The right-wing nationalist New Zealand First Party is
making anti-immigrant and militarist policies central to its
campaign for the November 7 election.
Despite
receiving just 6 percent of the votes in the 2023 election,
NZ First plays a major role in the coalition government led
by the National Party, which also includes the far-right ACT
Party. NZ First leader Winston Peters is the foreign
minister, the same position he held in the 2017–2020
Labour Party-led coalition.
Support for the major
parties has fallen significantly, with the National Party
polling below 30 percent. On current polling, however, the
opposition Labour Party would need the support of two other
parties to form a government.
There is widespread
anger over soaring prices, social inequality and crumbling
public services, for which successive Labour- and
National-led governments are responsible. In the last five
years, real wages fell by 6.4 percent, the biggest decline
in the OECD. Youth unemployment is at a 30-year high of 17.3
percent. About 2 percent of the population is homeless and
10 percent are relying on food banks.
In this context,
speakers at NZ First’s election convention on July 18–19
sought to verbally distance the party from both National and
Labour. NZ First has increased its support at National’s
expense, and is polling around 11 percent. Peters declared
that “Pepsi and Coke have promised and done nothing,”
while NZ First had waged a decades-long “fight against the
elitist status quo” on behalf of “the ordinary
kiwi.”
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Such claims are ludicrous. NZ First is a
fixture of the political establishment and has been a
coalition partner in four governments over the past two
decades, which have implemented brutal austerity and
militarist policies.
The NZ First leader said his
party had been responsible for policies that invested
“billions into our struggling regions” since
2017—without mentioning the fact that regional areas have
been devastated by factory closures and thousands of job
losses in food and timber processing and other
industries.
Peters falsely claimed that NZ First had
“raised the minimum wage for workers” during the
previous government and the current one. The minimum wage
has increased by less than the rate of inflation over the
last three years, after remaining practically frozen during
the last government.
NZ First’s newest policy
announcement is a proposed $1 billion fund to conduct oil
and gas exploration—essentially a subsidy for fossil fuel
companies.
The main role of NZ First, since it was
founded 33 years ago, has been to divert tensions over
austerity, poverty and social inequality into attacks on
immigrants and other minorities. At its gathering, party
members lambasted National and Labour for supporting a free
trade agreement with India, which Peters labelled a “free
migration deal” for Indians.
NZ First deputy leader
Shane Jones railed against statistics showing that since
2013 “the migrant population from… India has doubled.”
Addressing the leaders of National, Labour, ACT and the
Green Party, Jones said: “The next time you go to an
ethno-nationalist rally to receive a foreign leader, take
off your knee pads!” This was a reference to the political
leaders’ attendance of a rally in Auckland during a recent
visit by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
If
anything could be likened to an “ethno-nationalist
rally” it was NZ First’s convention. Giving his version
of the racist Great Replacement conspiracy theory, Jones
accused Labour and National of making “dodgy trade
deals” in order to “import people” to vote for them.
He smeared foreign Uber drivers as criminals with no respect
for “New Zealand culture” and declared that immigration
was being used “to drive down wages [and] worsen our
infrastructure.”
NZ First is campaigning to restrict
the right to vote to “citizens only,” ending the current
law which allows permanent residents to vote if they have
lived in New Zealand for more than one year. A party
statement declared that voting “should be a privilege of
those who have sworn allegiance to New Zealand.” This
could strip hundreds of thousands of people of the right to
vote.
Closely connected to NZ First’s nationalism
and xenophobia is its call for compulsory military service.
Jones told podcaster Duncan Garner on July 16, when asked
what the party would do about youth unemployment: “I would
deploy more of them into the military.” He said the party
would say more about this in coming weeks.
NZ First
has been advocating such a policy for many years, as New
Zealand, a minor imperialist power, has become increasingly
integrated into the US-led militarisation of the Pacific
region.
Sections of the media—including Matthew
Hooton, now the editor of the Post, and the “liberal”
Daily Blog—last year called for the reintroduction of a
form of conscription. The imperialist powers, including
Germany and the US, are putting in place mechanisms to draft
young people as they escalate the war against Russia over
Ukraine and the criminal war against Iran, and prepare for
war against China.
National Party Prime Minister
Christopher Luxon criticised NZ First’s anti-immigrant
statements, telling the media that it was playing “easy,
lazy, base politics” and was seeking to emulate US
President Trump, Australia’s One Nation and the far-right
Reform UK.
Speaking to One News on July 21, Labour
leader Chris Hipkins said Jones’ “vulgar language” was
“disgraceful” and denounced “his attacks on our
migrant community.”
Hipkins and Luxon remained
silent on Jones’s call for military conscription. The
National and Labour Parties both agree that military
spending must be doubled and the size of the armed forces
significantly increased.
The major parties’
criticisms of NZ First are entirely hypocritical. In the
lead-up to the 2017 election, Labour joined NZ First in
whipping up anti-Chinese sentiment. The Labour-NZ
First-Greens coalition government led by Jacinda Ardern
proceeded to strengthen military ties with the US, boosted
New Zealand’s military spending, and imposed draconian
restrictions on immigration. The Labour Party has not ruled
out forming another coalition government with NZ
First.
It is significant that NZ First has recruited
several former Labour MPs, including Jones himself, a Labour
MP between 2005 and 2014, as well as Dover Samuels, Rino
Tirikatene and Stuart Nash. Nash resigned from NZ First this
week after both Labour and National declared they would
never work with him in cabinet because of his sexist
comments about a female MP. A number of former National
Party members have also joined NZ First.
NZ First’s
vicious anti-immigrant chauvinism and militarism is the most
naked expression of the reactionary agenda shared by the
entire capitalist political establishment. Whichever parties
form the next government after November 7, they will
intensify the assault on workers’ living standards, the
militarisation of society and the promotion of nationalist
and racist poison.
The only alternative is to build a
new political leadership to unify and mobilise workers
against the capitalist system itself, based on the program
of international socialism. We call on workers who agree
with this to join the Socialist Equality Group.
By Tom
Peters, Socialist Equality Group
Original url:
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/07/24/znkc-j24.html
