Rt Hon John Key
Prime Minister & Leader of the National Party

3 December 2014

Opening address to the 2014 New Zealand Post-Election Conference
Legislative Council Chamber, Parliament Buildings

Thank you Stephen for your introduction, and your work in running this important event.

Mr Speaker, can I acknowledge you and thank you not only for opening proceedings today, but also for your tolerance and patience in refereeing Question Time each sitting day.

I also want to acknowledge other MPs from across the House, and all of you who have chosen to take time out from your busy lives to reflect on September’s general election.

There have been nine previous books arising from the post-election conferences, with a 10th to follow from today’s proceedings.

This can only be a good thing.

The immediacy of the modern news cycle, together with social media, creates a focus on instant reporting and judgement, but it is also important to reflect in a more considered way on important events like elections.

Academic scrutiny of elections, politicians and political parties is an important function of democracy and also something that strengthens it.

As Prime Minister, I am privileged to represent New Zealand at international meetings around the world.

On these occasions, I often see first-hand the steps that emerging democracies take.

And they are not always steps forward.

I recently took over from John Howard as the Chairman of the International Democrat Union, a grouping of some 50 or so centre right parties from around the world.

At its most recent meeting in Korea, where I was represented by my Cabinet colleague Hekia Parata, the IDU admitted a number of new parties.

These included parties from Lebanon and Montenegro – countries where there are challenges and where people do not enjoy all of the privileges of our democracy.

In contrast, New Zealand can boast of an unbroken parliamentary democracy stretching back to the 1850s, and universal suffrage from 1893.

Few countries can match our record of democracy, or our openness, stability and focus on the rule of law.

So I welcome this discussion on the 2014 election, and the setting out of the views of participants so people in 20, 50 and 100 years’ time can think about what happened and why.

Steven Joyce, who was National’s campaign chair, is going to go through the 2014 campaign in a bit more detail.

I want to put the election, and its result, into the context of the last six years, and then look forward to the future.

I want to start by putting on record what a privilege it was to win a third term.

I can speak for all my National Party colleagues in saying that we are conscious every day of the trust that voters have placed in us. We are determined to repay that trust.

Achieving 47 per cent of the party vote highlighted the support the modern National Party has.

Periodically I say to my caucus colleagues, when you walk down the street, look at the people you pass by and think about how we need to reflect the hopes and aspirations of one in every two of them.

That requires a very broad appeal, built on a strong understanding of our communities – women and men; Māori and Pākehā; Pasifika and New Zealanders from other ethnic communities; the old and the young.

This is at the heart of the National Party.

While we were formed by a mix of farmers and small business owners more than 70 years ago, today we are a much broader church and long may that remain.

What’s more I never take our support for granted.

When I look at the current fragmentation of the political left, I recall 2002.

The year I first became an MP was also National’s worst election result. We learned a lot about ourselves in the years that followed 2002.

One lesson is that voters look forward as well as back. Even being a major political party will not insulate you from punishment if the voters consider you to be irrelevant to their world and to their hopes and aspirations.

Looking back at the 2014 election, I want to start at the beginning of the year.

In the interests of transparency and predictability, I thought it was important to explain to the public who we could or couldn’t work with in a prospective government.

So that’s what we did in February.

My stated preference was to continue working with the three parties we had enjoyed confidence and supply agreements with since 2008 – ACT, United Future and the Māori Party.

Over six years, notwithstanding a few ups and downs, we worked constructively with these parties to provide New Zealand with the stable government people want.

This is an appropriate point for me to acknowledge and thank United Future’s Peter Dunne, Tariana Turia, Pita Sharples, and Te Ururoa Flavell from the Maori Party and from ACT, their leaders going back to Rodney Hide and more recently John Banks and now David Seymour.

We also said we could work with the Conservative Party.

Ultimately, however, we took the view that there should be no electoral accommodation with them.

Ohariu and Epsom were the limit.

Even still, Colin Craig did very well – 4 per cent is a lot of votes.

In fact, the word we were getting from our candidates across the country was that in the last week or two, National voters were seriously considering voting Conservative in an effort to ‘help’ us.

We wanted to tell people that taking a vote off National to vote Conservative didn’t actually help us.

Hence our strong advertising along the lines of ‘if you want a National-led government, vote for it’.

Perhaps the strongest call early in the year was to leave open the possibility of working with NZ First and Winston Peters.

A lot of time, and two elections, had passed since 2008. NZ First, with Winston Peters as leader, had been returned to Parliament in 2011, so the electorate had – in an important sense – made their judgement about the party.

So it was timely to look forward not back.

As it turned out we didn’t need NZ First, and we have formed the third-straight government with ACT, United Future and the Maori Party.

In March I also named the election date as 20 September.

As in 2011, it was my view that naming the election day many months in advance was the right thing to do.

It assisted business confidence, and gave all political parties and agencies involved in the election time to properly plan.

A key reason for choosing 20 September was to enable a new government to be formed so that the Prime Minister - whoever it was - could attend the important multi-lateral meetings taking place at the end of the year.

I believe that the benefit New Zealand has gained from APEC, the East Asia Summit and G20, and of course the incoming visits of President Xi, Chancellor Merkel, and Prime Minister Harper, demonstrate that the right decision was made.

I hope that future prime ministers will continue both the practise of announcing the election date some months early, and scheduling elections to allow attendance at these important meetings.

