By The Straits Times | Created at 2024-11-19 06:23:47 | Updated at 2024-11-19 08:35:22
2 hours ago
WELLINGTON - A year before American voters’ anger over the cost of living helped Donald Trump win the US presidency, similar sentiments in New Zealand thrust in the nation’s most conservative government in decades.
Now, New Zealand bears little resemblance to the country recently led by Ms Jacinda Ardern, whose brand of compassionate, progressive politics made her a global symbol of anti-Trump liberalism.
The new government – a coalition of the main centre-right party and two smaller, more populist ones – has reversed many of Ms Ardern’s policies.
It has rescinded a world-leading ban on smoking for future generations, repealed rules designed to address climate change and put a former arms-industry lobbyist in charge of overhauling the nation’s strict gun laws.
And in a country that has been celebrated for elevating the status of Maori, its indigenous people, it has challenged their rights and the prominence of their culture and language in public life, driving a wedge into New Zealand society and setting off waves of protests.
On Nov 19, tens of thousands of demonstrators – including some who wore traditional Maori attire and performed hakas – converged on Parliament.
“This is nothing more than us having to defend that we exist,” Ms Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, the co-leader of the Te Pāti Māori party, said before the protesters reached Wellington, the capital.
This rightward shift is, in a way, reflective of Ms Ardern’s complicated legacy at home.
Her coronavirus policies were lauded initially but ended up being divisive. The pandemic also left the country with a bruising cost of living.
When Ms Ardern stepped down as prime minister in January 2023, before her second term ended, inflation was hovering at 7 per cent.
A few months later, voters delivered their verdict on Ms Ardern’s tenure: Although she had guided New Zealand through multiple crises, she had failed to deliver the transformational change she had promised.
“She feels very long ago and very far away,” said Dr Richard Shaw, a politics professor at Massey University. “We feel like quite a radically different country.”
Led by Mr Christopher Luxon of the National Party, the conservative government helped moderate inflation to 2.2 per cent by reducing government spending, said Associate Professor Dennis Wesselbaum, an economics expert at the University of Otago.
But the economy has also slowed, he said.
It remains to be seen whether the government can stimulate economic growth, Assoc Prof Wesselbaum said.
But it has a much clearer plan to do so than Ms Ardern’s government did, he added, pointing to its policies aimed at creating international investment opportunities, cutting taxes and reducing red tape.
The government is promoting a Bill that would allow some infrastructure projects – like mines, roads and housing developments – to bypass the usually required environmental assessments.
It has vowed to repeal some Ms Ardern-era measures – like a plan to tax farm animals’ methane emissions and a ban on offshore oil and gas exploration – with the argument that they hurt businesses’ bottom line.
And it has expanded mining operations, which it argued could become “an attractive prospect for investors and a source of economic prosperity.”
These changes have led to accusations by some conservation groups that the government is waging a “war on nature” and prioritising economic gains above environmental protection.
During the eight years that Ms Ardern’s Labour Party spent in power, some citizens grew disenchanted with government efforts to address disadvantages faced by Maori, who make up about 20 per cent of New Zealand’s 5.3 million people.
To these voters, measures such as a specialised Māori health body and affirmative action for the indigenous people were unfair “special advantages,” said Assoc Prof Lara Greaves from Victoria University of Wellington.
Two smaller parties, New Zealand First and Act, campaigned on those issues, advocating the “same rights” for everyone and promising to repeal “race-based” policies.
“We are watching our democracy being eroded through the enforcement of an ideological and cultural tone that exists only to serve the nation’s elite leftist cabal,” Mr Winston Peters, the leader of New Zealand First, said during Ms Ardern’s tenure.
These views are held by only a small portion of New Zealanders; Act won 8.6 per cent of the votes in the election and New Zealand First took 6 per cent.
But under New Zealand’s so-called proportional voting system, the government is typically formed by a coalition.
Consequently, Mr Luxon’s Nationals, which garnered about 38 per cent, needed both smaller parties to cross the finish line – and have been pulled further to the right.
In practice, this has meant abolishing the Maori health body, challenging their protected representation in local governments, and discouraging government departments from using the Maori language.
“It’s been our version of the culture wars, so to speak,” said Assoc Prof Greaves, who is Maori. NYTIMES
