Q+A: Andrew Little - Mt Roskill Win is Proof Labour Can Win
Andrew Little: Mt Roskill Win is Proof Labour Can Win General Election
Speaking to Jessica
Mutch on Q+A this morning, in wake of a significant Labour
victory in the Mt Roskill by-election, Labour Leader Andre
little the party proved it was able to win elections,
despite poor showings in national polls.
But Mr Little
said polls ‘come and go”. “We’ve seen what [the
polls’] track record’s like in other parts of the world
.. the stuff that counts is when people actually have to get
out and cast a vote. And we’ve seen that in the local body
elections this year and in the Mt Roskill by-election.”
Mr Little said voters who had moved away from Labour are
“there to be persuaded, to be convinced. And as we’ve
seen in the local body elections and the Mt Roskill, when
people hear a message, hear a clear message, a good message,
have good contact with us, then we win their confidence and
support. And we will go into 2017 with that.”
Mr Little
also addressed the issues around Nick Leggett, a former
Labour high-flyer who has now joined National, saying he
didn’t buy the “silly rhetoric” about Mr Leggett’s
move being a ‘defection’.
“This is a guy who might
have claimed to have been Labour, but when it was
opportunistic and convenient for him to do so, hooked up
with a whole bunch of National Party and ACT Party people to
campaign for the Wellington mayoralty.”
END
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transcript of the interview and here’s the Link:
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A
Episode
39
ANDREW
LITTLE
Interviewed by Jessica
Mutch
JESSICA Must be a big
relief for you yesterday. What does the win at Mt Roskill
mean for
you?
ANDREW Well,
it’s certainly very satisfying, because once
again we’ve seen that when we campaign well, when we stick
to issues that we know people care about, issues that
actually affect people’s lives, we had an excellent
candidate – as we had in Michael Wood – then we win. But
it wasn’t just what happened in Mt Roskill last night. We
saw the same thing in the local body elections as well,
where once again the Labour machine and the techniques that
we used delivered some great victories for us around the
country. What we are proving is that the Labour Party, as an
organisation, the approach we take to elections is winning
the confidence of people, talking to people, that’s the
basis on which we win
elections.
JESSICA Didn’t
you just learn though that without the Greens, without NZ
First, and without a very strong National candidate, you
guys can
win?
ANDREW And
without ACT and without the Conservative Party. I mean, I
don’t think that stuff actually is relevant at all. What
this showed was we take election seriously, we took the
issues seriously, we got out there and we spoke to people.
We campaigned as if we meant it. I always said that for the
Mt Roskill by-election, we would earn every vote that we
receive.
JESSICA What
do you mean, ‘campaign as you meant
it’?
ANDREW That
we take the people seriously, the voters seriously, take the
issues
seriously.
JESSICA And
is that what’s been
missing?
ANDREW Well,
what I saw on the other side was a campaign that was built
around the Prime Minister turning up, doing selfies for a
few
hours.
JESSICA That’s
always going to be the case, though, isn’t it? Your
campaign – we were hearing from Michael Wood that he said
when you keep it simple, two or three issues, keep focused.
So why is that not resonating? Is it the person delivering
the message that isn’t
resonating?
ANDREW But
we’ve won a whole heap of elections in the local
government elections; we’ve just won the Mt Roskill
by-election.
JESSICA But
I’m talking about national
now.
ANDREW The
same techniques used. And I’ve said all along in my
leadership, ‘We’re not going to go into 2017 campaigning
on 140 policies. We’re going to stick to a core chunk of
policy areas that we know are issues of today and are
relevant.’ The issues that we’ve talked about –
affordable housing. The idea that young couples in many
cities around New Zealand can’t even afford to buy their
first home. This is wrong. The story of Trixie Cottingham in
Levin.
JESSICA I
want to talk big picture,
though.
ANDREW I
know. But let’s get this right. A 96-year-old woman still
living in her own home needs a bit of home care. She was
getting an hour and a half a week, and she had that taken
off her because the DHB said, ‘We can’t afford it.’ I
mean, this stuff is wrong in New
Zealand.
JESSICA Let’s
stick to the questions, Mr
Little.
