By Bronwen Beechey
AUCKLAND — "We declare our total commitment to the advancement of New Zealand and its people and the need to rebuild and re-establish a society where human worth, dignity and respect for each other becomes the norm, irrespective of race, colour, creed, age, gender or sexual orientation, where reason replaces conflict as the only means of dealing with each other, where cooperation and diversity is freely encouraged", begins the Alliance Declaration, a statement signed by New Zealand's four main alternative parties: NewLabour, the Greens, the Maori party Mana Motuhake and the Democrats.
The launching of the Alliance last December signalled an important shift in NZ politics, with the new group winning 37% support in a national poll taken just after its formation.
The first major challenge for the Alliance is a February by-election for the seat of Tamaki, situated in the eastern suburbs of Auckland and recently vacated by former National Party prime minister Robert Muldoon, who used his departure to launch a stinging attack on his successors in the party's leadership for the hardship they had inflicted on ordinary New Zealanders. This was an unaccustomed role for the head-kicking politician who gloried in the nickname of Piggy during his term as prime minister.
Although Tamaki is a blue-ribbon conservative seat, including Paratai Drive — Auckland's millionaire row — it also contains working-class areas, middle-class families hurting as a result of high interest rates and National's user-pays policies, and a large number of pensioners affected by cuts to the national superannuation system. The Alliance is confident that it can beat Labour for second place, and perhaps even win the seat.
At Alliance campaign headquarters, an unpretentious suburban house in the heart of the electorate, the phone rings constantly and people regularly walk in off the street to offer help. Because voting is not compulsory, one of the major tasks is encouraging supporters to enroll and vote. There's no shortage of volunteers even though the work of door-to-door canvassing, organising transport to polling booths etc, is time consuming and tiring and much of it began during the Christmas-New Year period.
According to Matt McCarten, NewLabour president and coordinator of the Alliance campaign, volunteers report an overwhelmingly positive response from working-class areas and significant support in other areas.
The candidate is the Democrats' Chris Leitch, a former small business proprietor and now the party's national president. Until 1987, the Democrats were known as Social Credit, a party formed in the 1920s as a pressure group for monetary reform. It has contested elections since 1954 and elected two members to parliament in 1981 with a vote of 27%.
The Democrats have many policies in common with others in the Alliance, Leitch told Green Left. They have a strong environmental policy, oppose nuclear ship visits, support electoral reform including tion, advocate the right of recall of elected officials, oppose large-scale overseas investment and takeovers, and support public control of key assets.
Leitch says the process of forming the Alliance began at the 1990 general elections: "We realised that in many cases our candidates and the other alternative party candidates were saying the same things. It seemed ridiculous that the third-party vote was split when we had so many policies in common."
Leitch is optimistic for the Alliance's future. "I've been studying New Zealand's political history for some time, and it seems that around every 60 years in this country social conditions cause a major shift in political support. The formation of the Labour Party in the 1930s came out of conditions similar to today. You had economic recession, the breakdown of social and family structures. I believe that the Alliance has a good chance of doing very well in the next elections, perhaps even winning government."