After starving voters of any vision for what a Chris Hipkins government might look like, the governing party drowned voters in policy last week but is yet to see any reward, writes political editor Jo Moir
Comment: In East Auckland a graffitist with a penchant for political humour has revised Labour’s campaign slogan ‘In it for you’ by adding the words ‘F*** all’ above it.
It’s a not-so-kind way of describing what Labour leader Chris Hipkins has been offering voters, which until a week ago was very little.
READ MORE: * Practice makes Luxon less imperfect * Further vaping clamp-downs on the table
Hipkins has made a point of saying you don’t get to stop governing just because an election is nearing.
What that’s translated to is a Prime Minister with a weed whacker going around chopping down anything that looks too much like a Green Party policy and anything that reminds voters too much of Jacinda Ardern.
Instead of laying out a vision for what another three years under Chris Hipkins would look like, he’s busied himself getting rid of things.
Where he has offered up new government policy it has been delivered in a way that made it feel like back-of-the-envelope style decision-making in problem areas like youth crime, school truancy and housing.
In a cost of living crisis, when war is being fought overseas at the same time as warnings New Zealand isn’t safe from aggressions in the Pacific or foreign interference attacks, the country is more divided than it’s been in years, people are still recovering from Covid and hard-hitting winter illnesses, and they remain traumatised by the lockdowns and separation they endured, it’s not that surprising voters might be in search of a bit of hope and optimism.
As poll after poll has had National and Act ahead, Labour’s campaign team has sat by and breathed a sigh of relief every couple of weeks when Hipkins has kept an edge over Christopher Luxon in the likeability and trust stakes.
Pinning all hopes on it coming down to a popularity contest and backing the ‘boy from the Hutt’ to win, Labour’s strategists woke up a week ago (no doubt after alarming internal polling and focus groups) to the fact that Hipkins isn’t going to save the party from the opposition benches.
In the space of a week Labour launched its GST-free fruit and vegetable policy, rid the country of any remaining Covid protocols, offered up its paid parental leave policy, announced the Government’s and Labour’s transport policy, promised to introduce financial literacy skills to schools, committed to compulsory teaching requirements for reading, writing and maths in schools and presented both Government and Labour Party changes to vaping regulations.
You’d be hard pressed to find an average voter, only loosely plugged into the news, who has absorbed more than two of those things in any great detail.
Labour’s party vote miraculously held up well during the distractions of Meka Whaitiri, Stuart Nash and Michael Wood and only started to register in the low-30s in the 1News Verian poll from the point of Kiri Allan’s resignation.
Roll on a month later, with Labour having reached into its policy bag, and the party’s taken a hit.
While Monday night’s poll is only a moment in time, Labour will be petrified the GST-free frozen and fresh produce policy it has hung its tax principles on hasn’t done what its focus groups said it would – and that the next polls will confirm it.
Given voters seem to be agreed Luxon and Hipkins are equally uninspiring, it’s the vision and policy the parties put up that look set to decide the election.
On Monday night’s 1News Verian poll the preferred Prime Minister gap had Hipkins ahead by one measly percent (less than the margin of error). Embarrassingly, the two leaders only notched up 41 percent between them, showing just how uninterested New Zealanders are in their leadership styles.
And to put salt in the wound, Labour dropped to 29 percent – the same number at which former National leader Simon Bridges was turfed out and former prime ministers have lost elections.
National and Act are both up to 37 and 13 percent respectively and would easily govern with 65 seats in Parliament between them.
The spray of seven policies this past week, including two that offer no differentiation with National given it has the same ideas, were designed to create momentum for Labour.
National, Act and the Greens got the jump on them by going early on policy announcements.
While Monday night’s poll is only a moment in time, Labour will be petrified the GST-free frozen and fresh produce policy it has hung its tax principles on hasn’t done what its focus groups said it would – and that the next polls will confirm it.
National still has some big questions to answer about its own tax policy and how it will pay for it when it finally gets announced, but in the meantime, it will be taking wins from Labour announcing education policy it came up with and released months ago.
Labour also lost points with its paid parental leave policy after headlines that it had voted down National’s attempt to make the leave more flexible for parents dominated the news cycle for more than a week.
There will be voters who will look positively on National’s announcement on Monday to offer free prescriptions to only those who need them and use the rest of the money to target improved cancer care treatment for all.
It will have to defend that targeted approach of course when it announces its tax policy that will likely give more relief to the wealthy.
It isn’t game over for Labour and Luxon will be sure to remind his caucus when it meets at Parliament on Tuesday not to count chickens before they hatch.
But one floor down at Parliament, where the Labour caucus will be gathering at the same time, there will plenty of MPs with a ‘please explain’ for their leader, who they’re counting on to have a plan to turn things around.
