Where to next?

The departure of two key figures draws a squiggly line under Labour's Ardern years.

- Danyl McLauchlan

Two senior figures are leaving New Zealand politics within a few months of each other: long-serving Labour MP David Parker, who recently delivered his farewell speech in the House, and Auditor-General John Ryan, whose seven-year term spanning most of the Ardern-Hipkins years ends on July 1.

With the current coalition arrangement beginning to rattle alarmingly, its lights flickering, engines stuttering, and the probability of a Labour-led government in 2026 slowly shifting from unthinkable to merely unlikely, these twin departures help illuminate what went wrong with the government Parker helped lead, and raise questions about what the next Labour government might look like.

For most of his time in Parliament, Parker was seen as Labour's house intellectual; there's no obvious replacement for that role in the current caucus. He was the architect of the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme, a senior minister in the Ardern-Hipkins cabinet and an advocate for the theories of Thomas Piketty, the rock-star economist whose light has dimmed in recent years, partly because it's hard to point to any governments around the world that have implemented a Piketty-informed manifesto. Parker tried and failed.