By Steve Painter
The recently formed third-party Alliance threw a scare into the New Zealand political establishment with a strong performance in the February 15 Tamaki by-election. The Alliance came within 1200 votes of winning the blue ribbon National Party seat of former prime minister Robert Muldoon.
The Nationals held the seat with 48% of the vote (7469 votes at close of counting on February 15), the Alliance took 40% (6223 votes), with the Labour Party a distant third on 12.5% (1937 votes).
The result followed a week in which nervous business and political establishment figures warned strongly against voting for the Alliance following polls that showed the new group leading by 5-8% in one of the safest National seats in the country. The Alliance consists of NewLabour, a centre-left breakaway from Labour; the recently formed Greens; the Democrats, who had two MPs in the early '80s; and the Maori party, Mana Motuhake.
Prominent Labour and National politicians pleaded with disaffected supporters not to vote for the Alliance, and business leaders warned that a large vote for the Alliance would send negative messages to offshore investors. On election night, Labour left-winger Helen Clarke visited the National campaign office to congratulate the conservatives.
"The government sent hordes of its MPs from all over New Zealand into Tamaki to help bolster the campaign", reports Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly Auckland correspondent Ian Powell. "Robert Muldoon leapt into the fray stating that if voters could not bring themselves to vote for the government, they should not vote rather than support the Alliance candidate, Democrat member Chris Leitch." Voting is not compulsory in New Zealand. "National candidate Clem Simich said disaffected Nationals should vote Labour rather than Alliance.
"While a large part of the Alliance's support is a protest against National and Labour, voters are well aware of the Alliance's policies", says Powell. Around 600 people turned out for Alliance polling booth duties on election day.
Meanwhile, a fifth party, the Liberals, has announced its intention of joining the Alliance. This would give the Alliance three sitting MPs going into the next national elections: the Liberals' Gilbert Myles and Dr Hamish Hamilton, and NewLabour's Jim Anderton, a former Labour Party national president. The Liberals are a recent breakaway from the Nationals, and there is a possibility of more National MPs joining them.
Support for the Alliance is related to New Zealand's deep economic problems, and a jobless rate estimated by the Department of Statistics in December at 15.7%. While the government claims unemployment stands at 10.9% of the workforce, DS figures are more accurate because they include jobless people regarded as "not actively seeking work".
Unemployment has risen in every quarter since December 1989, when it was 6.9%. Around 40% of the unemployed have now been out of work for more than six months, and another 23% for more than a year.