Māori is openly demanding tino rangatiratanga – Māori sovereignty – and to hell with all the cavilling colonialists who complain. The party’s openly stated mission is to win all seven of the Māori seats, and to eliminate Labour’s decisive advantage, vis-à-vis Te Pāti Māori, in the Party Vote. Its leaders neither expect, nor are they seeking, a majority of all the votes cast. Their plan is to win enough parliamentary seats to make the support of Te Pāti Māori indispensable to the formation of any future New Zealand government.

That this makes the party hell-scary to a very large number of Non-Māori voters doesn’t bother Te Pāti Māori. It is well aware that skewering the Pakeha is a winning feature, not a fatal bug, of the party’s pitch. To succeed electorally it needs the enthusiastic support of rangatahi – and half-measures are repugnant to the young. Inspired by the uncompromising militancy of Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke, they want it all, and they want it now.

In other words, Te Pāti Māori is offering exactly what it says on the tin.

NZ First and its leader, Winston Peters, are considerably more opaque.

Schooled by Rob Muldoon – New Zealand’s second-most-successful populist politician after Richard Seddon – Peters’ consistent electoral objective has been to reconstitute the angry coalition of farmers, small-business owners, and culturally-alienated working-class voters, that swept Muldoon to victory in 1975.

Like Muldoon, Peters expects his angry coalition to shoulder the task of restoring the social, economic and cultural equilibrium which he charges the Left with disrupting. Unlike Muldoon, however, Peters had to launch his populist crusades in a multi-party environment. The binary choice between himself and Bill Rowling, which Muldoon set before voters in 1975, has never been available to Peters and NZ First. In the post-MMP political marketplace, NZ First has always faced too many competitors.

In attempting to match the offers of its competitors, NZ First has tended to promise more on the tin than its serially monogamous attachments to one or other of the two main parties could possibly secure by way of coalition agreements. It’s the party’s fatal marketing flaw: promising more, delivering less.

Act has never been overly concerned about what gets printed on the party’s tin, or whether it matches the contents. Hardly surprising, given that Act’s key objective has always been to preserve and, if possible, extend, the top-down free-market revolution.

Act’s most successful leaders, Richard Prebble and David Seymour, have always understood that the best way to achieve the party’s objectives is to persuade National voters that the dominant party of the Right has gone soft on social and cultural issues (free speech, the Treaty of Waitangi, law and order) or, even worse, that it is losing focus on the key objectives of neoliberal economics.

‘Give us the votes, and we will keep National honest’, has always been Act’s best pitch. And, if right-wing voters read no further than that on the tin, then satisfaction with the product is likely to be high. To paraphrase the Rolling Stones: Act doesn’t always get what disgruntled right-wing voters want (Treaty Principles Bill) but it’s highly effective at getting what the Neoliberal Revolution needs (workplace reform).

And then there’s the Greens.

For post-scarcity parties like the Values Party (1972-89) and the Greens, it really isn’t stretching things too far to suggest that what’s written on the tin matters a whole lot more than what’s inside it. The purpose of such parties (or should that be “movements”) is to educate and inspire the electorate. Meaning that it’s not so much a matter of telling people what’s actually in your tin, as it is of stipulating what should be in everybody else’s.

To a large extent this explains why Green Party co-leader James Shaw became something of an embarrassment to his colleagues. He’d committed the unforgivable sin of actually achieving something by persuading the National Party to lend its support to his Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill. Shaw’s wheeling and dealing, his willingness to compromise, smacked uncomfortably of actually existing politics – as opposed to the “perfect world” politics favoured by the true believers.

The Greens’ unbridled idealism explains in large measure why the challenge of matching what’s written on the party’s tin with its actual contents, has become so daunting. Promising the voters diversity, equity and inclusion on the label is one thing; opening the can to reveal Bible Belt Bussy; is something else altogether.

And Labour? Does it comport with the expectations of the Fair Trading Act?

It’s tempting to say that it does. (Not least on account of the fact that the author once sat as the party’s industrial representative on Labour’s New Zealand Council.) Certainly, anyone turning up to a Labour Party conference will still encounter trade union affiliates, feminists, LGBTQI activists, Māori reps, and ambitious youth delegates. Policy remits will be debated. Elections held. The trappings of a progressive party dedicated to furthering the interests of the New Zealand working-class are all still in place.

