There’s a historical pattern in New Zealand politics that has played out repeatedly. New governments tend mostly to leave their opponents’ initiatives in place and often build on them.

The 1935 Labour government’s epochal introduction of the welfare state was largely left intact by later centre-right National party administrations. Similarly, when Labour in the 1980s imposed a radical programme of economic deregulation, the National government that followed was happy to leave the new arrangements undisturbed. In fact National embraced the free-market creed with gusto, doubtless grateful that Labour had spared it from having to do the hard work of reform itself.

After Labour found itself in power again in 1999, Prime Minister Helen Clark referred often to what she called the ‘failed’ neoliberal reforms yet did nothing to unwind them beyond making a few tweaks to the social welfare system and the employment laws. And when National’s John Key succeeded her in 2008, the only significant Labour initiative he reversed was the abolition of the British honours system. Key personified the definition of a successful conservative politician as one who leaves most things alone, even doing nothing to reverse Clark’s emasculation of the New Zealand Defence Force. (Ironically, Key’s one attempt at making history, when he tried to persuade the country to adopt a new flag, ended in a humiliating failure.)

This political incrementalism, one party building on the achievements of the other, reflects the essential consensual nature of New Zealand politics. Since the 1930s the two major parties have shared broadly similar views about the sort of society they want New Zealand to be: namely, a liberal democracy with a mixed economy, a commitment to social equality (easier said than done) and respect for human rights. It was a consensus endorsed by Kiwi voters, who eschew extremes and reward politicians who don’t stray far from the centre.

That pattern has now been spectacularly disrupted. The ideological excesses of Jacinda Ardern’s Labour government broke the mould. Labour was accordingly punished by having its vote halved in the 14 October general election. Now, after 40 days of political limbo due to an election result that split the anti-Labour vote three ways, a new centre-right coalition government has been officially installed and started work.

It’s historic because it’s New Zealand’s first-ever three-party coalition, but what’s more significant is that it brings together three disparate parties – National, ACT (the Association of Consumers and Taxpayers) and New Zealand First – whose one common purpose is to undo the damage of the past six years. For probably the first time in living memory, New Zealand has a government that’s explicitly dedicated to dismantling the work of its predecessor.

In the short term at least, the Christopher Luxon-led government is likely to be less concerned with introducing new policies than with throwing discredited and unpopular old ones on the bonfire. That’s what New Zealand voters emphatically signalled they wanted and that’s where the three governing parties are in broad agreement. Labour appeared to acknowledge the profound shift in the public mood by not even bothering to field a candidate in a recent by-election in the provincial seat of Port Waikato, calling it unwinnable.

Under the new government, identity politics and racial separatism, which flourished with Ardern’s tacit endorsement, will have their oxygen cut off.  A concerted attempt by influential Maori activists to redefine the country’s founding document, the Treaty of Waitangi, will at the very least be subjected to proper parliamentary scrutiny and debate rather than progressing by stealth. Maori co-governance over the nation’s water resources, a project already well advanced, will be scrapped. A separate health bureaucracy for people of Maori descent will be disestablished and district councils will be required, as they were before a sneaky law change in 2021, to hold public referendums before introducing exclusively Maori wards. Government departments will be instructed to use their familiar English names rather than invented Maori ones that no one recognises.

Oil and gas exploration is back on the agenda, government work on hate speech laws will be curtailed and schools will be instructed to refocus the curriculum on academic achievement rather than ideology. Convoluted planning laws will be rewritten, union-friendly ‘fair pay’ agreements will be cancelled and the bloated public sector, which grew by 28 per cent under Labour, faces a severe haircut that could free up money for tax cuts. These are massive reversals for the left.

Costly, quixotic and ineffectual public transport projects will be abandoned, much to the chagrin of climate change zealots, and sclerotic regulatory red tape will be tackled head-on by ACT leader David Seymour in the newly created role of Minister for Regulation. Meanwhile the Reserve Bank, which under Labour had a dual mandate to protect employment while also trying to control inflation, will be ordered to revert to its previous sole focus on the latter.

Many of these are initiatives that National, the dominant partner in the coalition, would have been unlikely to attempt of its own volition. It’s reasonable to conclude that between them, ACT and New Zealand First have stiffened National’s spine and given Luxon’s party political courage it previously lacked.

The new government can also be expected to make control of crime a priority. That will put pressure on a police force that is seen as unresponsive to public expectations, idly standing by when a violent woke mob forced the cancellation of a legitimate speaking event and appearing to be impotent in the face of rampant gang violence and teenage ram-raids.

New Zealand, then, can expect a bracing reset, bigger by far than anything since the 1980s. The difference is that whereas the 1980s reforms were a leap into the future, the new government will effectively be turning the clock back to where it was in 2017. Having campaigned with the slogans ‘Get our country back on track’ (National) and ‘Take our Country Back’ (New Zealand First), the successful parties can claim a mandate to do exactly that.