Ahead of the Labour conference this weekend, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern delivered a bit of a sledge Christopher Luxon’s way.
Ardern - who attracted the “stardust” moniker from former National leader Bill English in 2017 to reflect her newness compared to his experience - pointed at her own experiencecompared to Luxon’s inexperience in politics.
Her five years of dealing with crises, she said, was experience that would be critical in the coming years.
What was coming was not for a rookie learning on the job to be in charge of.
It was very much a sign Ardern has moved into election mode - a foretaste of the line she will push relentlessly against Luxon on the campaign.
But as Labour members turn up to the party’s conference this weekend, the question uppermost in their minds will be whether the party can actually win the next election – and the price it could come at.
It is now polling around the same as it was ahead of the 2017 election - but that time round the optimism around the new leader, Ardern, gave it momentum. The conference that year was an unbridled celebration of Ardern after nine years of hardship for the party. Things were on the way up.
The change in the party’s fortunes since 2020 is obvious even at the front door to the venue of the conference.
There is strict security on the doors. Bags are being searched and photo ID requested from delegates and anyone else who comes along.
Protests have followed Ardern since the tail-end of the Covid lockdown era and remain.
Illustration / Guy Body
The combination of that Covid era and the raft of reforms in other areas – from health and industrial relations to the farm gates – has resulted in a bit of a bonfire of Labour’s political capital.
It means that as well as dealing with a cost of living crisis, Labour is confronting an electability crisis.
The question confronting Ardern is what can Labour do to shore up its chances in 2023 - and how far she will be willing to go to get that win.
The job before her this weekend is to convince the party – and the public – that she can win – and that she is still hungry to win.
Most of those at the conference will already be convinced, of course. Labour has made sure of that – the lead-up to the conference has been chock-full of announcements and treats for that base such as the fair pay agreements law for workers.
They are loyal, and many cannot comprehend any appeal that National or Luxon might have.
But Labour politicians cannot afford to be so blind to the reasons why the voters who have abandoned it since 2020 might think differently.
Regaining the government benches is not only a matter of Ardern finding some kind of post-Covid momentum herself – but about what Labour is offering.
Add and subtract is a useful formula when working out how to win an election. Subtract stuff that people don’t like, even if it is something you still believe in – the stuff that might lose you an election.
Add stuff that people will like.
Labour’s conference this weekend will partly deliver on the adding side of the equation: Ardern’s speech tomorrow is expected to be an announcement around the cost of living, aiming at helping families.
The subtraction is more difficult.
Ardern is no slouch of a politician and has previously shown she can make a merciless policy call.
In 2019 Ardern delivered her mother of all captain’s calls: ruling out a comprehensive capital gains tax for as long as she was PM.
It was done out of political expedience – and a hunger to be re-elected.
Has Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern reached a break in the road? Photo / NZME
It was done for exactly the same reasons former Prime Minister Sir John Key kept Working for Families running, and ruled out any change to the age for superannuation.
The question now is whether she is preparing to execute a 2023 equivalent.
As the unpopular reforms pile up – and combine with the natural corrosion that every government faces as time goes on – does Ardern still have the instinct and appetite to make further captain’s calls? What would they be?
There are different answers to the question of which should be killed off, depending who is asked.
It involves a cold, hard – and yes, cynical - look at what the greatest obstacles are - and then a less cynical assessment of whether it should be scrapped.
Deciding such things is not simply a matter of ranking policies in order of political unpalatability.
If that was the case, even the Prime Minister admits the most obvious candidate is Three Waters reforms.
But it will not be scrapped – of that she is adamant – because she considers the longer-term consequences of that would be too great in the cost to ratepayers.
What is possible is that the government will change the co-governance element - there is some belief in the government ranks that the co-governance, even if limited, has caused more political headaches than it was worth.
Instead Labour is likely to decide which projects are perceived as being unnecessary or distractions at a time the voters expect the focus to be on the cost of living.
In that vein, National is heading into an election year promising income tax cuts. The rubber marks are still on the road when the Government screeched its about-turn on a proposal to add GST on KiwiSaver admin fees, but it is still proposing at least two new taxes: the emissions tax on farmers and the income insurance scheme tax, which will shave a bit more out of workers’ wages.
Both may have noble aims, but do little for Labour’s electability in an inflation crisis.
Income insurance will go before Cabinet soon. It would levy wages to cover up to 80 per cent of workers’ salaries if they are laid off, or have to quit due to illness.
It is Grant Robertson’s baby – his legacy goal - but the PM will be looking at it with her Captain’s Call eyes on.
Some argue it is sound policy – but at the wrong time – a policy for a year of plenty but not when there is a crunch on the household budget.
It will not come into effect until 2025, but that makes it worse – it turns it into a campaign issue. It means Labour will be talking about a new tax on householders on the campaign trail while trying to say they’re focusing on the cost of living.
Labour’s final tax policy, which may or may not include tax cuts, will not come until next year.
However even if it does, if the income tax cuts are immediately eaten up by new taxes what is the point?
Other calls may be easier. Pursuing hate speech laws now is an unnecessary risk. Does Labour really need to open another front on the culture war in the lead-up to the 2023 election while still fighting skirmishes from the Covid-19 culture war?
And does Labour need to look as if it is focusing on that when the bigger law-and-order questions on voters’ minds are violence and property crimes - the ram raids, the gang violence?
Labour’s base was well tended to in the lead-up to the conference. After this weekend, the party has to move on to tending to the voters it lost.
