Claire Trevett sits down with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters to discuss the past year since the coalition government came to be. / Video by Mark Mitchell
COMMENT
The Coalition Government with a side of greens has blown out the candle on top of its first birthday cake and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is quite entitled to feel cockahoop.
The attention that would normally be given to such an occasion was somewhat missing courtesy of the action rolling out in the National Party.
It was marked by Ardern doing joint interviews with NZ First leader Winston Peters in her office. Peters sat at her side, quite happy with himself.
The Greens were almost an afterthought. Ardern met with the Green Party leadership for afternoon tea the next day.
It was somewhat symbolic of the hierarchy of the Government and the forces within in.
The only time the leaders of all three parties have been seen together was in September when Ardern was trying to put to bed talk of a schism in the arrangement.
She released a rather waffly "coalition blueprint" setting out their targets ahead.
Ardern got through the first year in a stronger position than she began it.
Labour's polling is now at a respectable level for the major governing party. While the hubcaps got a few chips along the way, the wheels remain on the car.
When the Government was set up, Peters was viewed by many as the greatest risk of instability.
It was more than that. It was also the management he provided when things got tough.
Over the past week Ardern held back wading into the National Party's woes, and frequently speaks of her wish for "kindness" in politics.
She can afford to – she has the advantage of having Peters on side, so she can – and does - outsource unkindness to him, as happened this week with the response to National's woes.
There is a risk in going overboard on the caring stuff. Voters do like positivity but can also see through platitudes.
Had Ardern not had to contend with issues such as the departures of former ministers Clare Curran and Meka Whaitiri, she would risk being seen as naive.
Ardern's greatest threat is not Peters throwing in the towel, or Bridges managing to dent her popularity.
In the 1 News Colmar Brunton poll, the aspect that most pleased National and concerned Labour was the six-point spike in those who were pessimistic about the economy.
That is a perception that has bedevilled Labour since it got into power.
It will worry Labour even more that the perception is lingering even after the opening of the books showed a fat surplus, decent growth forecasts and lower debt tracks.
The spike in the poll coincided with sharp spikes in petrol prices – something National was running a very effective campaign on. If those prices stay high, the cost of freight and goods will follow.
Ardern showed she was well aware of the dangers in those figures when she made her very rare Captain's call to rule out allowing any councils other than Auckland to apply a regional fuel taxes for as long as she was Prime Minister.
But perhaps the most dangerous is tax reform, being worked on by the Tax Working Group.
Tax policy has long been one of the key distinctions between National and Labour.
Labour held up the latest Government accounts as proof it was responsible with money.
But those accounts also showed the surplus was primarily because of higher-than-expected tax revenue – and because Labour has not had time to spend it yet.
The first part of that equation means Labour has no convenient excuse for extra taxes.
Any new proposals the Tax Working Group comes up with are a risk to Labour - unless they are offset by a tax cut elsewhere, say income tax.