Editorial: Popularity gives Key green light on tough issues

Prime Minister John Key. Photo / Mark Mitchell

There are messages for all parties from the voters we polled after the Budget. National will notice that its changes to KiwiSaver have found disapproval from more people than approve of them, and its plans to float shares in power and gas companies and Air New Zealand are opposed by more than 60 per cent of those surveyed.

But any pleasure Labour might take from those results will be offset by the fact that, despite them, National remains comfortably ahead on the question that matters most. If the election was held now, 54.4 per cent would vote National, enabling it to govern alone. Labour is pinning its hopes mainly on the rising cost of living, but when we asked whether people were better or worse off since the GST increase and income tax cuts, fewer than 40 per cent said worse.

The Government remains preferred over Labour by more than 20 points, a wider margin than it enjoyed in our last poll, in December, and not much less than it had in polls earlier in its term. The results have been consistent for so long that unless something scandalous happens between now and November, National is bound to win the election.

But that is not to say it will be able to govern alone. No party has won a majority of the vote on election day in living memory. National is likely to need a partner. The only other party with more than 5 per cent, the MMP threshold for representation, is the Greens, who are unlikely allies. The poll's message for them is that a clean Labour-Green coalition is not going to happen.

If it needs partners, National will need to rely once again on winners of electorate seats, which we do not poll. But the nationwide survey of party preferences does not offer much confidence for the Act Party. Its change of leader not long before the poll has not lifted its vote higher than 1.7 per cent, which would give it just two seats in the House if its new Epsom candidate, John Banks, holds that seat for Act.

Its new leader, Don Brash, rated miserably when the sample of 750 were asked who they preferred as prime minister. Dr Brash was nominated by even fewer than wanted Hone Harawira, despite the publicity Dr Brash attracted with his take-over of Act. Clearly that change has yet to work magic, and Act has more work to do if it is to figure in coalition calculations.

National's other present partner, the Maori Party, gets high marks from the poll. Just over 60 per cent believe it has been "good for Maori", though that of course is for Maori electorates to decide. The party has only Maori seats. It ought to be concerned at the leadership survey where its co-leader, Pita Sharples, attracted less support than Mr Harawira, though it is a difference of five or 10 people in the survey.

Interestingly, none mentioned Mr Harawira's Mana Party for their party vote, despite the attention its announcement received.

But the most telling result of all in the Herald-DigiPoll survey was on a subject that was not in the Budget and might not be an issue at the election, though it should be. We asked whether National and Labour should be planning to raise the age of eligibility for national superannuation in the long term, say 10 years out.

A clear majority, 52 per cent, said yes. The Prime Minister has staked his position on no change to superannuation entitlements, but clearly the voters are open to persuasion. They can see life expectancy rising rapidly and they know the baby boom has just begun to reach 65. They saw the age raised in gradual steps through the 1990s, and it could be done again.

The poll confirms the Prime Minister's popularity - preferred by 67.7 per cent of voters - and finds it hardly dented by unpopular decisions the Government has made on asset sales and KiwiSaver. It gives him room to do much more.