It was a coincidence that the New Zealand election fell on the same night as Australia’s ‘Voice’ referendum to recognise its indigenous population. But it is no accident that New Zealand’s Labour party and Australia’s Labor party, which called the referendum, are reeling at the scale of their defeats.
Chris Hipkins, who stepped in when Jacinda Ardern vacated the prime minister’s chair in January, led the party to lose half of its seats. Meanwhile the Australian referendum, proposed by a jubilant Anthony Albanese on the night of his 2022 election victory, also fell flat: he lost by a margin of 60.8 per cent to 39.2 per cent.
Both centre-left leaders now stand accused of making the same political miscalculation: in a moment of seeming strength, they lost touch with their core voters. “Both leaders were out of step with the blue collar people who have been putting Labour in government for 100 years,” said John Black, executive chair of political profiling group Australian Development Studies.