Election 2026 Campaign Diary: Seymour plays to strength and Hipkins doesn’t disagree
The difference between Act in 2023 and Act in 2026 is stark, and that is evident as David Seymour joins The Big Pinky bus tour up the North Island.
In this final week of the campaign, Seymour is campaigning on a positive policy area that Act has performed strongly on: medicines and Pharmac.
Seymour has already released a new policy for a second term and is reinforcing it this week: to dedicate 1% of new health spending each year to medicines, in order to be on parity with Australia by 2033.
New Zealand spends 4.9% of its health budget annually on medicines and Australia spends 12.2%, Seymour said in a press conference in Palmerston North.
Even Labour leader Chris Hipkins has given Seymour veiled credit in his role as the minister in charge of Pharmac. It was the one area of health that he was less concerned about, Hipkins said at a press conference in Hamilton East.
“By and large, I think medicines policy just needs more money but the overall approach to managing medicines I am not going to argue with.”
Seymour’s campaign was more fraught in 2023. One of the reasons he seemed determined to stick to the Treaty Principles Bill in the first half of this term, despite the turmoil it created, was that he had campaigned so strongly on it in 2023. He was never going to get the referendum he had promised voters but he was determined to push it partway through Parliament until National and New Zealand First killed it as promised, halfway through the term.
By the way, Seymour won the Campaign Diary sweepstake in the Melbourne Cup, having been assigned Point of Law by me.
Two sides playing engineered overhang game
There has been a lot of attention and criticism of Harry Mowbray’s encouragement to engineer an overhang to advantage the centre right but not so much to Te Pāti Māori, which is trying to engineer an overhang to advantage the centre left.
It is going for the electorate vote only and encouraging its supporters to give their party vote to the Greens or Labour. But in order to do so, the party needs the permission of Labour and the Greens, according to electoral law expert Graeme Edgeler. Labour general secretary Rob Salmond confirmed that it has not given it.
The Green Party has been very critical of the right wing’s campaign but not of Te Pāti Māori’s when asked about it on Tuesday morning. Chlöe Swarbrick deflected and simply said the right was no stranger to strategic voting. Labour’s Chris Hipkins has consistently opposed the engineered overhang and the party is running a two-tick campaign in every seat.
Before or after? Shane Jones has better timing
New Zealand First deputy leader and Northland candidate Shane Jones is planning to reward party volunteers on election day by taking them fishing before the results roll in on Saturday night. We can only be grateful that he has better timing than leader Winston Peters in 1996 when, the day after the election, in which the party held the balance of power, Peters tormented the media and the country by delaying a press conference and taking a bunch of party candidates and officials out for a day’s fishing in Tauranga.
They said it
“We haven’t been the newest, we’re not the biggest, we’re not the loudest but, gee, we’ve certainly had our head down and our bum up.” David Seymour’s assessment of his Act Party’s record.
Campaign quiz
In which electorate is Act Party list MP and whip Todd Stephenson standing and who is the sitting MP?
Looking ahead
Wednesday: David Seymour will be campaigning in Taupō and Hamilton. Qiulae Wong will be in Wellington.
Thursday: Most smaller party leaders will be preparing for the TVNZ Q&A debate.
Quiz answer: Southland, held by National’s Joseph Mooney.
ICYMI
In case you missed the latest, follow the Herald’s campaign blog for live updates. National deputy leader Nicola Willis has been savaged by some critics, including Newstalk ZB drive host Heather du Plessis-Allan for the attacks on Swarbrick. Willis has defended it, saying it is no more than the scrutiny the party deserves. And political editor Thomas Coughlan takes another look at Labour’s tight fiscal plans.