OPINION:
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins heads into what is shaping up to be a make-or-break Budget this week with a bit of a bloodied nose.
Polls out this week showed support for Labour – and Hipkins’ personal ratings – have both dipped.
Hipkins’ early momentum has been lost or at least paused and there is some dread it could be the start of an election slipping away on them.
Often political parties remain wilfully blind to the most likely cause of a polling drop because it does not suit them.
Labour’s has come courtesy of the antics in Hipkins’ ranks – the defection of Meka Whaitiri soon after Hipkins had to drop Stuart Nash as a minister – and of National wreaking havoc with that disarray and Hipkins’ ambiguity on tax policy.
Labour will be hoping it is mainly the former, because that is short-term damage. The latter is more damaging and gets Labour into problems almost every election.
National has been drumming up uncertainty about Labour plans through a series of social media attack ads and its own MPs – and Labour has not been able to counter it because its policy is not final.
Some in Labour do recognise it needs to clear up any uncertainty on tax policy – and quickly. It is likely to release its tax policy reasonably early to try to address that – possibly even in June.
It should be hoping that is not too late.
With National desperate to climb in the polls after plateauing in the mid-30s, the negative is not going to stop anytime soon.
The so-called attack ads are aimed at seeding doubt and perceptions.
The key perceptions they are currently pushing is that Labour will tax the bejeezus out of everybody and that anybody who votes Labour runs the risk of delivering a Labour-Greens-Māori Party government – the so-called “coalition of chaos”.
In the last week, National leader Chris Luxon also went negative and proved surprisingly adept at it.
He rammed home the “coalition of chaos” line with some impact when setting out why he was ruling out Te Pāti Māori.
He claimed he was “literally seeing a government falling apart”.
It is both a misuse of the word literally – and a gross over-exaggeration for political effect.
It wasn’t nice politics, but it was effective politics.
Labour is resting its hopes on next week’s Budget being the reset it desperately needs. On Sunday, all the top ministers head to Hawke’s Bay to announce what is almost at the scale of a mini-Budget for the cyclone recovery.
Then comes the main show on Thursday.
However, Budgets come with a great risk of over-selling and under-delivering. Its cost of living offering is intended to get the limelight in that Budget.
There are two ways to ease cost of living pressures. One is to give people more money (such as through tax cuts or Working for Families). The other is to make something people need cheaper.
Finance Minister Grant Robertson has made it clear that tax cuts are pretty much off the table because of the inflationary effect – and the cost. The other approach is to make something cheaper – and that could be done in the health area.
Even if the Budget delivers a big voter pleaser, it can’t be relied on to hold up Labour’s polling for too long.
The recent release of last year’s donations to parties showed National is also loaded – it raked in a record sum of more than $5 million. That was not even an election-year haul, which is traditionally when parties get their moolah in the door.
Labour has certainly noticed the move to the negative and clearly hope it will backfire on National. It may do. Going negative works if it is done well but there is a fine line.
Two campaigns in particular in recent times have been pointed to as pitching positive. One was John Key’s 2008 “brighter future” and “ambitious for New Zealand” campaign. The other was former PM Jacinda Ardern’s 2017 “relentlessly positive” campaign with the slogan “let’s do this”.
Both resulted in a change in government (albeit one at the whim of Mr Negative himself, Winston Peters). However, that positive Labour campaign was enough to lift Labour by about 10 points in the polls and ensure it became an option for Peters.
It made it competitive.
A bit of the negative worked for National in 2014 when it successfully depicted the parties on the left as a rag-tag pack. That election involved a vast array of characters – the Mana Party, Kim Dotcom’s Internet Party as well as the longer-standing ones.
National came very close to a majority that election. It worked because the same accusation could not credibly be levelled back at it: it was riding very high in the polls and while it would need smaller partners they were at that point very small, so lacked influence.
This time round, the coalition of chaos label can easily be slated back to National – it’s partner Act is shaping up to be a strong force in a future National Government, and if NZ First rises in the polls by a point or two it too will become a very real prospect.
Hence Act urging Luxon to rule out NZ First now – to ensure that does not happen.
Both parties are relying on their juniors not to give the coalition of chaos label any fuel. And by and large, both the Greens and Act are playing a steady game.
Thus far there have been no outrageous demands or bottom lines. Both have managed to at least put on a sensible facade, so as not to scare the voters.
For now, Hipkins is biding his time, but at some point soon he too will set out what his preferences are. When he does, he is unlikely to rule out Te Pāti Māori altogether, but he could very well deliver a less prickly version of Helen Clark’s “last cab off the rank” 2005 call.
That could consist of specifically ruling them out of a formal coalition or Cabinet seats, but not ruling them out of some kind of lesser agreement if required.
He will certainly make it clear his preference is for a clean two-party option: Labour and the Greens.
With $5 million in the National Party’s kitty and an election to win, Labour should not expect it to ease up anytime soon on its attempts to skewer Labour.
It follows concerns about use-of-force powers being given to staff.