IT WAS A muffled cheer. On 19 October 2017, it rose from behind a stiff oak door in New Zealand’s Parliament Buildings and drifted down narrow corridors decorated with stern-faced portraits of historical bearers of office. In a televised speech made at the Executive Wing (known as the Beehive), Winston Peters, the leader of New Zealand First, made the announcement the nation had been waiting for since the general election on 23 September: ‘That is why we chose a coalition government with…the Labour Party.’[i]

Change, Peters explained to the camera, had driven this decision; the cheer emanating from the Labour Party caucus room chorused that change. Yet, as I took in the announcement of a new government, a fresh start, I thought about the politics of another age, another place – the politics where change seemed always out of reach.