When even Stuff can see it…
A generational split emerges within National on house prices
An apparent split in the National Party over falling house prices is symptomatic of a generational split in New Zealand around home ownership, says one political analyst.
Economist Shamubeel Eaqub says the differences in opinion within National on housing prices represent a transition in New Zealand politics between young and old.
Bernard Hickey makes the point from the latest polling data…
Old anti-vaxx men prefer the coalition. Young women don’t.
A majority of male voters (54%) supported the centre-right, whereas 58% of female voters supported the centre-left. Voters under 40 years old were more supportive of the centre-left at 57 percent, whereas over 60 year old voters are more supportive of the centre-right, at 60 percent.
…the next election will be Old Zealand vs New Zealand.
Old Zealand are boomer white culture war males who thrash in fury at Trans, climate change, Māori, vaccines, the Treaty and are virulently pro Israel and Trump.
They are culturally threatened, have property and are economically anxious.
They are driven by Social Media Hate algorithms.
They have power because they religiously vote to ensure their privilege.
The good news for New Zealand is that Old Zealand are a shrinking electorate.
Estimation for 2025 (or more recent)
If similar age proportions hold, then:
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If 60+ voters are ~28-30% of the voter roll, and
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Under-40 voters are ~35%,
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then in a total roll of ~3.6 million enrolled voters (approx current size), you’d expect:
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60+ voters ≈ ≈ 1.0 to 1.1 million
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18-40 voters ≈ ≈ 1.25 million
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(These are rough estimates: actual numbers will depend on enrolment rates, population growth, and changes in age composition.)
New Zealand is a greater voting block than Old Zealand and that is what we need to collectively focus upon as we move into the 2026 election.
We have the numerical supremacy and by sweet Jesus we need to step up to defeat Old Zealand.
This hard rights Government’s anti-Māori, anti-Treaty, anti-Worker, anti-Renter, anti-beneficiary, anti-disabled, anti-environment agenda that strangles the common good for their donors interests represents Old Zealand whose cruelty and malice is simply not the future of New Zealand.
Old Zealand is dying metaphorically and literally. New Zealand is the future.
2026 Election will be Old Zealand vs New Zealand
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You’ve put your finger on the key determinant: demographics. But I would argue that it is more than simply age related. Granted, the relationship between age and assets is well established. Well off boomers have benefited from a lifetime of relatively stable work and untaxed capital gains have cemented their wealth. A generalization but this is the old Zealand.
Yes, the new Zealand looks quite different, but in more ways than one, at least in the part of town I live in. It seems that half the town is East Asian and the other half from the Indian subcontinent. Drive to another part of town and its a mix of 2nd and 3rd generation Pasifika and people from all over the globe. In short, ethnically diverse. And I’ve heard that in some parts of the country Maori are very visible. Up north. The East Coast. Urban pockets.
Now, if you live in some places I won’t name you probably don’t fully comprehend this diversity, beyond immigrant farm workers and the brave small business owner.
My question is how do these new Zealanders vote? What is their political affiliation, not only on the ‘health of the economy’ but on all the social policy change around them? A good many probably hold on to previous political habits are are not fully converse with local nuances.
Are all new Zealanders the same? Most likely not. Some come with wealth, modest as it may be in some cases. Others not.
What are the expectations of these new Zealanders- more often for their kids? Who do they believe in the political landscape is going to help them achieve their goals?
That said, do new Zealanders yet have the numbers to really make a difference to the political landscape beyond the age-related divide?
People keep aging, the demographic keeps changing.
Is that the same box that has “they’re eating the dogs, tariffs will make things cheaper, and I’ll end the Ukrainian conflict on day one?
yep tank is full of hate and shit
As baby boomers downsize or move to retirement villages and Auckland council endorse lots of apartment development at train stations house prices may continue to fall. Will that cause the opposite of the rising house price ‘wealth effect’ and the economy continue to stagnate?
The bad news is plenty of millennials are totally consumed by the fear of homelessness, poverty, and early death that they are aping the boomer mindset. What of their children? I should rap my own fingers with a wooden ruler for buying into the “boomer” moniker, because the way they think, and the reason why they are that way isn’t simply because they were the firstborns after 1945. The mindset has existed since forever, only this time it was coupled with the right economic and social conditions, so it really went full toxic. Wait till you get to the mindset of the middle-classers, regardless of age. Rates cap? Same result either way. Inheritance tax? Gee, wonder who’ll get that in tax cuts. As Gil Scot-Heron once said, the revolution will not be televised. There will be no imaginable, tidy, pre-planned, politically convenient, new NZ. When it all falls over, it’ll just be me, and you. I’m not gonna swing first. How’s your nerve?
These silly old codgers, have never moved with the times, so are thoroughly stuck in a huge RUT. They make up the bulk of Hosking’s ZB clown show. Surely they must see, they’ve had their youth, their day, it’s the younger generation’s turn now. They can’t keep banging on about the good old days! Give youth a break – allow them to look after our lovely NZ and help them all you can. Many will be your grandchildren! If you can’t, then move on……
Some of us do choose to move on, having had our lives and done as well for the community as possible, and managed for ourselves okay. Just quietly slip away but carefully as a simple-minded authoritarian and religious-bound authority bars euthanasia. I believe that referendums on it are gerrymandered by the dev-out.
I’ve noticed that some politicians don’t want people to be at ease, or enjoy too much, if they think that some of their taxes are helping that. (Did you know that earlier on women giving birth were not helped too much as it was ‘natural’, or somewhere in the bible it said that childbirth was pain.) One can find anything wanted for a quote from the bible.
