Why voters ran out of patience with New Zealand’s progressive government

Meanwhile, the tenuous assumptions underpinning his tax relief policy were torn apart by independent experts, the media and the government.

It didn’t matter. Voters dealing with soaring food prices, rising mortgages and ragged government services were ready to bring to bear years of frustrations on a government viewed as out of touch with everyday New Zealanders.

A series of natural disasters, culminating with wild storms and floods early in the year, also taxed government coffers and the public service, adding to the perception of an administration out of its depth.

Nor did aggressive monetary tightening by the central bank in response to the post-pandemic inflationary outbreak help New Zealand’s battlers.

The same country that had returned Jacinda Ardern and her progressive brand to office with 50 per cent of the primary vote just three years ago had run out of patience. It abandoned Labour in droves on Saturday night, with the party bleeding votes to its left and right.

Labour’s vote has now almost halved since 2020, sitting at roughly 27 per cent on Sunday after massive swings in key electorates through its heartland. Not even Ardern’s former Auckland seat was safe, with just 100 votes separating the two major party candidates at last count.

A last-minute move by Hipkins to bail out Labour by throwing many progressive Ardern policies overboard appears to have come too late.

That effort to rid the party of those Ardern pursuits, including climate reforms and hate-speech laws, may have even ended up costing the party votes on its left as it worked to re-centre itself.

Nationals pollster David Farrer from Curia Market Research described the result as a “bloodbath”, pointing out Labour was haemorrhaging votes not only to National, but to the Greens, the left-leaning Te Pāti Māori, and others.

Saturday’s result may also prove to be a warning to Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, following the resounding rejection of the Indigenous Voice to parliament referendum, also held on Saturday.

Among criticisms levelled at New Zealand Labour by conservative parties was its push to improve Maori representation across government services through a co-governance structure.

Echoes of the Australian “No” campaign could be heard through the opposition to the co-governance measures, with the Labour government accused of focusing on a divisive, peripheral issue at a time when people are struggling to pay their bills.

Six years after “Jacindamania” swept New Zealand, the Labour government, hampered by a pandemic and natural disasters, ran out of time to deliver much of the progressive reform it had promised.

Bold reform aside, it was Labour’s perceived inability to address even the basics of governing in a cost-of-living crisis that ended up costing it the election.