Political lives of NZ's top women on the line

By David Barber

WELLINGTON (DPA): New Zealand political parties wrapped up their formal campaigns Thursday for a general election that has the country's economic direction and the future of two women leaders on the line.

Prime Minister Jenny Shipley, who heads the conservative National Party which has ruled for the last nine years, wants to continue right-wing policies that favor business and promote self-reliance among the population at large.

Helen Clark, leader of the Labour Party, says the Nationals' free-wheeling free market policies have disadvantaged the poor and middle-income earners and wants to reintroduce a dash of socialism to improve their lot.

One of them will be Prime Minister after Saturday's election -- the other will be heading for political oblivion, for neither of their parties has much time for losers.

Shipley, 48, became New Zealand's first woman Prime Minister two years ago when she ousted her predecessor, Jim Bolger, as leader of the Nationals, in a caucus coup.

The party backed her because it did not think Bolger was capable of winning a rare fourth consecutive election victory this year and she was seen as a tough and aggressive political fighter who could achieve what no party has done since the 1960s.

If she fails, she is not likely to be given a second chance at the next election in 2002, and an heir apparent in the shape of her bright young Treasurer, Bill English, is already waiting in the wings.

Clark, 49, who became the first female Deputy Prime Minister in the last Labor government in 1989, also came to power in a caucus coup, toppling Mike Moore, now director general of the World Trade Organization, as leader of the party.

She survived a half-hearted attempt to oust her in 1996 before narrowly losing that year's election. She desperately wants to be the first woman elected to the Prime Minister's job and like Shipley, she will only get one shot at it.

If she loses this time, the Labor Party is bound to replace her early next year. Ironically, the fate of both women lies largely in the hands of others.

Although opinion polls indicate that Labor is ahead of the Nationals in voter support, under New Zealand's proportional representation voting system neither party is likely to win an overall majority in the 120-seat Parliament.

Shipley would have to rely on the free market ACT NZ party (once the Association of Consumers and Taxpayers) to form a center-right government and Labor would need the left-wing NZ Alliance and maybe the Green Party to make a coalition of the center-left.

Looming over them all is the specter of the maverick Winston Peters and his nationalist New Zealand First party, who held the balance of power in 1996 and went into an ill-fated coalition with the Nationals which collapsed less than two years later.

This time, Peters, whose popular support is flagging, according to the polls, has vowed to stay out of government even if he holds the balance again, sitting on the cross benches "to keep the others honest".

A lackluster campaign has been fought on predictable lines and with widespread distrust of all politicians, more than a quarter of a million eligible voters have not even bothered to put their names on the electoral role.

Shipley's Nationals, promising future tax cuts to entice voters, have campaigned on a credible policy of economic growth, low inflation and the lowest interest rates in 28 years. "Why change a winning formula?" asks Shipley. "Let's stick with the policies that let the economy work."

A Labor-led government, she says, would wreck the good work by raising taxes, pandering to trades unions by undoing labor reform and penalizing business by restoring expensive and wasteful welfare policies.

Clark says nine years of conservative rule has turned New Zealand into a mean, dog-eat-dog, society. "It is time for a change," she says.

By raising taxes on the wealthy five percent of earners, Labor will restore a flagging public health system, put the poor into State housing they can afford, raise pensions for the elderly and close the widening gap between rich and poor.

Victory would pose its problems for both women. ACT NZ favors much more extreme right wing economic policies than the Nationals that Shipley would have to try to dilute.

Much of the NZ Alliance's policies are far to the left of the Labor Party, which Clark has been at pains to move into the mainstream of politics and she would have to balance their demands with the need to keep the business community happy and the economy growing.