Upon closer inspection, however, the label on Labour’s tin has the look of something carefully designed by an advertising agency to evoke a powerful nostalgic reaction. There’s a lovely photo of Mickey Savage, the typeface chosen has a staunch 1930s feel to it, and there are numerous references to Labour’s proud history of delivering “social justice” to “working people”.

But the compulsory list of ingredients, set in 8 point at the bottom of the label, reveals something a little different: Democratic Socialism: 1 percent; Social Justice: 10 percent; Decolonisation and Indigenisation: 15 percent; Gender Equity: 19 percent; Neoliberalism: 55 percent.

Don’t say you weren’t warned.

And National – New Zealand’s most successful political party? How closely does National’s content match its branding?

Let’s start with the party’s name, “National”. It was deliberately chosen by the party’s founders to indicate that, unlike Labour’s openly sectional commitment to working-class New Zealanders and their trade unions, the new party (born in 1936 out of the United and Reform parties) was committed to serving the whole nation – irrespective of its citizens’ class origins. That was a big, and an almost impossible, ask.

If they’d been serious: if the party had indeed been dedicated to the welfare and advancement of all New Zealanders; i.e. to the “national” interest; then its policies would have built upon and extended Labour’s reforms. Not to put too fine a point upon it, a genuinely “national” party would have been as much “left” as it was “right”.

There will be many, reading the above sentences, will cry: “Aha! That’s exactly what National has become – ‘Labour Lite’!”

But, that would be an ideological, not an historical, response. Between 1936 and 1946 National was pledged to sweep away all of the social and industrial reforms of the First Labour Government. And even the party’s reluctant (albeit election-winning) acceptance of the welfare state in 1949 was tactical, rather than sincere. Forty-two years later, in 1991, National atoned for its earlier historical sins by laying waste to both the unions and the welfare state. What little of them remained standing, the party has been systematically dismantling ever since.

So, no, National is not a “national” party. Still less is it a “nationalist” party. A party infused with nationalist pride would be voluble in upholding the achievements of the New Zealand nation. It would sing the praises of its settlers, its city-builders, its progressive legislators, its engineers and scientists, its writers, poets and artists. A nationalist party would not sit mute as the New Zealand people’s achievements were disparaged.

No, National isn’t a nationalist party either.

If the policies promoted by the dominant party of the present coalition government came in a tin, and that tin was labelled “National”, then the only defence against a charge brought under the Fair Trading Act would be that after nearly 90 years of “representing everyone, farmers and businessmen alike” (thanks Gary McCormick) New Zealanders have come to accept that, in their country, the Right’s leading political party has only ever been notionally “national”.

We all know exactly what’s inside.


*Chris Trotter has been writing and commenting professionally about New Zealand politics for more than 30 years. He writes a weekly column for interest.co.nz. His work may also be found at http://bowalleyroad.blogspot.com.

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17 Comments

Believe there was wisdom, reason and good purpose when the Maori parliamentary seats were introduced not much over 150 years ago. Unfortunately the independent voice and status that was intended was largely lost when the Labour Party more or less absorbed them by default and they became rather taken for granted. That meant in turn those seats and that say,  spent more time in opposition than in government. It is worthwhile to note Dame Tariana Turia’s comment that once part of a National government, alongside John Key and Bill English, there was opportunity for independent thought, cooperation and progress.Venture to suggest if from way back those seats had had that, independent presence and status in government that the Maori Party of today would not need to be at the extremes that it is.

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There was a bell-curve back then - a few poor, a few rich, and a big middle-class. That has changed - there are now a growing number of poor, trending towards a majority. There is an echelon who think of themselves as middle-class, but who are hocked to the eyeballs, and really aren't. And there is a cohort of even-richer. 

The poor no longer trust either major Party, the rich self-serve, and the assumption that there is a 'middle' is still falsely held by most. What we really have, is a mass of disenfranchised (someone coined the phrase: Precariat) who tend to vote out the incumbent - regardless of hue. They also, with each passing year, seem to have less time for politics. 

 

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Just read this in the Guardian, maybe the same has happened here.    Worth the read.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/apr/20/american…

The America I loved is gone - Stephen Marche

At one prepper convention I remember, a vendor was selling gluten-free rations for bunker survival. That was America in a bucket to me: even at the end of the world, don’t let a gluten allergy interfere with your active lifestyle.

I suspect many NZers are not voting for the party that will deliver their dream future, rather against the nightmare they think another will try and deliver.  

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Definitely worth the read - thanks for the link.

Writing of that calibre isn't common.

