OPINION:
Company chief executives, iwi leaders, peak organisation bosses, union secretaries-general and NGO directors should be telling their government relations managers to reorient towards National-Act.
First, there's self-interest. The probability of a change of Government next year now exceeds 50 per cent. Those wanting regulatory relief or corporate welfare need to be hedged against the risk of Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, Deputy Prime Minister David Seymour, Social Investment Minister Nicola Willis, Finance Minister Simon Bridges and Economic Development Minister Chris Bishop.
The second reason is more noble. Some National MPs who might become ministers next year remain as ignorant of their own portfolios and the real world as their Labour counterparts. Getting them into your business, community programme, social agency or school is a public service.
The narrowing polls have been well documented. Close analysis suggests National-Act is now competitive even among younger voters. Once the Queen of TikTok and Instagram, the Prime Minister's efforts are now more likely to attract derision from teens and 20-somethings.
That reflects a more general slide in voters' judgments of the Government's performance.
According to this month's New Zealand Issues Monitor by Ipsos, one of the world's largest and most respected market research firms, employing more than 16,000 people in 88 countries, the Government's performance rating is back to where it was after its first disorganised year and in the months before Covid, when polling suggested Bridges was on track to make Jacinda Ardern a one-term Prime Minister.
Just as Ardern's post-Christchurch polling boost faded in her 2019 "year of delivery", her Covid dividend has evaporated.
This might be recoverable, especially if Ardern benefits politically from another disaster, like the spread of war in Ukraine. But the Ipsos study suggests Labour-Green has lost the confidence of voters in four of the top five issues that worry them.
That's a massive turnaround from the last Ipsos survey in October. That reported, astonishingly, that there was not a single issue among the top 20 about which voters had confidence in National-Act.
Now, National is ahead on voters' top two issues, inflation and housing, and the fourth and fifth, petrol prices and the economy generally. Labour remains ahead only on the third most important issue, healthcare.
Further down the list, Labour remains ahead on poverty and inequality and the Greens on climate change and the environment. But National has overtaken Labour as most trusted on law and order. The polling was largely completed before the Wellington humiliation, and when new daily Omicron cases were in the hundreds rather than thousands.
Worse for Labour, the importance voters place on the cost of living, on which National is most trusted, is skyrocketing. Correspondingly, the importance placed on issues where Labour-Green remains strong is declining.
Confidence in Labour's handling of health has steadily declined from 61 per cent in late 2020 to just 40 per cent this month. Labour-Green needs to be much further ahead on what remains its best issue.
Having presided for two years over the greatest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in the history of post-colonial New Zealand, it must show some concrete progress on poverty and inequality to maintain its lead over National-Act on an issue it usually owns.
Assuming a deadlier new strain of Covid isn't around the corner and that the Ukrainian situation doesn't widen into a full-scale European or even nuclear war, the 18 or so months until the election will be about economics.
Sadly for Labour, its very success in delivering record low unemployment has pushed that issue down to 15th among voters' concerns.
On the issue that so powerfully contributed to its 2017 revival under Ardern, Labour could make an argument that it has finally begun solving housing affordability if house prices fall by 5-10 per cent over the next two years and nominal wages rise to catch up with consumer price inflation.
But even if home ownership is down from the three-quarters of dwellings seen in the 1990s, nearly two-thirds of households still own their own homes. Voters may well want house prices to fall in general, but not the price of their own home.
Similarly worrying for Labour strategists, those worst affected by falling house prices and rising interest rates will be young people who most recently entered the market after slaving away on a deposit for years or taking a loan from Mum and Dad. Those who bought apartments rather than land will be hit worst. These sound like exactly the young people who so enthusiastically embraced Ardern five years ago.
More positively for Labour-Green, falling house prices and rising interest rates will help those still saving for a deposit, although they also risk pushing up rents even further.
The Reserve Bank's latest projections for inflation and interest rates also disadvantage Labour-Green. The bank now picks inflation to go much higher and peak slightly later than in its November projections. Disastrously for Labour-Green, interest rates are now expected to keep rising through to the election and even into 2024. Voters won't have the sweet taste of that first interest rate drop before choosing red or blue.
Strong commodity prices, the eroding value of the New Zealand dollar and Miles Hurrell's successful back-to-basics strategy yesterday boosted Fonterra's forecast payout by another 40c to an unprecedented $9.30-$9.90 per kilogram of milk solids. That cash will eventually flow into the cities, but the lower currency will also make the middle class' long-awaited post-Covid trip to Australia or the South Pacific more expensive.
The events in Wellington make law and order — normally the last refuge of a political scoundrel — a legitimate election issue. Labour-Green's support of woke policing philosophies has manifested itself in front of the very seat of the New Zealand Government.
The post-Christchurch gun buyback placed a price on a soon-to-be-illegal product, and conduits to the gangs were more than happy to offer gun owners a premium over what the police were allowed to pay. The Mongrel Mob, Black Power and the rest are more heavily armed than ever.
There are serious discussions to be had about what type of policing philosophy voters want, a conversation National-Act is better placed to lead than Labour-Green.
If offered an even-odds bet, choose National-Act. There's even a chance the Ardern Government will become as much a joke as did the once soaringly popular Lange-Palmer-Moore Government by 1990.
Still, no Prime Minister who has won two elections should be underestimated. If your mate offers decent odds, Labour-Green is probably still worth a punt.
- Matthew Hooton is an Auckland-based public relations consultant.
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