Looking ahead to 2017, that is certainly my intention.

Perhaps the one downside of naming an election day some months in advance is that the press gallery get impatient to move straight into the campaign, and even into post-election negotiations, well before the election.

That is all very premature, and we were more concerned with bedding-in a strong fiscal situation and making more progress on reforms across a range of areas.

We also took the opportunity to rejuvenate the National caucus.

With 14 retirements last term, National has been able to bring in a large and talented new back bench that augers well for the party’s future.

I have also made changes to the Cabinet, refreshing both people and portfolio allocation to give us a strong sense of energy as we start our third term.

In my view, the failure of the Clark government to refresh both the Cabinet and caucus contributed to its defeat in 2008, and has continued to dog Labour since.

By the time of our annual conference in Wellington at the end of June, candidate selection was largely complete.

That conference opened at a time of high polling numbers for National. As an example, the TV3 poll on 26 June had National on 49.7 per cent and Labour on 27.3 per cent.

So a key theme for the Party President Peter Goodfellow, Steven Joyce, and I, was the absolute imperative of avoiding complacency.

I recalled the 2011 election, where despite all of the polls National only won narrowly.

While Labour was constantly talking about the ‘missing million’, what was clear was that many of the people who didn’t vote in 2011 were National supporters.

In particular, a number probably believed the talk in the media that we would win easily so didn’t bother to vote.

That, and the inevitable closing of the gap that occurs in campaigns, meant a very tight contest in 2011. I was concerned that could happen again in 2014.

The campaign team led by Steven Joyce and Jo de Joux were certainly taking nothing for granted, and a very strong ‘get out the vote’ campaign was well underway by the time of the annual conference.

We also wanted to point out to New Zealanders the chaotic relationships between our opponents, and the impact this would have on any alternative government.

In the end this lead to our effective rowing boat ads, which reinforced what was clearly already a concern held by many voters.

The strong advertising campaign reflected the strength of the broader campaign, and the contribution of National Party members and supporters, from the President down.

Experience and genuine enthusiasm make a real difference.

It is fair to say though, that events out of our control meant that for much of the campaign, policy issues were not top of minds, for the media at least.

When the Hager book came out it became clear that much of the campaign would be about so called ‘dirty politics’, even though the voters wanted it to be about policy and the future of our country.

Throw in the made-for-TV personality Kim Dot Com and the recipe for a most unusual campaign was complete.

My views on the Hager book are well known, so I won’t repeat them here.

During the campaign it became clear that New Zealanders were frustrated with the attention given to the whole saga.

That was the impression I got very strongly on the campaign trail, where there was a lot of support for National and general bemusement that a couple of issues they didn’t care about were taking over the whole campaign.

On the positive side, the risk of complacency was well and truly over.

Polls also highlighted just how close the election between the centre right and left wing blocks could be.

Just a few days out from election day came the so-called Dot Com ‘moment of truth’. And so it came to be, but not in the way he and his supporters intended.

The level of anger was palpable. The next day my office received a large number of calls from ordinary voters outraged at what was going on.

I have sometimes wondered how many additional votes National may have won as a result of this whole exercise.

There is of course no way of knowing.

But I do know from feedback we received at the time that the combination of Hager and Dot Com galvanised National voters to get out to the polling booths in big numbers.

One of the most pleasing things to come out of the 2014 election was that it reinforced the notion that New Zealanders make up their own minds and won’t be dictated to.

Achieving 60 seats in Parliament under MMP was a superb result and shows National’s widespread appeal.

I put this result down to five key factors.

First, New Zealanders understood the strength of the economy and that this flowed directly through to more jobs and better paying jobs for them and their families.

Second, voters saw National had a plan for the future that was consistent with their hopes and aspirations. We were talking about the things that really mattered to people’s futures.

Third, over six years in government we had won the trust of voters.

We had always been very careful to get a mandate for reform – including the mixed ownership model – and we kept our promises.

Our approach has been to undertake incremental, sustainable reform, and to take the electorate with us, as opposed to what might be described as the ‘big bang theory’ of politics.

Fourth, we had the strongest team. Put simply, many New Zealanders were not listening to Mr Cunliffe.

Finally, we ran the best campaign. It really did make a difference.

At the end of it all, I said on election night that I was determined to govern for all New Zealanders.

I feel that just as strongly today as when I said it back on 20 September.

There will be challenges over the next three years.

New Zealand is a small country that makes its way in the world by trading with others, and we do feel the impact of events that take place far from home.

But throughout it all I remain optimistic for our future as a country. There is so much we have going for us.

At the core of my government is a clear focus on the economy.

I have said before, and want to repeat today, how fortunate New Zealand is to have Bill English as Minister of Finance.

It was fitting that, after a little persuasion from yours truly, Bill joined me on stage on election night.

He deserves a lot of the credit for the success of our government.

As this speech is to be incorporated into the latest post-election book, I also want to take the opportunity to place on record my appreciation to my wife Bronagh.

Everyone involved in politics understands the pressure it puts on family life.

Throughout my time in politics Bronagh has been supportive of me following my dream -- with all the ups and downs that entails.

My children Max and Stephie have also been supportive, and it’s not always easy having a father who is in politics.

As for me, I am just as excited to be Prime Minister as I was on the day my first Government got sworn in back in November 2008.

It is a great privilege and one I never forget.

ENDS

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