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Yes corporate greed has destroyed middle America. The America most ordinary working class people from around the world could or would relate to.  It has been replaced by increasing struggles and indebtedness as people are duped into modern enslavement by the other part of the equation, those who are on the other side of increasing inequity, who are able to increase their wealth despite the difficulties. And the mythical American 'dream' of being able to be mega rich is ever harder to achieve because too many who are already there tend to clip your ticket long before you get there.

Marche refers to the Hollywood dreams of idealistic America. But the Hollywood that is becoming more likely as a portent is the movie Civil War or The Purge series.

Ironic really, but said often here is that Xi and Putin really don't need to do anything other than sit back and watch America do it to themselves.

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Did we ever have a NZ dream?

 

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In the post war years sections tended to 1/4 acre. My parents had one. I believe this was the size considered necessary to have a reasonable vege garden, run some chickens or perhaps a sheep. Essentially the minimum required for a basic level of self sufficiency. I think that self sufficiency was the 'dream'. But bureaucracy and greed has killed it. Authorities don't like people having too much freedom it seems (I've heard one in authority lamenting that people should learn to do as they're told). True some are careless with it and impact on others, but laws have never been effective at protecting people from stupidity.  They tend to find new and better ways to be it, and if we are lucky the only person they hurt or kill is themselves. Inventiveness often flourishes when there are few rules to constrain one.

the 'dream' that PDK lives (off grid, self sufficiency) is what most wanted, but it has always needed money to get there and for most it was and, now ever more so, far beyond their reach. 

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Yes that mantra “we know, we say, you do” only too readily comes to the fore. That element in itself contributed to the then  “ungrateful”  electorate booting out the Clark/Cullen government. But you may also recall during the pandemic second lockdown of Auckland at the facile and farcical stage, at the barbecue you can pee outside but not inside, PM Ardern muttered furiously on national TV something like - I just wish people would do as they are told. Said it before, do believe that somewhere in the psyche of every politician is both desire and pleasure in telling other people what to do.

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Poor has a different meaning. Poor today means approximately zero wealth an no credit available whereas middle-class may mean significant negative wealth with financial institutions falling over themselves to increase indebtedness.

My mother pointed out that when the Jarrow hunger strikers walked the length of England to protest their poverty everyone could see their faces were shrunk by semi-starvation. Today activists protest about the obesity caused by being low-waged or  a beneficiary. 

In the past being poor meant leaving school early and having little access to education; today everyone has an internet accessing mobile phone (well except for some of the eccentric mega-rich) and school goes on forever.

Where NZ has returned to the past is the low level of social mobility. How many of our MPs can claim to have had a genuine working class origin. I can only remember John Key; I'm sure there are others but few.

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There is always something to learn. Only recently discovered that those families that were so poor they collected their urine to sell to the local tannery and thus the colloquialism “piss poor.”

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"There is, in New Zealand, a certain powerful, tightly controlled organisation. It has secretive membership numbers, opaque finances and a history of safeguarding and other scandals. It boasts strong connections at the highest levels of New Zealand public life. "

https://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2025/04/hehir_reveals_another_cult.html

 

(Yes, the same lens could certainly be applied to National)

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Are we being reduced to voting for who we think lies the least?

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Haven't we always...?

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If that is the measure we may as well never vote.  

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In the past it was for whose policies were the least repugnant, ill-conceived, or simply stupid becasue there was at least some hope of them keeping to the policy script without too much secret dealing.

This is an order of magnitude further down the electoral despair scale.

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What CT doesn't expound on, is the dangers of the division that TPM call for. That tino rangatinotanga is a distortion that ignores history from the Treaty must be considered, but also the very call is divisive, apartheid if you will. The international evidence is that it can only lead to extreme violence and will destroy societies from within. It needs to be confronted, but unfortunately NZ has demonstrated it has no will to do so.

When Act's Treaty bill was read in parliament, TPM members began a haka. they stated that they did so because it was their culture. But their culture doesn't say to do it when, where and how they did it. What they did instead was to try to stop any debate, suppress any possibility that a view counter to theirs being heard. For parliament this was in it's intent an act of violence, that messaged their intentions. 

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The party’s openly stated mission is to win all seven of the Māori seats, and to eliminate Labour’s decisive advantage, vis-à-vis Te Pāti Māori, in the Party Vote.

The function of TPM is to act as lapdogs for the Labour Party.  The disparity between their electoral and party vote gifting a 1-3 seat overhang in favour of Labour Party coalitions.  This cynical exploitation of electoral law to run as an electoral only party has been a known flaw since MMP was first introduced.  

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