From the Auckland farmer's market, Jacinda Ardern addresses speculation that Labour could encourage Northland to NZ First.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has ruled out a deal with NZ First in the critical Northland seat after a new poll that shows NZ First's Shane Jones coming a distant third.
"We have said we wouldn't [do a deal] - and NZ First hasn't asked," Ardern said today, as she campaigned at the Grey Lynn farmers' market in Auckland.
"We have both, as parties, been really clear - we are campaigning as separate parties. I am backing our candidate. We are six weeks out, so there's a lot of water to go under the bridge yet but we are campaigning very hard."
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern at the Grey Lynn market this morning. Photo / Dean Purcell
Ardern reiterated that the no-deal stance also applied to the battle in Auckland Central, where the Greens' Chloe Swarbrick is up against Labour's Helen White, and a National candidate yet to be announced.
A Greens win would ensure they returned to Parliament, without having to rely on the 5 per cent party-vote threshold.
"We haven't done deals in the past. I don't see any reason to change that. Winston Peters himself has always been clear himself in not doing deals."
Jones has huge ground to make up if he wants to win the Northland seat and give his party a path back to Parliament without winning 5 per cent of the party vote.
The Grey Lynn markets were a hive of activity when Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern visited this morning. Photo / Dean Purcell
Jones did not front on TVNZ's Q+A show this morning but admitted he needed to get the "political jack-hammer" out. There was a huge road ahead.
King was happy with the result but cautious: "It's only a poll of 500 people. You're a fool if you rest on your laurels."
The party vote in the poll shows Labour on 41 per cent, ahead of National on 38 per cent, Act on 8 per cent, NZ First on 7 and the Greens just below the 5 per cent threshold.
The poll, released this morning on Q+A, had responses from 503 eligible Northland voters between July 29 and August 4.
Eleven per cent of those polled didn't want to say how they would vote or didn't know.
Jones told Q+A that he had an uphill battle ahead of him and voters should give him their candidate vote if they wanted NZ First back in Parliament.
The party has been languishing at about 2 per cent in recent polls, but NZ First has usually done better on election night than in the polls.
In 2017, King won the seat from NZ First leader Winston Peters with a 1389 vote majority. Prime won 22 per cent of the candidate vote.
National won 46 per cent of the party vote in 2017, well ahead of Labour on 30 per cent, while NZ First was on 13 per cent.
Today's poll is the first to measure whether Jones has any chance of winning the seat at this election.
Meanwhile, Ardern was spending the first official day of Labour's election campaign locally.
She said she had not given consideration to a national mask day to prepare people if Covid returned. She was keen that Kiwis had masks as part of their civil defence preparedness packs.
New Zealand was the only country that she was aware of - in the current circumstances -that had not seen a resurgence. It would be irresponsible for New Zealand not to prepare for that.
Fresh from the campaign launch in the Auckland Town, she is visiting the Grey Lynn farmers' market, which is in her Mt Albert electorate.
She will attend Cabinet tomorrow and then begin her regional campaign on Tuesday.
