New Zealand general election, 2005

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New Zealand general election, 2005
120 seats (plus 1 overhang) in the New Zealand House of Representatives
September 17, 2005 (2005-09-17)
		First party	Second party	Third party
Leader		Helen Clark	Don Brash	Winston Peters
Party		Labour	National	NZ First
Leader since		1993	2003	1993
Leader's seat		Mount Albert	List	Tauranga
Last election		52 seats, 41.26%	27 seats, 20.93%	13 seats, 10.38%
Seats won		50	48	7
Seat change		-2	+21	-6
Popular vote		935,319	889,813	130,115
Percentage		41.10%	39.10%	5.72%
Swing		-0.16%	+18.17%	-4.66%
		Fourth party	Fifth party	Sixth party
Leader		Rod Donald / Jeanette Fitzsimons	Tariana Turia / Pita Sharples	Peter Dunne
Party		Green	Māori	United Future
Leader since		1995 / 1995	2004 / 2004	2000
Leader's seat		List / List	Te Tai Hauāuru / Tāmaki Makaurau	Ohariu-Belmont
Last election		9 seats, 7.00%	Not yet founded	8 seats, 6.69%
Seats won		6	4	3
Seat change		-3	+4	-5
Popular vote		120,521	48,263	60,860
Percentage		5.30%	2.12%	2.67%
Swing		-1.70%	+2.12%	-4.02%
Incumbent Prime Minister Helen Clark Labour Prime Minister-elect Helen Clark Labour

Wikinews has related news: Results of the 2005 New Zealand General Election

The 2005 New Zealand general election took place on 17 September 2005 and determined the composition of the 48th New Zealand Parliament. No single party or recognised bloc won a majority in the unicameral House of Representatives, but the Labour Party of Prime Minister Helen Clark secured two more seats than its closest rival, the National Party of Dr Don Brash. Most of the other parliamentary parties polled worse than in the previous election, losing votes and seats, with the exception of the newly-formed Māori Party which took four Māori seats from Labour.

Brash deferred conceding defeat until 1 October, when the inclusion of special votes caused National's tally of seats to drop from 49 on election-night to 48.

The election saw a strong recovery by National: it won 21 more seats than at the 2002 election, when it had suffered its worst result since it first fought a general election in 1938. Despite this resurgence, National failed to displace Labour as the largest party in Parliament. National's gains apparently came mainly at the expense of smaller parties, while Labour won only two seats less than in 2002.

On 17 October, Clark announced a new coalition agreement that saw the return of her minority government coalition with the Progressive Party, with confidence and supply support from New Zealand First and from United Future. New Zealand First parliamentary leader Winston Peters and United Future parliamentary leader Peter Dunne became ministers of the Crown, though outside Cabinet. Peters became Minister of Foreign Affairs while Dunne became Minister of Revenue. The Green Party, which had thrown its weight behind Labour before the election, received no cabinet post (see below), but gained several concessions from the coalition on matters such as energy and transport, and agreed to support the government on matters of confidence and supply.

Detailed results

Parliamentary parties

Non-parliamentary parties

The election saw an 81% voter turnout.^[2]

The results of the election give a Gallagher index of disproportionality of 1.11.

Electorate results

List results

Party vote by electorate

Analysis of results

Going into the election, Labour had assurances of support from the Greens (six seats in 2005, down three from 2002) and from the Progressives (one seat, down one). This three-party bloc won 57 seats, leaving Clark four seats short of the 61 seats needed for a majority in the 121-seat Parliament (decreased from the expected 122 because the final results gave the Māori Party only one overhang seat, after it appeared to win two overhang seats on election night). On October 5 the Māori Party began a series of hui to decide whom to support. That same day reports emerged that a meeting between Helen Clark and Māori co-leader Tariana Turia on October 3 had already ruled out a formal coalition between Labour and the Māori Party. Māori Party representatives also held discussions with National representatives, but most New Zealanders thought the Māori Party more likely to give confidence-supply support to a Labour-dominated government because its supporters apparently heavily backed Labour in the party vote.

Had Turia and her co-leader Pita Sharples opted to join a Labour-Progressive-Green coalition, Clark would have had sufficient support to govern with support from a grouping of four parties (Labour, Green, Māori and Progressive). Without the Māori Party, Labour needed the support of New Zealand First (seven seats, down six) and United Future (three seats, down five) to form a government. New Zealand First said it would support (or at least abstain from opposing in confidence-motions) the party with the most seats. Clark sought from New Zealand First a positive commitment rather than abstention. United Future, which had supported the previous Labour-Progressive minority government in confidence and supply, said it would talk first to the party with the most seats about support or coalition. Both New Zealand First and United Future said they would not support a Labour-led coalition which included Greens in Cabinet posts. However, United Future indicated it could support a government where the Greens gave supply-and-confidence votes.^[3]

Brash had only one possible scenario to become Prime Minister: a centre-right coalition with United Future and ACT (two seats, down seven). Given the election results, however, such a coalition would have required the confidence-and-supply votes of both New Zealand First and the Māori Party. This appeared highly unlikely on several counts. New Zealand First's involvement in such a coalition would have run counter to Peters' promise to deal with the biggest party, and Turia and Sharples would have had difficulty in justifying supporting National after their supporters' overwhelming support for Labour in the party vote. Turia and Sharples probably remembered the severe mauling New Zealand First suffered in the 1999 election. (Many of its supporters in 1996 believed they had voted to get rid of National, only to have Peters go into coalition with National; New Zealand First has never really recovered.) Even without this to consider, National had indicated it would abolish the Maori seats if it won power.

The new government as eventually formed consisted of Labour and Progressive in coalition, while New Zealand First and United Future entered agreements of support on confidence and supply motions. In an unprecedented move, Peters and Dunne became Foreign Affairs Minister and Revenue Minister, respectively, but remained outside cabinet and had no obligatory cabinet collective responsibility on votes outside their respective portfolios.

