New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has conceded his Labour party lost Saturday’s election, as voters punished the government and took the country rightwards nine months after his predecessor Jacinda Ardern suddenly resigned.
The rising cost of living dominated campaigning with voters New Zealanders ending six years of Labour Party rule, the latter half of which was dominated by the country’s strict response to the coronavirus pandemic that successfully kept infections low but battered the economy.
With 90% of votes counted on Saturday evening, the center-right National Party, led by former airline executive Christopher Luxon, had amassed around 40% of ballots, CNN affiliates RNZ and Newshub reported.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has conceded his Labour party lost Saturday’s election, as voters punished the government and took the country rightwards nine months after his predecessor Jacinda Ardern suddenly resigned.
With 90% of votes counted on Saturday evening, the center-right National Party, led by former airline executive Christopher Luxon, had amassed around 40% of ballots, CNN affiliates RNZ and Newshub reported.
The only party to win a majority of votes and govern alone in the current political system was Labour in 2020, when Ardern won a landslide second term buoyed by her success at handling the country’s coronavirus outbreak.
But Ardern announced her shock resignation in January, saying she no longer had enough fuel in the tank to contest an election, and passed the reins of her party on to Hipkins.
The government’s “go hard and go early” approach to the pandemic saw New Zealand impose some of the world’s strictest border rules, separating families and shutting out almost all foreigners for almost two years.
It also is pledging to change the Reserve Bank’s mandate to focus on inflation, remove what it calls red tape for businesses, extend free breast cancer screenings, crack down on crime and give police greater powers to search gang members, and roll back a raft of policies implemented by Labour over the past six years.
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