The fundamentals are bad for this government - high inflation, stalled growth and delivery and a collapsing cabinet - and the polls just caught up. National’s lead is growing. Hipkins is almost Luxon levels of low in the preferred PM stakes. NZFirst may return to Parliament. You wouldn’t know it from the campaign launches, which showed a Labour determined not to lose and a National doing nothing much to win.
On Saturday, the Labour event faced down human wave tactics with calm and cheer. Helen Clark, being Helen Clark, pointed to the exits. Her presence, and Ardern’s absence, symbolised the hard edge of Hipkins’ Labour, mentioning National twelve times in a barrage of attacks. His speech turned generous: free dental for under 30s. That means a lot, both to us young voters and to our parents, who Labour has courted ever since fees free. The party is finally promising real relief from a substantial cost, not just 30 cents off carrots.
Look at your dental bills, and listen to Labour whispering that all this pain can be budgeted away with a mere $390 million. Comparatively, National’s plan to blow $14.6 billion on giving you $50 a week seems both exorbitant and underwhelming. National’s four new taxes to fund less taxes face left-wing allegations of budget holes and, more ominously, expert advice that taxing foreign buyers would violate many of our trade agreements, including with China.
That cloud did more to overshadow National’s conference than a horde of disrupters could to Labour, 2020 not 2014. National’s slick, flashy production reinforced a sense that Luxon (already caricatured as an evangelical) is the arrowhead for the unwelcome Americanisation of our nation and politics. Many of NZFirst and ACT’s issues are imported from American culture wars. The sausage roll PM may well be the most authentic option for true Kiwi patriots.
Highlights included cultural performances and, perfect for Father’s Day, a speech from the Luxon children. The problem was that this was all frosting on the cake, and there wasn't a cake, just a card with no money inside. It was like being told they didn’t get you a gift because they paid for lunch last week.
The postcard size of National’s pledge card undoes the dream of literally seeing accountability in your wallet. The final pledge (Net Zero Carbon by 2050) demonstrates National doesn’t actually understand this Blair-Clark gimmick: you can’t ask voters to judge your achievements when the crunch point doesn’t sit during your career, never mind the next three years.
The first pledge bundles less inflation and more growth together: individually no-brainers, but any high school economics student could tell you they don’t sit easily together. 2 through 7 are clear, good goals that National can contrast with current underperformance, but they still need proven policies that can do better. National have sleepwalked to a narrow lead, but if NZFirst enter the picture, the odds for Labour become insurmountable.
Promising free dental for young people will not move an older voter base. Labour will wrack their brains for a miracle policy to sink NZFirst below the waterline. They could plead that the Hipkins government is a new regime which Winston can work with. Both are possible and neither are likely. Looking out at the Opposition, the obvious weakness is that National occupy a soft centre amidst fierce flanks.
Labour would love to turn NZFirst and ACT against each other. Seymour and Peters dislike each other and lose nothing from scrapping; only Luxon suffers. Mostly, though, NZFirst can be used to tear the centre away. The main goal for the left is to establish a “cordon sanitaire”: the European approach where all parties who otherwise disagree collectively stand against any coalition with the far-right fringe. Peters has evaded this standard in the past despite fierce anti-immigrant rhetoric and painting our Muslim communities as terrorists in the 2000s. The mainstream tolerated that rubbish in a way that they do not permit anti-vax nonsense.
Last year, Christopher Luxon was asked for weeks whether he would rule out working with Brian Tamaki, finally saying “yes”. Journalists love to question whether parties will work with Winston, the ultimate pragmatist who will negotiate with anyone for everything. That is no longer the case. Change the framing and Chris Luxon gets asked every day if he will agree to NZFirst’s demands for vaccine reparations, COVID investigations and cabinet posts.
Labour must do whatever they can to highlight his tin hat brigade and make this iteration of Winston Peters seem tantamount to inviting Tamaki in as Deputy PM. The left have six weeks to force Chris Luxon into a Sophie’s choice: does he leave the wound open and keep bleeding scared centrist voters to Labour, or does he amputate and rule out NZFirst?
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