If the last two games are indicative of the All Blacks’ form, that now seems a safe bet.
So when Labour returns to Parliament after a tough week, expect it to take some tips from those All Blacks: most notably that attack is sometimes the best form of defence.
The caucus will need a morale booster after the weekend’s list ranking and its recent troubles - MPs will be hoping the only way is up.
So, a week of consolidation is in order as Prime Minister Chris Hipkins tries to return attention back to the issues that concern voters ahead of the election rather than internal issues. There are signs it is trying to fight back, at least.
More Government announcements are expected later this week, likely in the area of transport.
National also has a roading policy announcement coming on Monday as it continues its rollout of policy. Transport is one of the key areas National has now started to move on, starting with the potholes fund of last week and continuing now with the bigger plans. Bitumen can be gold when it comes to votes.
Chris Hipkins and Christopher Luxon on the potholed road to the elections. Illustration / Rod Emmerson, 19/07/23
Over the weekend, Housing Minister Megan Woods announced an expansion to the progressive home ownership scheme for first-home buyers. That included allowing it for existing houses as well as new builds, and lifting the income cap for eligibility from $130,000 to $150,000.
Over the weekend, the Government also put out a statement on a “milestone” moment in the first cameras on fishing boats being installed, albeit only 23 to start with. It is a milestone moment, but it has taken a long time between promise and delivery.
Until it can get its own new policies out, Labour this week is also expected to try to get National on the back foot more by firing back at National’s new policies - and in particular, its claims National can not afford them without cuts to public services.
National says it would be mainly from pegging back government spending on ‘unnecessaries’ - which Labour translates as cutting critical public services like health and education.
Labour is also moving more on the defence side by trying to counter National’s claims that it has failed to deliver on a number of fronts - claims National and leader Christopher Luxon has had on high repeat on the party’s social media for months now. Some of those claims lean to the hyperbolic, but they do risk having an impact by repetition alone.
At some point, Labour will have to try to find a reset button to get it into the campaign.
For the time being, it is stuck in that tricky land between governing and campaigning.
It had been hoping the reset button would be its tax policy, but it is not expected to announce that for another two to three weeks - and so PM Chris Hipkins and Grant Robertson face an extended period of having to skirt questions about whether that policy is to remove GST on fruit and veg, as National’s Nicola Willis has claimed.
What Labour needs is a 2005 solution: like Labour’s interest-free student loans move in the last weeks of a campaign. That was very effective at grabbing cross-generational attention - and it was close to the election.
However, it is a very different climate and it doesn’t have much money. Finance Minister Grant Robertson is hellbent on trying to hold onto his economic credibility, especially as he tries to discount National’s.
That means he has two basic rules for a shiny new policy: he has to say how Labour would pay for it, and it cannot worsen inflation.
His main attack lines on National’s tax policy is that National hasn’t set out how they would fund it - and it gives a lot more to higher-income households than lower-income ones, which only get a few dollars from it.
National is saying the same about the alleged GST policy - because wealthy people spend more, ergo will save more. However, smaller savings also mean more to lower income households.
Such a policy would also force National into saying whether it would slap GST back on fruit and veg or not.
Willis delivered a bit of glorious theatre in announcing it for them - and then saying National wouldn’t be releasing its own full policy until closer to the election.
By the time Labour does announce it, there will have been plenty of time for critics to pick holes in it - but at least they’ll also know whether people will like it.
