The Christian Vote (4)
Tuesday, July 25, 2023
Good Morning and Welcome to this week’s Gospel and Culture update, by Alan Vink
The Christian Vote (4)
Tuesday 25th July 2023
I want to begin to express my sympathies to Kiri Allan. I can’t begin to imagine what she is going through right now. This is a very sad situation. I do hope she will be able to get some decent time out now, to re-group and get whatever help she needs. In saying this I am in no way minimising what has happened. Chris Hipkins is absolutely right when he said yesterday, “I have spoken with her first thing this morning and advised her I do not believe she’s in a fit state to hold a Ministerial warrant. I believe it’s also untenable for a Justice Minister to be charged with criminal offending”.
The latest poll results last week show National and ACT maintain wafer-thin advantage (see graph below) continuing what has been the case for most of this year. Basically, its neck-and-neck between the centre left and the centre right. However, what I find very interesting is the growing support for the minor parties. As Vernon Small rightly points out in his opinion piece over the weekend - “Through the fog of numbers, two clear messages are evident. The first is the leakage of support from National and Labour, and the solid and improving performance of the minor parties”.
As far as I know we don’t have any ‘hard data’ as to how Christians vote in NZ. What we do know is that in 2020 only 1.9% voted for Christian parties out of a possible 12-15%.. Anecdotally, it seems a good number of Christians in the last 20 years have voted Labour because they traditionally lean towards everyday working people…..middle New Zealand, the very large group that David Lange once described as “to poor to be rich and to rich to be poor”. Another big block of Christians have traditionally voted National, as I have, because of the belief that National typically is better at economic management and has been socially more conservative (though that is changing fast). It seems that those lines are more blurred now. As an example, I have heard that some Christians vote for the Green’s especially amongst the millennials because of their climate change policies much to the consternation and even disbelief of many other Christians.
Pre-Election Public Forum
If you live in or near to Hamilton you might be interested in this event that I am hosting on Sunday night 17th September at Fairfield Baptist Church at 7.00pm. This forum will be about policy not about politics. It won’t be the typical meet-the-(local)candidates evening but rather a robust discussion on various policy settings. I am going to ask the hard questions around housing, crime, education and beginning and end-of-life issues to mention just a few. Labour, National, Act, The Green’s and Te Pati Maori have confirmed attendance.
This is a public event and geared around the issues that matter to Christians. You are welcome!
Law and Order
In June this year the Ipsos New Zealand Issues Monitor poll showed that Law and Order was the second most important issue coming into this year’s election after the cost of living for New Zealanders. After the tragic shooting event in down town Auckland last week Thursday it will now be ‘top of mind’ for many voters. Reading the commentary around this it does seem that more and more everyday folks are not feeling safe in their own communities. No surprises there!
I can’t remember an election that the getting tough on crime rhetoric hasn’t come up yet no Government has been able to permanently reduce our crime stats. Violent offending is getting worse, more people are in prison or on remand than ever and our courts are absolutely log jammed.
I believe crime needs a truly ‘transformative’ approach. It needs policy settings that all parties can agree on and promise not to change when in power(cross party agreements). It needs much more effort in early family intervention using a multi-agency approach because this builds fences at the top of the cliff, which we know really works, rather than pouring more and more money funding the ambulance service at the bottom of the cliff. I believe we do need to be tough on crime but that doesn’t necessarily mean prison. We know prison does not have a good success rate when it comes to rehabilitating offenders. But we do need prisons. For the under 18 year olds that commit crime we need to think through carefully an approach that helps these kids to become self-disciplined and well behaved because that is exactly what most of them want to become. So, what do you think?