ANDREW We
are saying let’s campaign on the issues that are actually
about New Zealanders having a decent life – everybody
sharing in a decent life and opportunity. That’s what
we’ve been campaigning on, and we’re going to continue
to do that next
year.
JESSICA So
this great victory that you had last night – 6,500 – it
hasn’t been resonating in the polls. Our Colmar-Brunton
poll had Labour on 28%. You can’t be happy with that.
ANDREW What I’m
really happy about is when real people actually get out and
do a real vote in a real election, as they did the local
body elections, as they did in Mt Roskill last night, with a
proper campaign, us talking about the issues, us talking
directly to people, we win.
JESSICA It’s
not just our poll, though, is it? It’s other polls that
have been having you around the same
results.
ANDREW I
know you’re talking about the polls, and we’ve seen what
their track record’s like in other parts of the world as
well. The stuff that counts is when people actually have to
get out and cast a vote. And we’ve seen that in the local
body elections this year and in the Mt Roskill
by-election.
JESSICA Let’s
put a aside the local body. Let’s focus on your
party. What is your polling saying – your internal polling
saying? Is it about the same as the Colmar-Brunton – 28%?
ANDREW It’s a
little better than
that.
JESSICA How
much is
it?
ANDREW Well,
I’m not going to go into
it.
JESSICA You’ve
released it before,
though.
ANDREW Yeah,
I know. I’ve talked about it before, and it is a little
better than the Colmar-Brunton poll, but I go back to that
point earlier. We’ve seen these polls before. But when
people actually get out and vote at the end of a campaign
when they’ve heard the issues, they’ve spoken with us,
we’ve campaigned and we’ve spoken with people and
we’ve listened to them, look what happens – we win
elections, and that’s what we’re going to do in
2017.
JESSICA Let’s
have a look at the Green and you together. Back in the day,
Labour used to be able to garner 40% of the vote by
itself.
ANDREW We
haven’t done that in a long
time.
JESSICA But
that was when you were polling at your height, that’s what
you were doing. Now you have to add on the Greens to do
that. How comfortable do you feel with that whole Greens and
Labour together, and how is that resonating when you’re
out in electorates like Mt
Roskill?
ANDREW In
an MMP environment, neither of the major parties held an
absolute majority in parliament. We’ve always had to work
with other parties. And on our side of the house, the
centre-left of politics, we’ve had bigger coalition or
support partners than on the right-wing side of the house.
So that’s just a reality. What we’ve demonstrated with
this, with the Green Party, where we’ve been prepared to
put in writing a commitment of working together to
cooperate and ultimately to change the government. That’s
what we’ve done. We work with other opposition parties
too. In the end, our objective next year is – because so
many New Zealanders are missing out – our objective is to
change the government. That means getting our campaigning
right, our policy areas right. Campaigning to win. And
that’s what we’re
doing.
JESSICA What
are they missing out on? What are those people missing out
on?
ANDREW Which
people?
JESSICA You
said ‘people who are missing out’, those are the people
you want to focus on. What are they missing out
on?
ANDREW I talked
about Trixie Cottingham – the 96-year-old woman in Levin
who--
JESSICA But
more
broadly.
ANDREW But
there’s thousands. There’s 45,000 mainly elderly people
who went to the doctor last year, and the doctor said,
‘You know what, you’re going to go to hospital and get
the treatment,’ whatever; turned up to the hospital, and
the hospital says, ‘We can’t afford to treat you.’
You’ve got 41,000 New Zealanders homeless. 41,000
homeless. You’ve got 75,000 kids, 18- to 24-year old, who
are not in work, education or training. And that figure has
been pretty much the same for the last eight years. These
are the people who, no matter what the National Party says
about a growing economy, it’s not affecting them.
They’re not benefitting from it. Too many New Zealanders
are missing out on what’s decent and good about New
Zealand.
JESSICA All
right, one thing I’m really interested to get your
perspective on is the whole voting ideology. You’ve
already said that you don’t need to focus as much on the
centre ground. Is that because you feel like there’s a
whole lot of voters out to the left who are not voting and
can become potential Labour voters? Is that what your
strategy
is?
