John Armstrong: Election is all a matter of timing

The lesson of this election - as much as any lesson can be drawn from the wildly fluctuating opinion polls - is that parties that trifle with the intelligence of the electorate get the response they deserve.

Take Winston Peters' delusion that he be allowed a rerun of 1996's guessing game over coalition partners.

Elections are all about who governs. Voters are not going to buy a pig in a poke this time. The tailing off in New Zealand First's support is an obvious sign they expect Peters to declare, at a minimum, how he will decide who he will negotiate with after the election.

Likewise, it may be that voters are fed up with National's slow tease in revealing the size of its tax cuts. They want to know the colour of National's money and they want to know now, but the party's obsession with tactics has it losing the bigger picture.

In contrast, Labour seems to have learned the lesson, which in its case was dished out by voters after Michael Cullen failed to convince them he did not have the money for tax cuts.

Labour has had no such difficulty coming up with the $300 million to pay for this week's pledge to scrap interest payments on student loans.

Alongside "political correctness", Labour's voter research had shown the party was extremely vulnerable on student debt. The pledge may look like a bribe, but it is in sync with the electorate's desire for a dividend on prosperity.

A real electoral bribe offers voters something they do not need - such as Sir Robert Muldoon's 1975 policy to pay national super from the age of 60 when many of the recipients were still in fulltime work.

Three decades on, the worry for National is that the swing back to Labour in the latest two published polls was already under way before the Prime Minister unveiled her pledge on student loans. In one sweep, the election has been turned on its head.

Labour has made a king hit. It has clinically killed off National's far less generous offer of a tax rebate on interest payments, and it is bound to get a spin-off in the next round of polls, giving it a springboard into the formal four-week campaign.

The loan pledge does not have the benefit of the universality of tax cuts. But the political beauty of the policy resides in it helping a lot of people to a major extent. The jam is spread thickly - tax cuts spread it more thinly.

Graduates' savings will be measured in thousands of dollars - savings, which Helen Clark noted, could go towards a deposit on a first home.

In a weird kind of role reversal, National is suddenly the Jeremiah, the role previously occupied by Cullen with his warnings on the affordability of tax cuts. Bill English and John Key claim Labour has seriously underestimated the policy's cost which, they say, is more like $550 million.

Labour disputes that. But it admits the costings - worked out in the Beehive offices of Cullen and Education Minister Trevor Mallard - were made without the benefit of Treasury advice and are not definitive.

The policy - along with other pledge card promises - will be funded out of the $1.9 billion set aside for new spending in next year's Budget.

But Key argues that Cullen's proclivity for extra spending means he has no hope of keeping within that $1.9 billion without looking at overall Government spending - something National is flagging to fund part of its tax cuts.

However, if this is bad policy, it is awfully good politics.

National realises that, but it is keeping up the fight to weaken Cullen's attack when it finally unveils its tax cuts.

It will say Cullen cannot have it both ways by claiming National's package is fiscally shonky when the same accusation can be levelled at Labour's student loan package.

The rapturous reception given to that package puts pressure on National to bring forward its tax policy, still two to three weeks away, depending on when Brash launches his campaign.

Ironically, Labour timed this week's announcement on student loans in anticipation of National coming up with the goods on tax in the days following Monday's declaration of the election date.

Labour had intended using the policy as a vivid example of the "stark choice" Clark says is confronting voters.

Needing to come up with what one Labour insider described as a "stunner", the Beehive kept the pledge under tight wraps and away from the wider Labour Party's policy channels for fear it would leak out in advance.

So Tuesday's announcement had the vital element of surprise.

Moreover, it fulfilled Clark's maxim that it is always better to under-promise and over-deliver.

Labour certainly delivered - in contrast to the Budget schermozzle over tax. In that instance the party failed to recognise that expectations were rising and then failed to satisfy them.

The student loan policy has also underlined the utility of Labour's pledge card as an electioneering tool highlighting Clark's "stark choice".

The card will carry simple, easily understood pledges, rather than drowning voters in a welter of policy detail.

Along with the pledge axing interest on student loans, Clark has so far promised a rates rebate for pensioners and the creation of 5000 more apprenticeships.

A further pledge will be the announcement of a cut-off date for submitting Treaty of Waitangi claims.

Still to come are major pledges on health and law and order.

There has been talk of the remaining pledge being Labour's promise to retain the anti-nuclear legislation - so offering a contrast between Clark as someone who can be trusted to stand up for New Zealand and Don Brash's willingness to sell out New Zealand "by lunchtime".

However, National's revival has come from snuggling up to Labour - taking "me too" positions where Labour holds the advantage, while striking sharply contrasting stances on the issues where National believes it has the running, such as tax, law and order, the treaty, welfare reform and falling standards in schools.

As much as Clark wants to talk nuclear matters and make leadership the dominant issue of this election, Labour must regain the initiative on fundamental bread-and-butter domestic issues.

This week it did just that. No doubt, Cullen's chequebook is wide open for more of the same.