Election 2020: David Cormack - The biggest thing was the call to delay it a month

NZ First leader Winston Peters has found what the campaign needs - a pump for a bit of air. Photo / Mark Mitchell

COMMENT:

I get it. I really do. Labour is polling over 50 per cent. They're popular. And they haven't really done anything. So they're pretty much promising nothing.

National doesn't know how to counter this. Labour's approach has been popular, so National is trying to mimic them except suggest they'd be better at doing nothing.

It's just that when you're on your third leader in four months, and you lose a bunch of senior MPs, it's hard to pitch yourself as better at anything team related. Maybe they'd beat Labour at softball. I could see Judith Collins being fiercely good at wielding a bat.

There are no ideas coming from our two major parties. Someone from these two parties is going to be Prime Minister. And New Zealand should be proud that our two major parties are led by women and nobody is batting an eyelid. But we shouldn't be proud of how bereft of new initiatives we're seeing.

The strategy from Labour is that in times of crisis and fear and panic the public want certainty. And that means supporting the incumbent. It's a good strategy. Except for years those of us on the left hammered away at John Key's National-led Government for just wanting power for power's sake. Is that what Labour is doing?

If you want to see ideas you have to look farther afield, to the outer-parties. The ideas factories this election are the only two minor parties that have any real chance of getting back in, the Greens and ACT.

Illustration / Rod Emmerson

The Greens opened with a bang, offering up a wealth tax and a guaranteed minimum income. There's been a steady flow of imaginative and bold left-wing policies coming out of the Green policy tank since then.

I'm not a fan of ACT's … anything really. But I do have to commend them on at least having ideas. I don't think they want to bring back children working in factories, but I'm sure their plan is something I'm equally allergic to.

The carnage wrecked by Covid-19 has meant that whatever the Government looks like after the election, there will be huge potential for change. But at the moment neither of the major parties seem to appreciate that fact, or care, and that's dispiriting.

Even the ads put out by Labour and National are dull. It's all a big cluster-fuss of boredom.

For those of us on the fringes of New Zealand's Overton window - the policies politically acceptable to the mainstream population at a given time - who are seeking radical change, we've been frustrated by both MMP and New Zealand First stifling progress.

If ever there was going to be an election portending potential radical change it was this one. Instead, the most dramatic thing that's happened is the election got delayed a month.

• This is the fourth in series of guest columns from five political commentators. They will continue until election day. Co-founder of a PR firm David Cormack has worked for Labour and the Greens.