Stuff: Is the electorate in the mood for radical changes?

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“In politics,” the US president John Adams once wrote, “the middle way is none at all.”

But don’t tell that to politicians in New Zealand, where the middle way has been the only path trodden for decades now. Helen Clark, John Key, Bill English and Jacinda Ardern have all eschewed sweeping change.

Not that political life has been preserved in aspic: Clark (and her deputy Michael Cullen) gave us Working for Families, KiwiSaver and the Super Fund; Key part-privatised state energy companies and seeded charter schools; and Ardern’s governments have passed the Zero Carbon Act and raised benefits by $100 a week.

None of this, though, has radically changed this country, or fixed our long-standing deficiencies: elevated levels of poverty and inequality; poor productivity and low investment in R&D; underfunded public services; polluted rivers and lakes; extremely high greenhouse-gas emissions; appallingly expensive, cold and mouldy homes; and a ranking as just about the worst developed country in which to raise a child.

Some commentators blame this on MMP: its coalition governments, they argue, tend to hug the centre and block the radical change New Zealand needs.

But if a radical-change constituency had existed, politicians would have indulged it. I suspect it simply hasn’t been there.

This may reflect the lingering trauma of the 1980s, when finance minister Roger Douglas deliberately and undemocratically acted at breakneck pace, so that opponents had no time to respond.

Clearly the public has been content with political caution. Even after nine years of the last National government, 60% of New Zealanders said the country was on the right track. They weren’t demanding major change.

Labour’s response, at least rhetorically, has been to govern based on what Education Minister Chris Hipkins once told me was “radical incrementalism”: small steps towards a clearly stated and transformative goal.

This he distinguished from both the “crash-through” change of the 1980s and the “muddling-through” of recent governments unwilling to spell out their real goals lest it frighten the horses.

The theory of change – to the extent there was one – held that if people liked a small initial step, they would be “warmed up” to accept a bigger one. Where, though, has this really worked?

Perhaps with benefit increases, which the Government has cunningly made in increments of $20 a week here and there, profoundly changing beneficiaries’ incomes without much controversy. Even here, though, reform has fallen far short of the transformative vision of the 2019 Welfare Expert Advisory Group.

Fair Pay Agreements and social unemployment insurance would, if implemented, be modestly radical – but their fate hinges on the election, and they haven’t obviously been part of an incremental plan.

Elsewhere, the Zero Carbon Act has set the scene for the $4.5 billion Climate Emergency Response Fund, incrementally reshaping environmental politics, but concrete action remains lacking. And although Three Waters represents a gradual ramping-up of co-governance, it has – famously – not been well-received.

I think radical incrementalism has largely been a bust, for two reasons. First, it’s not clear that most ministers had a roadmap to a truly radical destination – or even wanted one.

Second, the theory of change has a clear flaw. Small initial steps don’t always warm people up to accept something bigger: often they can, despite their ostensibly humble ambitions, spark a massive political fracas; and with supporters exhausted, and opponents’ backs up, ministers may become less likely to step up the pace. Incrementalism can burn off, not build, political capital.

And here’s the killer irony: well before Hipkins started talking about radical incrementalism, Bill English was describing his government’s approach as “incremental radicalism”. Same house, slightly different paint colour.

But might incrementalism be junked this year? The above-mentioned right-track indicator fell sharply in 2022, as frustration over Covid and the cost-of-living crisis coalesced. In November a record-high 55% of Kiwis said the country was on the wrong track.

Having abandoned its internationally unusual positivity, New Zealand’s political mood is now closer to that of other developed countries – many of which have been roiled by populist revolts.

Commentator Matthew Hooton says Auckland polling reveals an “incredibly angry” electorate.

Meanwhile, we face what you might call a sidecar election.

On current polling, we’d have an extremely rare result in which the two flanking parties, ACT and the Greens, got around 10% each, while the two majors, Labour and National, got under 40%.

Sidecars like ACT and the Greens don’t have to deal with the nervous median voter. But if they keep polling well, one or the other could win unprecedentedly large concessions from their centrist big sibling.

The right is best placed, of course, to capitalise on the souring of the public mood. But it’s not inconceivable that the left could, too.

Either way, the age of small changes – of radical incrementalism and incremental radicalism – might be coming to a close.