Labour’s first and most urgent mission is to knock Te Pāti Māori out of the race, says Chris Trotter

By Chris Trotter*

“Your mission, Mr Hipkins, should you choose to accept it, is to lead Labour to victory in 2026.” Except, as always, the drama of a Mission Impossible movie lies not in the what, but in the how.

Of course Chris Hipkins is willing to lead Labour to a win. The real question is whether or not he is prepared to do what it takes to make the election of a stable and credible centre-left government something more than an impossible mission.

What will it take? Labour’s first and most urgent mission is to knock Te Pāti Māori out of the race.

While the slightest possibility remains that Chris Hipkins and his government could end up being led by the nose by Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, Labour’s vulnerability to centre-right attack will be acute. By the time the 2026 election campaign kicks off, therefore, the polls must be showing Labour ahead in most, if not all, of the Māori seats. Te Pāti Māori needs to be fighting for its political life.

In other words, Labour needs to do to Te Pāti Māori in 2026 exactly what it did to the Māori Party in 2017 – drive it out of Parliament. That’s right, in 2017 Labour retook all of the Māori seats. Moreover, by executing that clean sweep it reclaimed its historical position as the pre-eminent guardian of Māori interests.

How was Labour able to do that? An important contributing factor to Labour’s success was the Māori Party’s decision to throw in its lot with John Key’s National-led government. That decision, made first in 2008, and then reaffirmed in 2011 and 2014, was not well-received by a majority of Māori voters, even if, on a seat-by-seat basis, they’d proved willing to keep their  heroes – Tariana Turia, Pita Sharples, and Hone Harawira – in Parliament.

The success of Māori Party candidates was further assisted by the Labour Party’s internal political difficulties. While it remained preoccupied with the question of whether Labour should stick with, or abandon, its neoliberal economic and social policies, there simply wasn’t the sharp political focus required to unseat the Māori Party’s MPs.

That all changed when the then Labour Leader, Andrew Little, parachuted Willie Jackson into a winnable position on the 2017 Party List. Ably assisted by his long-time comrades Matt McCarten and John Tamihere, Jackson devised and was given command of a campaign for winning back the Māori seats.

At the heart of that campaign was a determination to focus on the economic lives of urbanised Māori – especially the material challenges of securing well-paid and secure employment, affordable housing, accessible health-care, and effective educational institutions. By homing in on the class-based, as opposed to the race-based, challenges of urban Māori life, Labour’s message contrasted sharply with the culture-driven policies of the Māori Party. It also reflected back to them what a majority of Māori voters believed Labour should stand for.

That the mainstream news media, firmly in the grip of “Jacindamania”, largely missed what was unfolding in the Māori seats, also helped. Otherwise, questions might have been asked about the profoundly traditional – i.e. socialist – tone of Labour’s message to Māori voters as opposed to its much more conventional pitch to voters on the General Roll.

Can the Jackson Plan of 2017 be repeated in 2026? It can, but only by broadening it out to encompass Labour’s pitch to the voters on both electoral rolls. In developing such a pitch, however, Labour would first have to address, head-on, the problem of “status reversal”. This is what happens when, in the words of political scientist Barbara Walter:

“Dominant groups go from a situation where, one moment, they get to decide whose language is spoken, whose laws are enforced, and whose culture is revered, to a situation where they do not.”

Status reversal presents the single biggest obstacle to Labour winning in 2026. If the party is unable to move past it, then voters otherwise persuaded that a change of government would be good for them, at least economically, will continue voting for National, Act and NZ First on the grounds that any government dependent on the support of Te Pati Māori (and the Greens) will necessarily entail the reinstatement and intensification of the policies rejected by the electorate in 2023.

While this remains in prospect, any change of government will be seen by Pakeha conservatives as something much more significant than a simple political defeat for the Right. It will be interpreted as the triumph of “Aotearoa” over “New Zealand”. They will assume that the Sixth Labour Government’s cultural demotion of Non-Māori is about to recommence – and they will not be happy.

The only way to prevent those who deserted the Left in 2023 from engaging in this sort of reasoning is for Labour to promise a general “status advance” for all economically precarious New Zealanders – irrespective of their ethnic, sexual, gender, or cultural identity.

Drawing its inspiration from Jackson’s 2017 campaign in the Māori seats, Labour could reaffirm its traditional priorities of employment, housing, health, education and welfare – presenting them as the indispensable foundations of a secure and happy life.

Certainly, it is hard to take seriously the Treaty of Waitangi’s promise of tino rangatiratanga when you’re shivering in a freezing house, black mould creeping down the walls, and with insufficient funds in the kitty to both pay the power bill and put food on the table.

Rather than allow the Treaty to take on the character of a racially-driven zero-sum game, Labour might highlight the way in which iwi are using their Treaty settlements to foster the sort of social uplift represented by Ngati Whatua’s social insurance scheme. That scheme offers tribal members cover for doctors’ visits, private hospital care, and dental care.

Back in the 1930s, Labour took a local welfare scheme, devised for the workers on the first big hydro-electric project on the Waitaki River, and expanded it into the Social Security Act. Taking inspiration from iwi innovations, and then working out ways to apply them to the whole country, might persuade even conservative Pakeha that te Tiriti and its principles can work for all New Zealanders.

Optimistic, innovative, moderate, credible, stable, and dedicated to making Aotearoa-New Zealand a liveable proposition for more than just those Kiwis who are “sorted”. If Chris Hipkins possesses the vision and guts to revive that version of Labour, then it would soon drive down the support for Te Pati Māori. It might also win back the support of those driven away by the non-traditional policies and dangerous relationships Labour has “progressively” signed up to in lieu of vision and guts.

Certainly, New Zealand has need of imagination and courage. Because, as Tom Cruise’s alter ego, Ethan Hunt, would undoubtedly assert: without vision and guts, all missions are impossible.

*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.