Possible government setups

Background

Election billboards advertise the parties and candidates standing nationwide and in each electorate

The 2002 election had seen the governing Labour Party retain office. However, its junior coalition partner, the Alliance, collapsed, leaving Labour to form a coalition with the new Progressive Coalition, formed by former Alliance leader Jim Anderton. This coalition then obtained an agreement of support ("confidence and supply") from United Future, enabling it to form a stable minority government. The National Party, Labour's main opponents, suffered a considerable defeat, winning only 21% of the vote (22.5% of the seats).

The collapse of National's vote led ultimately to the replacement of its Parliamentary party leader Bill English with parliamentary newcomer Don Brash on 28 October 2003. Brash began an aggressive campaign against the Labour-dominated government. A major boost to this campaign came with his "Orewa speech" (27 January 2004), in which he attacked the Labour-dominated government for giving "special treatment" to the Māori population, particularly over the foreshore and seabed controversy. This resulted in a surge of support for the National Party, although most polls indicated that this subsequently subsided. National also announced it would not stand candidates in the Māori seats, with some smaller parties following suit.

The foreshore-and-seabed controversy also resulted in the establishment of the Māori Party in July 2004. The Māori Party hoped to break Labour's traditional (and then current) dominance in the Māori seats, just as New Zealand First had done in the 1996 election.

A large number of so-called "minor" parties also contested the election. These included Destiny New Zealand (the political branch of the Destiny Church) and the Direct Democracy Party.

Polls

A series of opinion polls published in June 2005 indicated that the National Party had moved ahead of Labour for the first time since June 2004. Commentators speculated^{[citation needed]} that a prominent billboard campaign may have contributed to this. Some said^{[citation needed]} the National Party had peaked too early. The polls released throughout July showed once more an upward trend for Labour, with Labour polling about 6% above National. The release by the National Party of a series of tax-reform proposals in August 2005 appeared to correlate with an increase in its ratings in the polls.

Direct comparisons between the following polls have no statistical validity:

No single political event can explain the significant differences between most of these polls over the period between them. They show either volatility in the electorate and/or flaws in the methods of polling. In the later polls, the issue of National's knowledge of a series of pamphlets (distributed by members of the Exclusive Brethren and attacking the Green and Labour parties) appeared not to have reduced National Party support.

Candidates

For lists of candidates in the 2005 election see:

• Candidates grouped by electorate
• Candidates grouped by party
• Party lists

Major policy platforms

Labour Party

The Labour Party platform^[4] included:

• student loans: writing off interest if the recipient stays in New Zealand
• health: a pledge of extra public-hospital operations
• Treaty of Waitangi: accepting no lodgements for Treaty-claims after 1 September 2008
• increasing rates-rebates
• a "KiwiSaver" program, aimed at getting first homeowners into their own homes
• sponsoring 5,000 new apprenticeships
• increasing community police-force numbers by 250.
• a "Working for Families" tax-relief/benefit programme aimed at lower to middle-income families

National Party

The National Party campaigned on the platform of (National Party Press Release):

• taxation: lowering income-tax rates
• removing references to the Treaty of Waitangi from existing legislation; and resolving all treaty claims amicably by 2010
• making student-loan repayments and $5000 of pre-school childcare costs tax-deductable
• "reworking" the New Zealand Resource Management Act to make development easier
• "removing excessive bureaucracy" in the education system, in particular by overhauling the NCEA, and by re-introducing "bulk funding" of schools
• abolishing early parole for violent criminals. (As of 2005 most prisoners became eligible for parole after serving one-third of their sentence)
• a return to "market rents" for state-housing tenants, including a system of paying housing-subsidies (for the poorest tenants) directly to private landlords
• part public/private ownership of the public health system
• a "work-for-the-dole" scheme
• abolishing the Maori electorates

Voting

Postal voting for New Zealanders abroad began on 31 August. Ballot voting took place on Saturday 17 September, from 9am to 7pm. The Chief Electoral Office released a provisional result at 12.05am on 18 September.

Party funding

New Zealand operates on a system whereby the Electoral Commission allocates funding for advertising on television and on radio. Parties must use their own money for all other forms of advertising, but may not use any of their own money for television or radio advertising.

*Must register for funding
Source: Electoral Commission

Controversies

Police investigated six political parties for alleged breaches of election-spending rules relating to the 2005 election, but brought no prosecutions,^[5] determining that "there was insufficient evidence to indicate that an offence under s214b of the Electoral Act had been committed."^[6] Additionally, claims^{[weasel words]} allege Labour used over $400,000 of taxpayers' money to produce a number of pamphlets and "pledge cards" promoting Labour. The police decided not to lay a prosecution, preferring instead to warn Labour that similar future actions would risk prosecution, because it seemed clear that a number of other parties had also used similar tactics and it would have appeared unfair to single Labour out.

The Auditor-General has also investigated publicly-funded party-advertising for the 2005 election, with a leaked preliminary finding of much of the spending as unlawful. Observers expected the release of a final report in October 2006.^[7]

References

• Stephen Levine and Nigel S. Roberts (editors), The Baubles of Office: The New Zealand General Election of 2005 (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2007). ISBN 978-0-86473-539-3
• Elections New Zealand, joint website of the Electoral Enrolment Centre, Chief Electoral Office, and Electoral Commission.
• 2005 General Election Results from the Chief Electoral Office, Ministry of Justice
• nzvotes.org, comparative information on parties, candidates and electorates
• New Zealand Herald Election 2005 website
• Stuff.co.nz Election 2005 website
• Scoop Election 2005 website
• Scoop Election 2005 campaign diary

Footnotes

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