The Post: Housing could give Labour the way out of its squeeze between past and future

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For partisans of both sides, one of the most baffling aspects of this election is the sheer lack of bravery on display from either National or Labour.

The public mood is as dark as it’s been in 30 years. Burgeoning Green and ACT support speaks to a populace desperate for new answers. Opportunity’s new slogan, “Expect better”, deftly captures that mood.

Yet the former giants of the political scene, their combined vote at record lows, offer strictly middle-of-the-road fare. No new taxes from Labour, bar a CGT-lite that might raise $700 million a year; no asset sales from National.

The continuation of the “centrist drift”, in the columnist Danyl McLauchlan’s phrase, persists partly because the newfound radicalisms cancel each other out. As both the Greens and ACT poll well above their historic floors, they tug the centre equally hard, leaving it just where it was, only grumpier.

But Labour has very particular reasons for maintaining the centrist drift. Some of them stem from the innate caution of its leader, Chris Hipkins. But the more profound lessons lie in the immediate past.

It is evident that the future will require more radical policies. Homelessness is at record levels; the country’s stagnant living standards won’t be fixed by minor tweaks; climate mitigation and adaptation are challenges of almost unimaginable magnitude; and the response to threats like AI and global conflict demand a wholly new political settlement.

The problem, as Labour people see it, is that almost no-one would believe them if they promised policies of equivalent scale. Partly fairly, partly unfairly, the last Labour government is remembered as one that promised much and delivered little.

Unprepared for office in 2017, the party hadn’t done the hard policy work needed, nor was its governing ideology clear. Failures like Kiwibuild and the non-existent Auckland light rail left the public deeply sceptical of big promises, at least from the team in red.

Even relatively modest policies – like 2023’s pledge of free dental care for the under-30s – were met with doubt, according to those close to that campaign. And so, like a man being squeezed by walls that are closing in, Labour lies trapped between past and future, between the cynicism about its capabilities and the ever-more-urgent need for something bolder.

Just five weeks out from the election, however, the party isn’t going to suddenly change gear, policy-wise. Nor would it have enough anticipated tax revenue to do so.

The remaining options, strategically, would include an injection of greater energy and visibility – the campaign to date has hardly set hearts racing – but also a sharper drawing of contrasts.

That’s hard to achieve, of course, when there isn’t much separating the two majors. But housing offers one potential point of difference.

National’s tenure here has been disastrous. Yes, it moved people out of emergency housing, and that’s good as far as it goes – but where people went was, in part, onto the streets.

And to the extent that the others went into social housing, that was essentially housing built by Labour. One of the worst elements of Kiwibuild’s failure was that it obscured the massive success of the state house-building scheme, in which Labour took a largely moribund Housing New Zealand and turned it into a Kāinga Ora capable of delivering thousands of homes a year.

Kāinga Ora wasn’t perfect by any means, but it deserved better than being decimated by National, its ambitions reduced to funding a few hundred new homes per annum. Even the houses completed this term will, in many cases, have been signed off under Labour.

Going back to the future, Hipkins last week pledged to build 6000 social homes over four years: not enough, but far better than National has managed. And for once he can rely on his track record.

It was deeply troubling last month when a homeless man died sleeping in the freezing cold. And almost as troubling that the incident caused so little fuss.

In an entrenched cost-of-living crisis, of course, people have little empathy to spare for others; middle New Zealand’s first demand is for solace for its own wounds. Hard-headed logic argues against a campaign built mainly around helping the poor.

But alongside the carefully crafted retail policies for middling families – free GP visits, capped public transport – there is surely room to draw a contrast between a government that has broken promise after promise on housing, and an opposition that might actually get people off the streets.

When we vote, we do so hoping the people we elect will prove competent; but we also vote for the kind of country we want to inhabit. And that, surely, is the ultimate choice we face this election: do we, or do we not, want to live in a nation where our homeless brothers and sisters freeze to death on the streets?