Editorial: Lock-out list a recipe for election loss

Winston Peters, David Cunliffe, Metiria Turei. Photo / Dean Purcell, Michael Craig, Brett Phibbs

Cunliffe cutting his options as Key casts Nats’ net wider

At 25 per cent or thereabouts in the polls, Labour is not in a position to be ruling any parties out of a possible coalition. Yet David Cunliffe seems hell-bent on doing just that. First the Internet-Mana alliance was ruled out, then this week it was the Maori Party. Mr Cunliffe declares he will have only three parties in his government - Labour, the Greens and New Zealand First. Why is he doing this?

It cannot be simply that he wants to dispel the image projected in National's advertising of a Labour-led coalition of disparate misfits. If Labour is to have any chance of leading a government after this election, it will need every small party it can muster. By ruling out two of them, Mr Cunliffe shows he is not looking beyond the election. He is concentrating on limiting the likely damage to Labour at the election. Spurning the Maori Party and Mana might help Labour hold on to its vote in the Maori seats.

It also enables Labour to keep alive, just, the possibility of working with Winston Peters, who has said he will not be part of a government that includes either of the "race-based" parties. But Mr Cunliffe has probably done Mr Peters a greater favour than the NZ First leader will do for him. Mr Peters has not exactly welcomed his inclusion in Mr Cunliffe's imagined ministry.

Mr Peters, like Peter Dunne, is clearly pitching his campaign to Labour voters who do not expect Labour to be forming a government this year. Both have discovered how rich the pickings for their parties can be when the electorate is not in a mood to change the government and supporters of the main party not in power are looking to use their vote differently. United Future and NZ First each had a good haul of seats in 2002, when National's vote fell to 21 per cent.

That is the kind of collapse Mr Cunliffe is working hard to avoid. Labour's worry must be that this point in the electoral cycle is not comparable to 2002, when Helen Clark's Government was seeking a second term. It corresponds to 2005 when Labour was seeking a third term and National made that election a close race.

If Labour is to limit John Key's Government to three terms, it may have to emerge from the election in better shape than it was when the campaign began.

National came back into contention in the Clark Government's second term with a new leader, Don Brash, and an issue that hurt the Government, Maori privileges. Labour has changed its leader in the Key Government's second term not once but twice, and Mr Cunliffe has exploited an issue he expected to be equally damaging for the Government, "dirty politics". But the polls hardly moved.

National is still polling higher than it expected to be by this stage of the campaign. While Mr Cunliffe is limiting the number of parties he can work with, Mr Key is widening his options. The rise of Colin Craig's Conservative Party clearly has Mr Peters worried. If the Conservatives reach the 5 per cent threshold, National will have no need to bargain with Mr Peters. The Maori Party, too, appears to be coming back into contention. Te Ururoa Flavell has been quietly appealing in debates.

It is National that could come out of the election with a crew of many hues, and Mr Cunliffe's chosen coalition would be a three-headed opposition. But old loyalties tend to return on election day. Chances are Labour will do better than its polls are now showing, at the expense of Mr Cunliffe's preferred partners. Not even the Greens have responded warmly to his embrace. Those he excludes are probably grateful.