Introduction

The 1999 general election gave the Labour Party a majority of seats, but in order to govern it needed the support of the Alliance, a grouping to the left of Labour and including a number of people who had left the Labour Party during the period of the Fourth Labour government, disenchanted with that government's direction. The Alliance subsequently split apart after significant internal disputes based around a mixture of personality and political issues. Nevertheless, they continued to support Labour as the governing party. Labour has continued to be the major political party at the last two elections and has formed Coalition governments with a range of minor parties, usually to the right of Labour. (For ease of expression, all of these governments will be referred to as ‘Labour-led’ governments.)

The Labour election in 1999, Roper argues:

Political and economic direction

The Labour-led governments’ plans and directions are set out in a range of key documents. An early document entitled Growing an Innovative New Zealand produced what has been called the Growth and Innovation Framework (GIF), a framework that continues to provide the overarching and coordinating base for economic development (Clark, 2002). In the Foreword, the New Zealand Prime Minister (Helen Clark) describes the document as setting out a ‘clear direction which the Government intends to follow’ (Clark, 2002, p 5). The document sets out a vision for the country with building an open, competitive micro-economy and a cohesive society as the central foci. Within these, a healthy and highly skilled population, sound environmental management, global connection and research and development are identified as important elements in effecting the desired transformation. Economic growth and improving New Zealand's economic growth relative to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) are identified as central objectives, both because they would improve standards of living and because they would facilitate ‘provision of public goods in the way that other first world countries do’ (Clark, 2002, p 12).