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10:22 am, January 2nd, 2026 - 8 comments
Categories: act, Brooke van Velden, chris hipkins, Christopher Luxon, david seymour, election 2026, greens, Keir Starmer, labour, maori party, national, nz first, same old national, te pāti māori -
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National will continue to use urgency to push through its preferred policy changes. And it will ask Labour to show bipartisanship especially around changes to the Resource Management system, despite repealing Labour’s not dissimilar effort in as abject an example of lack of bipartisanship as you can imagine. It is as if parliamentary norms and the english language no longer have any meaning.
After a few years of decline New Zealand’s net greenhouse gas emissions will increase and the third emissions budget (for 2031-35) will be under considerable threat. The Government will do nothing to address this. And it will not have included the country’s potential $24 billion ETS liability in next year’s PREFU on the basis it would make them look bad.
Christopher Luxon will continue to struggle to hold the Government together and there is more than a small chance that Winston Peters will either pull the plug on the Government mid year or he will place Luxon in a position where he appears even weaker.
David Seymour will continue to be an unsufferable pompus ass and be completely confident in everything he says, despite how wrong it can be shown his utterances are.
Te Pati Maori will continue to have major issues. They will limp into the election and only three MPs will be returned to Parliament, Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke and the two coleaders.
The Greens will retain Auckland Central and Wellington North but will lose Wellington Bays (formerly Rongotai) to Labour candidate Craig Rennie.
The economy will improve, but not enough to reduce unemployment or help ordinary workers. The effects will disproportionately help the rich, as intended.
National’s polling will continue to slide into the 20s and Luxon will face at least one more leadership coup. The inability of the different factions within caucus to agree on a successor will mean that he will survive.
This year the Parties on the right will declare receiving four times the funding compared to parties on the left. And Right wing astroturf organisations such as the Taxpayers Union and Hobson’s Pledge will run noisy distractive campaigns. Atlas Network’s dark-money junktanks will be loud and well funded. And expect Voices for Freedom to stir things up as well. The attacks will be relentless, very well funded, and dark.
And the Government will not change the law to make donations to these entities more transparent. Taxpayer’s Union received income of $2.79 million for the year ending December 31, 2024. It had declared spending election expenses of $371,565.05 in 2023 but that year had spent a total of $3.326 million on operating expenses who knows on what.
National’s will complete changes to the Electoral Act to disenfrachise tens of thousands of kiwis but the response will be profound. Young people in particular will not forget this. I anticipated a very justified backlask against the Government’s actions.
At the election National will lose Waitakere, Banks Peninsular, East Coast, Hamilton East and West, Hutt South, Maungakiekie, Mt Roskill, Wairarapa, West Coast Tasman even if a spoiler candidate gets funded by Bathurst, Whanganui and Napier, where Stuart Nash’s candidacy for NZ First will split the vote on the right. National will however regain Tamaki from Act.
The election result will be tight. Either Labour will scrape in with the Greens and Te Pati Maori or NZ First will again be kingmaker. If the latter Winston Peters will require a month to conduct negotiations and will keep everyone guessing to the last minute.
Luxon will be deposed as National Party leader shortly after the election and replaced either by Bishop or Simeon Brown.
And internationally …
Donald Trump’s Republican Party will suffer a pasting in the midterm elections. And questions will continue to swirl around his health. I would not be surprised if he does not make it through to the end of the term.
Israel will continue to kill Palestinians and Netanyahu will continue to claim the moral higher ground.
In the United Kingdom Keir Starmer and Labour will rally support to a certain extent, not as a sign of recovery but as parts of the electorate realise what a disaster Nigel Farage would be as Prime Minister.
Of course for the local preductions to happen we will need an energised activist base. Have a good break everyone but please come back ready to go.
2. I get the feeling that the government is reeling a bit from not realizing that our economy is significantly driven by global events, more than tweaking around with school lunches and unemployment benefits.
3. What would Hipkins do if NZ1 would enter a coalition with Labour but required a leadership change? I like Hipkins, but I think it might be a possibility. Winston's weakness is he quickly sees fault with the people he goes into coalition with and heaps blame on his erstwhile coalition partners. What price freedom (from a right-wing coalition)?
An LEC member I'm close to talked to several MPs at conference and privately and told me there are a number of pro-trade Labour MPs pushing to work with National on the free trade deal.
There is also very little appetite to try to roll back any of the fast track deals and deal with the litigation that would follow.
No boldness to be found there.
Cool story…I'm sure : )
https://youtu.be/DGEX_7IqaC4?si=ls4URetEzy-jSjHF
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The NACTNZ1 coalition election campaign song, soon to be released… 😉
My prediction for 2026 – Labour grows a spine.
Nah, just kidding. Under Hipkins it's centre of the road, don’t frighten the horses.
As someone who takes great pleasure in seeing National flail, squirm and flounder, I really hope they go with Simeon Brown, and that he stays put as long as possible.
The bit about Seymour is a given, doesn't need to be a prediction.
Tensions between Luxon and Bishop will increase.
Luxon's FTA deal with India is an attempt to bed in population demand for property to maintain values – on middle class property ownership class brand.
He and Peters will want Labour to block the FTA.
Labour can leverage this issue for electoral purposes, if they do not Peters will have one less reason to go with them in Nov/Dec.