After months of campaining, fundraising and debating, tommorrow will be the day where New Zealand's vote for change is finally implemented.
It has been a long road for the right to get to the point to where they are now -- three failed elections, three failed leaders, three failed coups. But now, under the leadership of one Mr John Key, the national party has climbed from one of their poorest election results in history (2002) to electoral power, complete with ministerial perks.
Many left wing analysts have claimed National's 2008 result to be a hollow victory, a result only achieved by their blatant masquerading of the left's policies and the left's achievements. But this transition of power has been at the expense of the overall left wing movement, and the calls and cries of the left only demonstrate their own knowledge that the left has fallen from where it once was. From nine years of power, under the leadership of Helen Clark, the left now find themselves in a position of rebuilding, a position which threatens to leave them on the cross benches for another nine years. Phil Goff undoubtedly shows promise as leader of the Labour party, but as many pundits are calling, he lacks the ability to charm his core voters as his predecessors were once able to do.
But another alternative stands as the reason for the National party's convincing victory. Not a simple masquerade of the left's policies as the Standard has claimed, but rather a realisation by John Key that most voters have key fundamental political beliefs in the centre-right of the political spectrum rather than the right.
In the past, both Bill English and Don Brash campaigned on certain far-right policies, and were hampered in their respective election campaigns by these particular policies, alienating many centre and centre-right voters. But John Key's picking up of key centre policies, such as Working for Families and Kiwisaver, reflect an acknowledgement on his part that at the heart of any political system lies a pragmatic, sensible, centralist set of voters.
If either party, Labour or National, plans to win in 2011, then the needs and wants of this particular set of voters will need to be addressed. National achieved this easily in 2008, branding themselves as an inclusive party that can incorporate the needs of all voters. Some may be cynical about such a branding, claiming it to be false and misleading, but nevertheless it reflects a right wing not seen since the days of Norman Kirk or Keith Hollyoake -- a smarter right wing.
