Can National find hat with a rabbit?

By JOHN ARMSTRONG

What on earth can National do now?

The party adopted an air of resignation - rather than despair - over the wretched results of the terrible trio of polls that banged on the doors of the Beehive like harbingers of doom late this week.

As one cabinet minister noted, the polls would have been a surprise if they had National surging ahead of Labour, rather than trailing six to nine points behind.

Even so, the bad news on top of the bad news is that those polls were sampling voters before Prime Minister Jenny Shipley's botched attack on the Greens, which saw her sidetrack her party's campaign into a dead-end argument about cannabis.

Rather than "staying on message," to employ the jargon, she created a distraction which blunted National's theme of threats to the economy, jobs and stability posed by a Labour/Alliance/Greens coalition.

The Prime Minister remains an enigma. At times, she seems to have donned a Nero-like indifference amid her party's tired campaign. Where's the fight? Where's the hunger? The feeling in the Beehive is that Mrs Shipley reined herself in for fear of making mistakes, presuming that the media, particularly television, is interested only in exposing gaffes rather than covering what she says.

Regrettably, there is some truth in this. But having finally let herself off the leash, she immediately blundered.

As John Banks argued on his radio show yesterday, rather than merely looking the relaxed leader, she might better employ her skills in encapsulating a passionate vision of where she is taking the country and spell out what National would do in the first 100 days of its next term - something Helen Clark plans next week to try to cement the notion that a change of Government is inevitable.

National insists the poll gap behind Labour is more like four to five percentage points, but the party quickly deployed damage control yesterday to stop people thinking there was an irreversible groundswell to the centre-left parties.

National's fear is that voters will think a vote for National is now a wasted vote and there will be a stampede to Labour.

Mrs Shipley pointed to the upset result in Victoria's recent state election; there were reminders about the many yet-to-decide voters and opinion poll fatigue.

National's strategists - about to crank up anti-Labour ads - have argued throughout that it is the final week which matters.

And they insist they will not be panicked. In truth, they know there is little they can do which will not reek of desperation.