Dullpunk: New Zealand Edition
1974-1978: Bill Rowling (Labour) [1]
1975 defeated Jack Marshall (National), Bruce Beetham (Social Credit), Tony Clough (Values)
1978-1987: Brian Talboys (National) [2]
1978 def. Bill Rowling (Labour), Bruce Beetham (Social Credit), Tony Kunowski (Values)
1981 defeated Bill Rowling (Labour), Bruce Beetham (Social Credit), Tony Kunowski (Values) [3]
1984 defeated Michael Bassett (Labour), Bruce Beetham (Social Credit)
1987-1990: Geoffrey Palmer (Labour)
1987 defeated Brian Talboys (National), Bob Jones (“Revivalist” National) [4], Gary Knapp (Social Credit)
1990-1999: Simon Upton (National) [5]
1990 def. Geoffrey Palmer (Labour), Jim Anderton (“True” Labour)
1993 def. Helen Clark (Labour), Bruce Beetham (Centre Coalition)
1996 def. Michael Cullen (Labour), Richard Prebble (“New” Labour), Tuku Morgan (Mana)
1999-2006: Philip Goff (Labour) [6]
1999 def. Simon Upton (National), Richard Prebble (Forward!), Tuku Morgan (Mana) [7]
2002 def. Bill English (National), Tariana Turia (Mana), Dick Quax (Liberal), Jeanette Fitzsimons(Green)
2005 def. Bill English (National), Pita Sharples (Mana), Dick Quax (Liberal) [8]
2006-2008: Margaret Wilson (Labour)
2008-2017: Peter Dunne (National)
2008 defeated Margaret Wilson (Labour), Nanaia Mahuta (Mana), Dick Hubbard (Liberal)
2011 defeated David Parker (Labour), Tariana Turia (Mana), Alfred Ngaro (National in electorate agreement with Citizens' Action League: No Commercial Airport At Whenuapai), Colin Craig (Values) [9]
2014 defeated Andrew Little (Labour), Colin Craig (Values), Winston Peters (Mana), Denise Roche (Green)
2017-0000: David Shearer (Labour)
2017 defeated Peter Dunne (National), Gareth Morgan (A New Approach), Metiria Turei (Mana), Denise Roche (Green)
[1] After the death of Norman Kirk, Bill Rowling was left with a country reeling from multiple systemic shocks. The oil price had tripled overnight. The UK had voted to enter the EEC, and exports were on track to plummet if the country couldn't find new export partners. Inflation was already over 10%. With the 1975 election looming, it would take a miracle to keep the Third Labour Government in power.
And then Jack Marshall decided to give it just one more go.
The reprieve was brief; Labour nosed over the line with 44 seats to National's 43, and gave up the Speaker's chair to preserve their razor-thin majority. And while making Rob Muldoon Speaker of the House was a nice way of smothering his political career, it did not make for a productive term in office.
[2] Brian Talboys waltzed into the leadership in 1976 and into the new Executive Wing in 1978, crushing Rowling with a majority of twelve even as Social Credit successfully defended a seat for the first time in its history. The next two elections would be a sort of managed decline from this peak, as Talboys led the party through diminishing electoral returns and the country through diminishing economic ones. Timid reforms were attempted as the 1980s wound on, though radicals within the party called this "fiddling in the margins", their discontent a foretaste of things to come.
[3] Another foretaste of things to come was the rise and fall of third parties in the form of Values and Social Credit, who between them managed a fifth of the vote in 1981. While their fortunes ebbed with those of the Talboys Government as protest votes trickled back to Labour, small parties have endured as a feature of New Zealand's political landscape since, usually polling a respectable five per cent of the vote with at least one election per decade where they will collectively break into the double digits, particularly if they manage to win a by-election or the incumbent government is extremely unpopular.
[4] Where the once-a-decade peak interacts with an unpopular government, then, accidents like the Fourth Labour Government happen. Geoffrey Palmer was a man intended to lose the election with dignity in order for Labour to put itself in position to repeat 1972 (or, as the economy continued to stagnate, 1935) come 1990. What they got was a repeat of 1957. While reformers like Bob Jones (whose "National Revival" faction voted with Labour on most economic issues from 1985 to 1990) applauded the "crash course" reforms, the Labour Party itself did not react well, particularly as the PM occupied himself more with constitutional affairs than "real" politics.
[5] In a reversal of 1987, National's wunderkind seized the Beehive by exploiting the left-right split in Labour, tactically "failing to correctly submit" candidate registration forms in certain Labour strongholds and leaving the field open for situations like Christchurch Central, where no fewer than five candidates, all purporting to be from the Labour Party, ran against the Prime Minister. Upton continued to use Labour against itself for the next nine years, fending off two uninspiring challenges before the 1998 financial crisis and voter fatigue turfed him out of office.
[6] It was a cleaner break than his successor would end up getting; while Phil Goff won more elections than any other Labour PM and secured the longest Labour Government since the First, he lost control of his caucus and was dethroned in 2006. Unfortunately for all involved, the country simply did not take well to "that bloody impossible woman", replacing her with the reassuringly bland Peter Dunne on election night 2008.
[7] The Mana Party has exploited an unusual niche in New Zealand politics, harnessing both the Maori political awakening and the strengthening currents of discontent with neoliberalism as the 2000s turned into the 2010s. Portraying itself as a voice for all of those marginalised and forgotten by the metropolitan elites, the party has become an increasingly big tent over the past few years and is rapidly approaching the heights Social Credit once reached.
[8] At the other end of the spectrum, the right-Labour faction who were ejected from the party in 1999 congealed into a new movement of their own, eventually settling on the Liberal brand at the same time as they hit on the winning "stand an athlete as your candidate" formula. It didn't outlast Quax's leadership for long, however, and at the end of the day, all of the Dicks left the House.
[9] Finally, at the bottom of the scale, the disparate fragments of the population who considered themselves Christians before all else and rallied behind a strange little man with strange little billboards were cruelly disappointed. Utterly blind to irony in its naming, the second Values Party was a bizarre sequel which made even less of an impact on New Zealand politics than the first.