New Zealand voted in a new government as fog choked the capital, Wellington, on Saturday – and the mood was as palpable as the grey weather.
“It’s pretty flat,” 21-year-old Imogen Vlutger says. “There’s this kind of apathy and a bit of dread.”
“Tired. I think we’re all tired,” Symone, 28, admits.
“I didn’t even vote,” one man in his 40s sheepishly confesses. He couldn’t bring himself to tick any of the boxes, he explains, declining to chat further.
“Wellington’s a bit of a bubble,” another voter says, expressing a caveat I heard often, before describing feeling disillusioned.
But polling shows this is a pervasive sentiment across the country: the national mood is low and faith in politics is even lower.
More than half the country no longer sees it as a land of opportunity, a recent study found, while a similar portion fears that the future looks even worse.
Many Kiwis feel the economy is in ruins, there are no jobs, the cost of living has become sky high, the sense of community that used to be a source of national pride is breaking down and there’s no sense of genuine progress on policy solutions.
A record number of them are abandoning ship in search of brighter futures elsewhere.
Saturday’s election also saw a record number of voters desert the two major parties, giving neither a clear mandate.
But it brought new highs for parties across the spectrum: the left-leaning Greens, the right-wing libertarian Act Party and the centrist Opportunity Party – the latter of which had never won a seat in parliament before but could now hold the balance of power with seven.
“You have voted to change New Zealand politics for good,” the party’s ecstatic leader Quilae Wong told Kiwis on election night. “I personally came into this because I was frustrated at the slow pace of change.”
It will likely be weeks before we know exactly who will make up the governing coalition and what deals have been made to form it.
But this is only the first of many challenges facing whoever is the next prime minister of a country at a crossroads.
