Audrey Young: A bad week for the alternative Government

The poll came at a crucial time for Andrew Little. Illustration / Guy Body

It has been a bad week for the alternative Government - though not necessarily disastrous.

Andrew Little and Labour's polling is heading south and the party's alternative families package was not an instant hit.

The two other essential elements of an alternative to National domination, the Greens and New Zealand First, have been at each other's throats, highlighting the other's respective "racism" and "stupidity."

Never one to miss an opportunity, Act's David Seymour noted that the Opposition made this week's storm look organised. At least the storm had been moving with a sense of purpose, he said.

For Little, the poll came at a crucial time - 11 weeks from the election when voters are starting to take more notice of politicians, and it aired on TV1 the night before the party launched its families package.

It seemed to sap his confidence in media appearances about the package which gives more money than National's package to 70 per cent of all families with dependent children but takes away its tax cuts.

The poll has prompted a round of post-mortems among the Left about whether Labour should have moved further left, been bolder and less constrained by fiscal orthodoxy and who should be the next leader (Jacinda Ardern is the consensus).

The post-mortems are way too premature. The party may be demoralised that its support is down to 26 per cent (similar to where it was at the same time under David Cunliffe's leadership) but what hasn't changed is that New Zealand First is likely to decide the next Government.

While a National-New Zealand First government is also a viable alternative government, what is clear is that about half of voters support National and its current partners and about half support the Opposition parties.

A good or bad campaign could be worth a few percentage points and campaigning is English's weakness.

There is no logic that says Winston Peters would necessarily find National a more acceptable alternative - two weeks ago Peters called on English to resign over the Todd Barclay debacle, and this week said he was not fit to be Prime Minister.

There is no logic that says Peters would find Labour a better coalition prospect if it won 30 per cent of the vote than say, 24 per cent. There is a case for the opposite applying. A weaker Labour Party may be more willing to give New Zealand First a stronger deal than National.

The deal would need to be underpinned by confidence and supply support at the very least from the Greens and that for that, the Greens would expect a deal in return.

And it was in pursuit of their post-election interests and a deal that is not inferior that the Green Party stuffed up this week.

Illustration / Guy Body

It has been a bad week, not because they decided to get some guts and say they are not prepared to be walked over in a post-election deal by Labour and New Zealand First.

It is because they didn't say that. They tried to convey that message but between co-leader Metiria Turei and the party's newest MP, Barry Coates, the message was mashed.

Turei's moves were planned. Under the no surprises clause of the Green-Labour MOU, the Greens alerted Labour that Turei was planning to call out Peters at its campaign launch.

Calling him a racist during a television interview that morning went further than anyone in her party or Labour had been expecting and she did not repeat it during her speech - although she has not resiled from it either.

It was more mild than what former Prime Minister Jim Bolger said about Peters before their coalition deal in 1996. Bolger called him despicable as well.

In one heated question time, not long after Peters drew attention to the "rows of ostentatious homes" of Howick immigrants, Bolger was almost thrown out for accusing Peters three times of being racist.

It must be noted, however, that Peters demanded an apology for that during his coalition talks with National.

Peters has a particularly thin skin when it comes to criticism from the Greens.

No matter how mainstream some of their policies have become, Peters prefers to characterise them as extremists to reinforce his own positioning in the centre.

Turei's criticism was designed to say that while the Greens were open to working with Peters, they are not prepared to pander to him.

Labour tip-toes around Peters. National is more critical of him but not by much. Neither wants to give him oxygen.

The Greens wanted to show a bit of spine.

When the novice MP Barry Coates put his oar in, in a blog post on the Daily Blog, he was at first repeating only what Turei had said at the campaign launch - that neither a New Zealand First -Labour coalition nor a New Zealand-National coalition was "acceptable" to the Greens.

"Acceptable" was probably the wrong choice word but it was intended as an admonition in the sense that someone talks about someone's behaviour as unacceptable, not a declaration that it would never happen.

Coates went completely off script when he suggested to Newshub that the Greens might rather have an early election than support a Labour New Zealand First government. That was repositioning the Greens off the planet.

Metiria Turei wasn't much better. She has been in Parliament for almost 15 years but she is not an "experienced politician" in its common meaning.

Her botched attempt at putting a stake in the ground has inflamed Peters, but it has also put some strain on the Greens relationship with its only ally because Labour sees an ill-disciplined party that can't make up its mind what it wants to be.

Turei, the former anarchist turned lawyer, exposed the dilemma that the party faces - whether to be the principled players in the political system who tell it like is, or whether they are prepared to be more disciplined and compromising and show they are ready to govern.

Turei suggests they can be both. She has shown that she can't.

It could have been worse. It could have happened in the last week of the campaign. Turei has a little time to repair the damage.

Whether she has the ability is quite another matter.