Christopher Luxon says New Zealanders 'gave hope and voted for change'; Photo: Dom Thomas/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
New Zealanders convincingly elected a new Conservative government as Chris Hipkins, the current prime minister, acknowledged that six years of Labor rule had come to an end.
The National Member Christopher Luxon said New Zealanders had «found hope and voted for change» after a campaign dominated by an increasingly difficult economy and a backlash from farmers over Labour's environmental policies.
«It's a weight off our shoulders,» said Joe Lloyd, a sheep and beef farmer who watches election coverage on television from his living room in the Waikato region.
Mr Lloyd had hoped for a National-ACT coalition and voted for the minority party because of its strong stance on protecting the interests of rural communities.
Alastair Reeves, another representative A Waikato sheep and beef farmer said he was «delighted» with the new government.
«Labor has pitted urban New Zealand against rural New Zealand and undermined our businesses by painting us as polluters of the planet,» he said.
“We were bombarded with rules. They have done everything they can to undermine farmers' confidence.»
Saturday's result stood in stark contrast to Labour's landslide victory under Jacinda Ardern in 2020.
Mr Hipkins withdrew from the competition after receiving just 85 per cent of the vote. The National Party and its coalition partner were projected to win 61 seats, enough to secure a majority in New Zealand's 120-seat Parliament.
Chris Hipkins has admitted that Labour's time in power is over. Photo: Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images
A former chief executive of Air New Zealand, Mr Luxon campaigned to «get our country back on track».
It's a message that has resonated with a population suffering a cost-of-living crisis and concerned about an unprecedented rise in violent crime.
In the small town of Waikanae, about an hour's drive north of Wellington, butcher Terry McKee said the rising cost of living was the most important issue of the elections.
“Everyone is having a hard time. Interest rates, fuel costs, all of these are driving up costs, but I don't know what another government is going to do,” he said.
Many New Zealanders have also not forgiven Ms Ardern for her handling of Covid. -19 pandemic.
Measures such as banning New Zealanders living overseas from returning home, imposing strict quarantines, making vaccines mandatory and refusing to face protesters camped outside Parliament all contributed decline in her popularity before her resignation.
While her policies have helped New York's death rate remains impressively low, the country's High Court has found some of the government's handling of the pandemic to be «unjustifiable» in a functioning democracy.
The agriculture industry has had a particularly tough time in six years Labor government. He has withstood the onslaught of green initiatives that have been criticized by farmers and opposition parties as unnecessary at best and harmful to the country at worst.
If Labor remained in power, one of them would be a world-first tax on the methane belched and released by livestock — by 2026. A bitter pill to swallow, say New Zealand farmers, given that they are among the world's most efficient food producers in terms of greenhouse gas emissions.
Mr Luxon's campaign message appears to have resonated with voters. Photo: Dom Thomas/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
Speaking to The Telegraph after securing his seat in the Rotorua electorate, Todd McClay, National's agriculture spokesman, said his party would follow the rules of Labour's agricultural policy rule by rule.
The ones that don't really achieve anything, the ones that just increase costs, we'll either remove them or fix them to make them better.” » he said.
» Morale in rural New Zealand is at an all-time low and we need to fix that.
«We are an exporting country producing the high quality food and fiber that the world needs, and we need our farmers to do well because that's how our economy does well.»
>While National said ACT would delay the introduction of a methane tax — and when it did, support farmers to make sure it was manageable — ACT promised to delay this until New Zealand's agricultural sector competitors introduced their own, thereby leveling the playing field.
Mr McClay said the issue would need to be resolved during coalition negotiations.
He confirmed National was committed to meeting New Zealand's commitments to reduce climate change and said that The country also had farmers. They «just need reasonable rules on how to get there,» he added.
Mr. Reeves agreed. “I just hope they listen to farmers and science,” he said of the new government. “The workers were focused on ideology, not results.”
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