Labour’s list yesterday with its elevation of sitting Maori MPs to high list positions is clearly an attempt to starve Te Paati Maori of votes.
Labour obviously wants to avoid having to even consider forming a coalition with them.
But in losing one old-school Labour MP and placing some of its new bright urban talent way down the list, Labour is taking some big risks.
The Maori-first strategy sees Labour’s Maori Caucus co-chair Willie Jackson at four on the list; well ahead of Kieran McAnulty who is the party’s campaign chair and has been placed at 10.
Other Maori MPs ahead of McAnulty are the low-key Willow-Jean Prime and Cushla Tangaere-Manuel.
Another Maori MP, Shanan Halbert, currently ranked at 28 in the Caucus has been shifted up to 19 on the list.
But what stands out is who has been demoted and those demotions beg the question “why?”
The most obvious question hangs over the absence from the list of the assistant speaker and former Ohariu MP, Greg O’Connor.
O’Connor is old Labour.
He is a Catholic with working-class West Coast origins.
He is not on the list at all after he withdrew over the weekend, possibly realising standing for it was futile.
Earlier, he had lost the nomination battle for the new redrawn Ohariu seat, now called Wellington North, which means his political career as a Labour MP is now over.
O’Connor told POLITIK that he accepted the change that had taken place in Labour over recent years.
“Anything that was locked into its 30s entity would not be particularly pertinent, relevant and probably successful today, and political parties are the same,” he said.
He said he was retiring, believing that Labour owed him nothing, and reflected back on his defeat of National’s Nicola Willis in the last election.
“The only owing that goes on here is I owe an extreme debt of gratitude to the people of Ohariu for electing me three times last time, when against the trend, on the night I managed to hold out against some fairly hefty opposition and money.
“So that’s where my debt lies. Nobody owes anyone a living, and I’m not owed anything by anyone.”
He is not the only current MP seemingly dispatched by the list rankings.
National’s pollster, David Farrar, has published a list of current Labour MPs who are in seats they could lose, and who are not high enough on the list to return to Parliament.
That list is Deborah Russel, Georgie Dansey, Dan Rosewarne and O’Connor.
On his “Kiwiblog”, Farrar says, “I’m surprised that they have placed Camilla Belich so low. If Labour drop 2% in the polls, she could miss out – or if they win two more electorates than 26.”
What is clear from the list is that it is highly strategic.
The placement of Willie Jackson at four, Willow-Jean Prime at seven, and Cushla Tangaere- Manuel at nine suggests that the party is aiming to recover the Māori vote.
That is intended as much to win numbers from Māori but, perhaps more importantly, to starve Te Paati Māori of votes and thus remove them from contention as a coalition partner should Labour form the next government.
That strategy includes new faces like the new candidate for the Hauraki-Waikato seat, Kingi Kiriona, who has been placed at a winnable position 22 on the list.
Kiriona (Ngāti Ruanui, Ngā Rauru, Ngāti Apa, Ngāti Kahungunu) is a member of the Waitangi Tribunal and Deputy Chair of the NZ Māori Broadcasting Funding Agency, Te Māngai Pāho.
Importantly, in the main Kingitanga seat, Labour says he stands with the blessing of the Māori Queen, Te Arikinui Kuīni Nga wai hono i te po.
After the party lost four more Māori seats at the last election and then crashed to a big defeat in the Tamaki Makaurau by-election, Hipkins can only promise to do better.
“Our whole campaign is going to look and feel quite different to the campaign we ran last time, in the Māori seats and in the general seats as well,” he said.
“We had a social media edge in 2020; in 2023, we’d lost that. So we needed to do some rebuilding to get that back, we’ve done that, and now we’re well and truly outperforming every other political party in our social media presence at the moment, and I’m really proud of the work that we’ve done to achieve that, but you know social media is a very rapidly evolving space, and you’ve got to move fast.”
But not all of Labour’s Maori seat candidatesa are on the list. Te Tai Tonga candidate Mananui Ramsden is not, a move, which the former Te Paati Maori MP for the seat, Takuta Ferris clearly sees as an attempt to force Te Tai Tonga voters to choose between him and Ramsden.
“Had Labour backed its Te Tai Tonga candidate with a list position, there was a clear pathway for the electorate to potentially have both an electorate MP and a Labour MP with a direct connection to Te Tai Tonga. That possibility has now been removed,” he said on Facebook last night.
The surprise new candidate is Superintendent Rakesh Naidoo, who is the National Partnerships Manager – Ethnic, Iwi and Communities at New Zealand Police, holding the rank of superintendent. His current governance roles include the FIFA Anti-Racism and Anti-Discrimination Committee, Sport NZ, and Gandhi Nivas Family Harm Services. He is a former Chair of the Wellington Interfaith Council.
Labour sources have suggested he had strong backing from Leader Chris Hipkins.
Regional support plays a big role in Labour’s list ranking process, and thus widespread support from Auckland can assist a candidate to get higher up the list.
That may explain the elevation of new candidate Max Harris.
He is a barrister from the left of the party who has been involved in community campaigns to oppose the sell-off of public assets and to make welfare more equitable and healthcare more accessible.
POLITIK understands he was strongly supported by the Auckland region.
There may be some internal caucus politics at play in the placing of a number of sitting MPs lower down on the list, particularly Ingrid Leary, Phil Twyford and Arena Williams at 39, 40 and 41, respectively.
All are said to be “independently minded”, but all are likely to win their seats.
“All of them have higher list rankings than they did last time, so all of them are MPs who are expected to win their seats,” Labour leader Chris Hipkins said yesterday.
“When we put the list together we’re always mindful that the list is an opportunity for us to showcase some of the new talent that we want to bring into Parliament, which does mean that those, and I’ve been in this camp myself, are those who hold seats that they’re expected to and don’t always get some of those higher spots where those spots are really about showcasing some of new potential people coming in.
“It is absolutely no reflection on them.
“They’re expected to win their seats, and they’re still going to be very valuable members of our team.”
There will, however, be questions about two of those new “star” candidates, Craig Renney and George Hampton, who are not in winnable positions on the list. Renney is 51, and Hampton is 52.
Renney the former Grant Robertson economic advisor and now CTU economist, and Hampton, a former MFAT diplomat posted to the UN (and part owner of Mr Whippy NZ), are expected to win their seats.
But they will have tough battles.
Farrar says, based on current polling, Renney would be only 1.4 per cent ahead of the sitting Green MP, Julie-Anne Genter, in Wellington Bays.
Asked about why Renney was so far down, Hipkins simply said he expected him to win the seat.
Hampton might have an easier run in Christchurch Central, where the retiring Labour MP, Duncan Webb, has a majority of 1840.
This list is strategic. It is designed to cover the gaps in the vote that Labour believes it is not getting. And it is particualrly intended to reduce te Paati Maori to an insignificant rump.
But it will do that at the risk of alienating some of its sitting MPs and also possibly old-style Labour supporters who might see O’Connor’s absence as the end of an era.
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