Matthew Hooton: Polls all point in the wrong direction for National

Labour now leads National in all reputable polls. Photos / Mark Mitchell, Herald montage

OPINION:

Labour now leads National in all reputable polls, Chris Hipkins’ net favourability is still rising and is well ahead of Jacinda Ardern’s at any time in 2022, and Christopher Luxon remains stuck below zero.

For National, the only good news is Act remaining well ahead of the Greens so a National-Act Government with a one-seat majority is still possible, as long as Te Pāti Māori doesn’t win too many electorate seats — and as long as Act co-operates.

Sadly for the centre-right, National’s key message that Hipkins is no different from Ardern has not been accepted by voters. Nor is it supported by events.

As I recommended here two weeks ago, earning me vehement condemnation from the left, Hipkins announced on Monday that resilience would now be the number one priority for his Government’s transport spending, ahead of climate-change mitigation.

While confirming that he is a fan of busways and cycling, the Prime Minister said, “we also have to be investing in maintaining our roads and making sure that people can get around”. He justified this partly by Cyclone Gabrielle, but firstly by the fact “there’s been a change in leadership of the Government”.

Hipkins so casually but unmistakably distancing himself from Ardern suggests Labour must have received some truly horrifying focus group results about attitudes towards her. That shouldn’t surprise anyone, given her net favourability rating was as bad as Luxon’s when she stepped down.

The transport u-turn also humiliated the darling of the Labour left, Transport and Auckland Minister Michael Wood, who is so passionately in favour of public transport, particularly light rail, that he tends to overlook insurmountable economic, geological and social-licence barriers. For Beehive strategists, that was a small price to pay for Hipkins demonstrating his personal priorities as Prime Minister.

The second element of National’s anti-Hipkins strategy has also failed, of trying to remind voters of his record as a minister.

As Education Minister, his polytechnic centralisation project is an expensive fiasco. His plans to centralise school management weren’t, but only because they were abandoned in the face of public opposition. Under his watch, school attendance and student performance plunged.

Chris Hipkins is distancing himself from Jacinda Ardern's regime. Photo / Warren Buckland

As Health and Covid-19 Minister, Hipkins was responsible for the failure to secure the vaccine early enough and for the cruel MIQ lottery system. He also has a history of providing inaccurate information and opting for cheap smears, such as his false insinuations about Bill English’s family as recently as last year for which he apologised to Parliament.

National strategists despair that voters just don’t seem interested in all this stuff. Results for the first quarter of 2023 are already in, and National has lost customers, revenue and market share.

Luxon’s latest attempt to regain the initiative was his proposal on Sunday to cut $400 million of the $1.7 billion the Wellington bureaucracy spends on consultants and give the money to the parents of children in early childhood centres, with a tax credit capped at $75 per week, per household. The money would be on top of Labour’s similar policy announced last year.

The first part is well overdue but the economics of the second bit are dubious. Just as Grant Robertson’s 2017 $50-a-week student-rent subsidy was entirely captured by landlords, Luxon’s $75-a-week would almost certainly end up solely with the owners of early childhood centres, mainly private-equity funds, through higher fees.

Still, it was terrific politics. Only the most swivel-eyed Labour diehards were prepared to argue on social media that the money should be left with PwC rather than be given to parents. The policy was also announced when National knew pollsters were in the field, as part of what its strategists call pumping the polls.

Alas for Luxon, his big announcement was immediately overshadowed by Hipkins’ transport u-turn the next day.

National strategists then appear to have forgotten to take their Ritalin.

Luxon and deputy party leader Nicola Willis did a cute photo op at an early childhood centre to push the policy. But by Monday afternoon, education spokesperson Erica Stanford was talking about NCEA literacy and numeracy co-requisites, and hunting and fishing spokesperson Todd McClay was publicising rising firearms licence fees.

For the rest of the week, National entirely forgot its $75-a-week promise, becoming preoccupied with Wellington minutiae.

Willis was distracted by the idea of a parliamentary select committee inquiry into banking regulation and competition; RMA reform and urban development spokesperson Chris Bishop focused on getting an Infrastructure Commission report released immediately to the environment select committee; public service spokesperson Simeon Brown became fixated on whether Hipkins had sent a memo to Wellington mandarins on consultancy costs; and police spokesperson Mark Mitchell hoped to start a public argument with Hipkins on ram-raid data.

All good issues, no doubt, but ones which could have been saved for another day.

Instead, some National strategists argue it must demonstrate its breadth and energy by getting involved in whatever story the media is interested in on a given day. More conventional PR doctrine is focusing on one issue at a time — preferably one associated with voters’ top five concerns — and finding ways to keep repeating popular key messages until they start to be recalled unprompted by voters themselves.

National argues that it does have those key messages. As Luxon puts it, National promises to “curb the rising cost of living, lift incomes for all, deliver resilient infrastructure for the future, restore law and order [and] provide better health and education services”.

But this is all so bland, feel-good and meaningless, it reeks of Ardernism, and Hipkins — and pretty much anyone standing for Parliament — can claim to offer the same. As Act strategists said privately of the $75 policy, it was both left-wing and unimaginative. Act leader David Seymour pointed out publicly that it could easily be adopted by Labour.

For some reason, National remains unwilling to make meaningful promises of change even though all polling and focus groups say voters want them. This is not an argument to head off to the right on an ideological crusade, but to think of and communicate new centre-right paths along which Labour dare not follow.

That’s hard work, of course. But it’s necessary if the polls aren’t to keep moving in the same direction. If National lets the next election be about whether Hipkins or Luxon should get three years to cook the same stew, then it makes sense for median voters just to vote for who they like best. Whether National likes it or not, right now that’s Hipkins — as it will also be on election day.

- Matthew Hooton is an Auckland-based political and public affairs strategist. His clients have included the National and Act parties, and the Mayor of Auckland.