If there were any silver linings for Labour in Meka Whaitiri’s defection from Labour to Te Pāti Māori, it was that she drew attention away from other news which will be of much more consequence in the coming months.
The most dangerous news on that front was delivered by Deputy Prime Minister Carmel Sepuloni, who said: “Winter is coming.”
Winter does come every year - but some years with more political impact than others.
This year, the atmospheric river Chris Hipkins is facing into brings both health and economic storms.
Last winter was a disaster for the Government on the health front – Covid-19 was running through New Zealand for the first time and the dreaded flu had also returned.
However, the health workers had not – and there were horror stories from overloaded hospitals.
It was over that winter that the slide in Labour’s polling began in earnest – the Government simply cannot afford a repeat of it.
Last winter did not coincide with high inflation, high interest rates or an expectation of a recession. Nor did it have an election plonked right at the end of it. Those were on the horizon - now they are all here.
And the October 14 election does not give Labour much spring-time for people’s moods to improve.
It is obvious the Government is worried about what lies ahead in winter on the health front. It is not bothering to pretend otherwise – it wouldn’t be believable if it pretended everything was going to be tickety-boo.
However, it does have to show it learned a thing or two from last winter.
There is the recent measles outbreak, Covid-19 and concerns about particularly severe flu strains doing the rounds this winter, based on the experience of the northern hemisphere’s winter.
Health Minister Ayesha Verrall this week delivered the winter preparedness plan – measures to try to ease the strain on hospitals and GPs as the staff shortages continue. It is not fair to accuse the Government of doing nothing about those shortages - it has moved on immigration and pay - but it may not have done it in time.
This year’s winter plan includes measures such as virtual consultations and allowing GPs to refer patients to some specialists, rather than a hospital having to do so.
Its success is heavily reliant on people helping themselves, such as by getting vaccinated for both flu and the new bivalent Covid-19 vaccine.
The Government has provided the means for that but there are also concerns vaccine fatigue, or complacency, has set in because many people have had Covid-19 and did not necessarily find it severe.
Hipkins has so far been buoyed by a new feeling of optimism within and toward Labour and the novelty factor of Hipkins and his different approach compared with Ardern’s.
At some point very soon, that novelty factor will have a head-on collision with reality.
Poll boosts that are the result of the so-called honeymoon are notoriously fragile – those early gains Hipkins secured are wobbly ones.
The Government is now in the yearly patch of the doldrums which always precedes a Budget.
That will come in two weeks’ time and Labour is putting a lot of hope in that Budget to try to cement in that initial bounce in support it got under Hipkins.
The Budget needs to deliver that – because after that point things will only get harder for the Government and easier for the Opposition.
The Government will have to deal with a health system that is creaking and under pressure, ongoing high inflation and a potential recession. All the Opposition has to do is pick holes in that response and say what it would do differently.
The next couple of months are critical if Hipkins is to hold on to any Budget spin-offs in the polls.
His much-vaunted policy bonfire was a useful PR exercise, a way of showing the new Prime Minister’s intent to focus on the problems confronting people in the here and now.
But it has its limits – and it was limited. It saved about $1 billion, but these days that is small change.
Hipkins also used it to try to remove some of the smaller annoyances besetting people’s lives which they might blame the Government for – such as its plan to reduce speed limits.
It has also moved to try to get the workers flooding back into New Zealand – especially in the health sector.
Those are all things the Government has control over. It doesn’t have control over flu and Covid outbreaks and it has only partial control over inflation. It can’t simply order the flu not to happen.
It does not help that at the end of its second term, the Labour caucus is visibly fraying at the edges.
The demotion of Napier MP Stuart Nash followed promptly by the defection of Whaitiri leave it exposed more widely than in Hawke’s Bay. Hipkins has been forced into three mini-reshuffles.
The cyclone recovery is also problematic – after a fairly agile initial response, Hipkins knew things would start to get tough as time passed. Some decisions cannot be made quickly and so a lot of people are sitting and waiting – and getting more restive as time passes.
Grant Robertson is dealing with that as well as the Budget.
Hipkins’ increasingly cluttered international travel schedule isn’t helping in that regard. He had intended to restrict himself to only a few trips – a quick one to Australia and a possible trade delegation to China were the priorities, and the King’s coronation was unavoidable.
However, events have plonked others into his schedule – first the invite to the Nato summit in Lithuania in July and now an expected trip to Papua New Guinea for a meeting with Pacific leaders.
That’s all well and good – he cannot decline such invitations if New Zealand wants to stay in the frame. The trips have also been occasions to announce good things which benefit New Zealand - such as the citizenship move by Australia, the start of the free trade agreement with Britain and progress on the NZ-European Union free trade agreement.
But international trips are also effectively pauses in PM’s domestic schedule at a time he does not have much leeway for breaks.
Labour will be watching its polls like hawks for the first signs that its polling might be starting to weaken. National will be watching the same polls, hoping to capitalise on that same moment.
It follows concerns about use-of-force powers being given to staff.