KEY POINTS:
The National Party was doing very well until it started to announce policy. Now our latest monthly DigiPoll survey finds the gap between the parties has narrowed from nearly 15 percentage points in August to 5.2 points in the poll that ended last week. It is not so much that Labour had a good month, gaining barely three points, but that National stumbled, dropping 5.5.
During the month it produced three policies: work for the dole, partial privatisation of state companies and its position on health. The last was a particular debacle. The party endorsed the present Government's system of subsidising general practice except - and this is something the senior MPs present at the policy launch neglected to mention until reporters asked - that it would no longer constrain the fees that GPs could charge.
This embarrassment, which came too late to be reflected in the poll, seems nevertheless symptomatic of National's big problem. All the portents point to its winning the election next year and the party wants to do nothing to change them. In its anxiety to avoid any contentious commitments it is reaching for policies that duck difficult issues.
It will float shares in some state companies but keep them in public ownership. It will allow doctors to set their own fees and continue to pay them a subsidy for every patient on their books.
There are hard choices to be made in public policy. Services can be provided by competing private companies disciplined by shareholder behaviour or by departments disciplined by Treasury accounting rules. National's partial asset sales would be neither one thing nor the other.
The party would sell shares, but not enough to make the operation fearful of the sharemarket's judgment on its performance. The state would maintain majority control but obligations to the sharemarket would restrict the state's use of its property. All that partial privatisation means is that minority shareholders get a risk-free ride on a stock underwritten by the taxpayer.
Likewise, the free ride proposed for doctors under National's plans for primary health care. The present Government has introduced a medical service subsidy for all citizens regardless of income or need. It has gone to some trouble to negotiate a fee agreement with practitioners to ensure they do not defeat the purpose of the subsidy with their patient charges.
National proposes to waive the agreement and trust doctors to keep their fees in check. Private practitioners are not charities; the more their services are subsidised the higher will be the demand and the costs placed on the practice. Subsidies distort the demand in a way that requires a check on charges if the subsidies are to work as intended.
National proposes to maintain the benefit without doing the hard work. This does not look like the behaviour of a party ready for the responsibilities of power.
The Herald-DigiPoll September survey brings National down from the unlikely levels of 48-50 per cent of intending voters - which would enable it to govern alone - to a more realistic 45 per cent, which would leave it needing another party's support.
On the basis of the latest poll only the Greens, with 7.2 per cent, would get back into Parliament on their party vote, and Act, United Future and the Maori Party would get only the electorate seats they could win. On the figures, Labour and the Greens could form the Government. National's risk-averse policymaking is not working.
The next election is a good year away. National still has plenty of time to capitalise on the voters' desire for change, and offer some compelling new ideas to make a change worthwhile. So far we have seen none.