ANDREW Yeah, we
get into the talk about centre, right, left, whatever –
it’s irrelevant, as we’ve seen, following Brexit; it’s
irrelevant, as we’ve seen, following Donald Trump. In the
end, what it comes down to is talking to people about their
issues; and there will be issues that are big issues,
important issues, where the response might be what was once
upon a time described as a left-wing solution; and there
will be issues where the proper response once upon a time
might have been described as a right-wing solution. In the
end, most voters don’t think about themselves as left,
right, centre, whatever. They think about themselves as
citizens in a country where they want to have a fair go and
a fair share. And they want a political system that’s
going to make sure they get
there.
JESSICA So
how do you appeal to those people? Are you taking heart the
Jeremy Corbyns of this world, the British Labour leader, who
is driving the party to the left and picking up support. Is
that a boost for you? Does that help you sleep at
night?
ANDREW What
gives me a boost is that when we go and actually front up to
voters, and they actually go out and vote, as we saw in the
local body elections this year – as with Mt Roskill
yesterday – and we’ve campaigned on issues that we know
are important to them because we’ve spoken to them; we run
a good campaign, and we win. That’s what gives me heart. I
don’t pay too much attention on what happens in completely
different jurisdictions. To be honest, I haven’t followed
closely Jeremy Corbyn’s fortunes. Things are in a pretty
pallor state there since the Brexit vote. What I focus on is
what’s right for New Zealand and New Zealanders, and our
track record this year in campaigning well on good issues,
and win
it.
JESSICA In
terms of the 28%, where do you think the voters are going?
Is it to the Green and NZ First? Or is National picking up
some of those potential Labour
voters?
ANDREW I
think what’s happened is – and you get this talking to
people and you see it in some of the polling – the one
conclusion you can draw is that a whole lot of people have
gone off this National government. They don’t think it’s
delivering for
them.
JESSICA But
in 28%, where are those voters going? Is it National or the
Greens?
ANDREW And
they are going all over the place. They are
there to be persuaded, to be convinced. And as we’ve seen
in the local body elections and the Mt Roskill, when people
hear a message, hear a clear message, a good message, have
good contact with us, then we win their confidence and
support. And we will go into 2017 with that.
JESSICA You say
votes are going all over the place. So if some are going to
NZ First and to the Greens, then you can bank those, because
NZ First will potentially go with you; the Greens have
already said they would. Don’t you then need to focus on
those National voters who are swinging, who are sitting in
the middle? Shouldn’t that be your
focus?
ANDREW Yeah,
when I say they’re going all over the place, they’re
drifting off National. They’re looking for places
to--
JESSICA They’re
drifting off Labour, to be fair, with
28%.
ANDREW Yeah,
there are people who are disillusioned with what this
National government is doing, failing to deal with big
issues, failing to deal with long-term issues. Their total
recklessness about the future of superannuation is a real
concern pretty much to anybody over the age of 50. People
are looking around, and that’s what we pick up. And what I
find is that we talk to people; when they hear from us, we
listen to them, and we have good engagement with them, and
we campaign hard on the stuff that’s important, actually,
they come to us. And I’m very confident about 2017.
We’ve proven this year with the local body elections, with
Mt
Roskill.
JESSICA Okay,
I want to talk about Nick Leggett now. He was a Labour
man.
ANDREW A long
time ago,
yeah.
JESSICA A
year ago he was a Labour man, earlier in the year. He
decided to go with National recently; people like Chloe
Swarbrick looked at Labour as an option and decided to go
with the Greens. How alarmed are you at people like that not
picking
Labour?
ANDREW So
you mentioned two people. This is a democracy. People are
free to do what they want. I don’t buy into the kind of
silly rhetoric we’ve had this week about Nick Leggett
going to the National Party as a
defection.
JESSICA Why
silly?
ANDREW It is
silly, because this is a guy who might have claimed to have
been Labour, but when it was opportunistic and convenient
for him to do so, hooked up with a whole bunch of National
Party and ACT Party people to campaign for the Wellington
mayoralty.
JESSICA But
he was a Labour man from a Labour family, the mayor of
Porirua.
