Labour refusing to help Green candidate Chloe Swarbrick in Auckland Central could be grim for NZ First, who need to have a deal to have any chance in Northland.
Now Niki Kaye has withdrawn from contention in the Auckland Central electorate it is up for grabs. National haven’t named a replacement candidate yet, but leaving the seat open to discussion about whether Labour and Greens will do some sort of a deal. If Swarbrick wins the seat her party won’t have to make the 5% threshold to get back into Parliament, but Labour are openly unwilling to help.
RNZ: Labour rules out deal with Greens in Nikki Kaye’s seat
Labour is adamant it won’t be doing a deal with the Greens in the Auckland Central electorate.
Labour Party’s candidate Helen White will be going up against Green MP Chlöe Swarbrick, who is campaigning for both the party and electorate vote.
White said National won the seat in 2017 by just 1500 votes over Labour.
“The vote was so close for Labour, it just isn’t in the same league with regard to the gap that the Greens would have to move,” she said.
Given that, White said she was sizing up National as her main opponent in the seat.
The Greens are polling at about five or six percent, right on the threshold for getting back into parliament.
But regardless of that, White said she wouldn’t be making way for Swarbrick in Auckland Central.
“I actually think the Greens will be fine, they’ve got a solid base and obviously Chlöe is way up on that list, so people will firmly expect to see Chlöe in parliament.”
Asked what she would say to people who pointed out Swarbrick’s higher profile and name recognition, White said: “I’d ask them whether they’re looking for a celebrity or someone to do this job very seriously.”
At a campaign event in Auckland last night, Labour’s national campaign manager Hayden Munro told the crowd the party could not afford to split the progressive vote in the seat.
But if Labour aren’t going to help Swarbrick, or vice versa as some arrogant Labour supporters have insisted should happen, the left wing vote will be split between White and Swarbrick.
Labour will be very keen to take Auckland Central back now Kaye is out of the picture, but as long as the Greens get 5% or more (as I think is likely) then who wins Auckland Central won’t matter, as the party vote is what matters.
Labour refusing to do a deal in Auckland Central has greater implications for NZ First, who are polling well under the threshold.
If Labour don’t do a deal to help Swarbrick then they can’t credibly do a deal to help Shane Jones in Northland. And if Jones loses there (he has never won an electorate), and if NZ First fail to make 5%, they are out of Parliament.
And the old dog Winston Peters seems to have lost his political teeth.
Stuff – Winston Peters: old dog, same tricks but no bite
The NZ First leader is fighting for survival, afraid that he’s about to be tossed out of the toxic swamp of Parliament.
And as his time in the Beehive peters out, he shows no sign of changing. But the old dog’s teeth are no longer sharp.
As he awaits the outcome of a Serious Fraud Office investigation following revelations about the secretive NZ First Foundation, Peters has watched his party’s polling dwindle to around 2 per cent.
He’s been here before. But while pundits were previously reluctant to write off Peters, his tricks just now seem as old and tired as Lazarus himself.
His campaign launch last weekend failed to showcase any new ideas.
No-one buys the schtick of baiting his Government partners any more. In a sense, he’s the victim of his own chaotic tactics. Self-preservation kept him in the Labour-NZF-Greens alliance – destabilising a leader as popular as Ardern would almost certainly have finished him.
But having gone the distance with the Greens, attacking them to kick off a campaign is just meaningless political rhetoric.
His other stock tactic of distraction also failed him last week.
Facing scrutiny about a taxpayer-funded trip to Antarctica for two wealthy mates, Peters cooked up a story about who’d leaked his private pension details.
It was the latest half-cocked claim in a saga that has already cost him $320,000 in High Court costs. He’s got a long history of making unproven allegations under the shelter of parliamentary privilege, while those he accused have no way to defend themselves.
Peters can only win if voters see only his crafted image and ignore the reality of who he really is.
But once the tricks become obvious – when the threadbare curtain concealing him is pulled back – the show man can no longer pass himself off as the Wizard of Oz.
Peters is looking jaded and out of ideas.
His stymieing of a $100m rescue package for Southland, as the region reels from the likely closure of the Tiwai smelter, was cruelly cynical.
Peters was in Southland on Friday making ludicrous suggestions that management or employees buy the smelter, as there is not chance of a Government buyout he had previously suggested.
So Peters was pushing policy that he has no support for from other parties, so has no chance of succeeding with. Voters are likely to see through his promises, which are as lacking in credibility as his accusations in Parliament.
Jones also looks like he has lost already. He must have got the message from Labour that they aren’t going to help him in Northland.