Now if we want to move on we have a limp, dim government that has mistaken material wealth and good taste for having good values in the community. It reminds me of a book about early 1900s, when some people were being enabled by the industrial age to move up from being poor villagers. The wives stopped mingling with previous acquaintances and stayed home pansying up the furnishings and polishing the silver. Money separates when one doesn’t want to share it, (I’m bringing in some Regency words , and being ‘high in the the instep’ was one for the proud), and relationships can sour. I think that one would find the same today with a Lotto win, being a thick wad to carry, even if one didn’t move away to an upper neighbourhood. Catherine Cookson has written on the clash between means and mean behaviour both within a social class and between classes.
… have never moved with the times …
Change is inevitable they say, the only constant, both in the natural world – although at times hard for humans to spot at the time with any certainty – and in the social world. In many cases the two are inseparable. Recently rewatched Kens Burn’s doco on the bison of North America. What struck me was how intertwined the bison were with the lives of the humans already living in North America and how changes brought on devastation to both. This was ‘only’ 200 years ago. One can think of similar events, historical and not so historical. The takeaway is that change does not always imply progress. Moving on to what?
Still a very tight margin when you consider the difference in voting rates between the two groups. Old people will drag their frail and weak bodies to the polling booth through earthquakes ,flooding and draught. Walkers, wheelchairs, taxi or bus – they will turn up to vote and protect what they have. Younger voters – not so much.
Boomer NZ males, they seem self-satisfied and resist change. But how can intelligent, thoughtful people be satisfied with the state of our country and our fellow citizens?
The anger about defacing a flag. It seems at its base about returned servicemen, full of stories about things and themselves and NZ, and rightly demanding respect and assistance with their needs and living, but no room for any new understandings. Both these news stories are about respecting our flag. Helen Clark went on about it. It always is a symbol, though now it is a brand logo.
And everyone misses the point, it stands for the nation, good or bad, and it is better to show dissatisfaction with a far from worthy nation by stepping on, setting on fire, a piece of material, than shooting a policeman or one shooting Tom Phillips.
Get one’s ideas into proportion, stop thinking that the symbol is more important than the truth, stop worshipping symbols or any person, follow practical, human-crafted systems based on rational, co-operative supportive and hopeful, beliefs.
Dec5/25 https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/ldr/581025/controversial-flag-exhibit-flagging-the-future-stolen-from-hastings-art-gallery
([Mike] Doyle said he was really upset when he saw the “please walk on me” flag on the ground.
“I told the receptionist I thought it was disgusting,” Doyle said.
He said he was shaking and upset for the whole of New Zealand.
“I thought to myself, ‘how the hell can I protest?’. On the floor, on either side of the flag, there were blocks of wood with writing on them, so I kicked one. That was my protest.
“I was almost crying, but I thought if it’s alright to stand on the NZ flag it’s alright to kick a block of bloody wood.”)
2Dec/25 https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/580615/please-walk-on-me-new-zealand-flag-exhibition-shocks-hastings-councillor
Then earlier-
May27 2025 https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/ldr/562297/please-walk-on-me-flag-artwork-sparks-outrage-again
‘Artwork insult to veterans’ FGS The insult is that men who go to war are being sacrificed by their country, forced to become killers, thugs, injured, killed, and their family, personal life destroyed, and often for venal, not noble reasons that should be dealt with otherwise. And WW2 after W1, disgraceful politics and venality.
Objecting to a piece of material being used as a focus for attention about badness and tragedy, is a shocking example of how dull are many people. These old guys have lost interest in the following generations they were said to be fighting for. They feel overlooked and need to manage their lives and infirmities.
But they are an important part of history, of humanity, which moves on and needs our attention all the time we are alive. They could help and make their sacrifices and those of dead others be of powerful importance and lasting good, by giving the young people their support and wisdom, not leading them to a degraded future, not a dictatorship of disdain, even hate. It seems, without deliberate intelligent goodwill, moral stance and concern, we sink to a default of doing others down and meretricious ways.
Very well written Greywarbler. Very clear explanation for those who read.
I’d love to think old warriors have as much concern for present generations as they believe they deserve, and they do deserve our concern and help.
Present generations may not be being sent off to die for ignoble causes, yet! With the world leaders we have at present, including our own, it could come.
But younger generations are having many difficulties imposed on them, simply for being young.
This govt. has plainly said, it doesn’t care. So, we must care, our generation must care and must try to do right by our young ones.
The flag is a symbol of what our forefathers achieved and we clearly told key we weren’t prepared to have him gerrymandering it.
I can see how emotionally shocking it would be to come across an artwork encouraging people to walk on the flag but it’s also a message to our present govt. that they are desecrating our country and showing disrespect for our forebears with almost every action they take. They are ruining a perfectly good country for their owners and doners who only see dollar signs.
What meaningful legacy for a better future will Luxon leave? Absolutely nothing. His big talk about the economy is just that, big talk. His unpopularity surely well exceeds any other PM’s, by now. No-one with any sense of NZ, sees him as anything but a poseur. He’s a complete waste of 3 years which we could not afford to lose.
It’s a great story, but largely false. Maori were not dispossessed due to racism but for profit.
Luxon doesn’t hate the people he has dispossessed, he merely doesn’t care. The evils of greed are banal and boring, there is no opera to be made about NZ’s cheapass MPs and the corrupt PPPs they make.
You’ll have to drag the levers of power and baubles from our cold dead hands!
Que Vincent Price laughter
If you look at the current government ,they are mostly in the 40 -60 age group .They are fucken disgusting hate fill entitled shit heads .I have never seen so many sick nasty people in one place .Even the mothers in government are happy fucking over their own kids and grand kids .
The under 40s will change the government along with a lot of us boomers who are disgusted with the way our children have become so fucken self centered and materialistic .