ANDREW Well,
he’s free to do that. This is a democracy. But I don’t
buy into this – that somehow we’ve lost an icon of
Labour. We haven’t. Nick Leggett is an opportunist. And he
was quite happy to have ACT Party and National Party support
the campaign for the Wellington mayoralty. It didn’t work
out for him. He wanted to leave Porirua. Now he wants to go
back to Porirua and campaign for
parliament.
JESSICA But
people like Chloe Swarbrick as well, as very talented
individual, who doesn’t see a place in
Labour.
ANDREW Well,
she’s gone off to whatever party she’s chosen to do.
She’s kind of in the centre-left. Yeah, I think you’ve
got to be a bit careful about drawing generalisations to
people, or even from one person. I mean, Chloe Swarbrick,
very talented, young political thinker – good on her. And
we need more people like her around. But that somehow
reflects on Labour? No, it doesn’t. You’ll see when our
full slate for the 2017 election is put together and
publicised, we have a good balance – really talented,
fresh new talent coming through, and some great
personalities.
JESSICA You told the
Labour Party at your recent conference that you weren’t a
show
pony.
ANDREW Yeah.
JESSICA Don’t
you need to be a little bit show pony in this job? You are
out there representing and selling the Labour Party,
you’re representing all of the MPs who work for Labour.
Don’t you need just that tiny nugget of show
pony-ness?
ANDREW Well,
you’ve got to be able to step up and work with a crowd and
talk and get your message across, and proving I can do that.
What, actually, voters want to know is that the people who
they are putting into Parliament, or putting into
government, are people who understand their issues –
people who are prepared to listen, take seriously their
issues. And I think New Zealanders are driven by a sense of
values about what sort of country New Zealand is, and they
want a country where everybody gets a good start and a fair
go, because they’re not seeing that at the moment. I do
represent that. And, listen, you can complain about my
glasses, my ears, you can— Whatever. I’ll tell you one
thing I do have in spades, and that is character. And
that’s about determination, and it is about a sense of
conviction about what is right for New Zealand and getting
out to New Zealanders, communicating with them and getting
across the line on that. We’ve proven we can do it, and
we’re doing it next
year.
JESSICA But
you can have as much character as you want; if you’re not
selling it and people aren’t seeing it, then it just goes
into oblivion, doesn’t
it?
ANDREW So, when
we’ve had to get out in front of people to sell a Labour
message and win their confidence and win their vote, as we
have done now twice this year, we succeed and we win, and
we’ll do it again next
year.
JESSICA Because
we’ve seen show pony work, though – Obama, Trump, John
key, to a certain extent. You’ve got to have a bit of show
pony, don’t
you?
ANDREW So,
here’s the show pony in Mt Roskill. So, he turned up there
seven days. The prime minister spent seven days in a
by-election--
JESSICA How
many times did you
go?
ANDREW I had
about five days there. I was out there talking to people,
knocking on doors, out there, and I was talking to people. I
wasn’t there collecting selfies. I was there trying to win
people’s votes.
JESSICA You must have
your have your fair share of selfies, though, to be
fair.
ANDREW I
get lots of selfies, fine, yeah, but he made a big song and
dance about it – ‘Look how many selfies I’m
getting,’ and all that sort of stuff. Here’s the
thing— Here’s the real lesson out of Mt Roskill for the
National Party – they had the prime minister, who,
according to everybody else’s commentary and rhetoric, is
in his prime, peak of his, sort of, approval. He was there
to get the National Party
vote.
JESSICA In a
Labour seat,
though.
ANDREW In a
seat— In a National seat. The party vote favoured National
in the last election – 2000 majority party
vote.
JESSICA But
this has been Mr Goff’s seat for a long time,
though.
ANDREW Mr
Goff’s seat. That’s right. And a lot of commentators
have said, ‘Yeah, it’s a Phil Goff seat.’ It’s a
National Party seat. But the whole thing is the prime
minister turned up there to get the National Party vote out.
And what has happened? It didn’t turn out. People turned
out to support Michael Wood with Labour’s message and
Labour’s campaign. That’s the big difference. That’s
the lesson. I take great heart out of the result. It’s a
good result for us, and it sets us up well for next
year.
JESSICA And congratulations on that
result. We’ll have to leave it there. Thank you very much
for your time this
morning.
ANDREW Thank
you.