Election 2023: Claire Trevett - Why the National Party called on Sir John Key to try to quash NZ First leader Winston Peters

OPINION:

“Everything is failing everywhere all at once,” was NZ First’s cheery assessment of things in its freshly released election manifesto.

It is presumably a riff on the movie Everything, Everywhere All at Once, which involves having your bad life choices highlighted through visits to parallel universes.

As the political parties head into the last week of the campaign, they may feel they are facing a parallel universe they did not expect to have to face way back at the start of the campaign: one which involves NZ First leader Winston Peters.

In the Herald’s Poll of Polls, it is still close as to whether Peters gets back into Parliament (he is currently straddling the 5 per cent threshold, but rising) and hence as to whether National will need him to form a government. However, in September there was a 95 per cent probability National and Act could form a government on election night. This week, that has dropped to 13 per cent off as NZ First cannibalised Act’s vote.

So it was that on Thursday, just ahead of the last week of the campaign, the National Party reached for its Centre Whisperer: Sir John Key.

Key was the man who grabbed the centre vote by its neck and kept it with National for nine years – and almost longer if it had not been for Winston Peters depriving National of power in 2017.

In a social media video – heavily promoted by National – Key issued a thinly veiled request to voters to give his charge, National leader Christopher Luxon, a clean start by locking out Peters.

Key’s more active advocacy over the past week has two purposes: first, to try to convince those centre voters who had abandoned National after 2017 to return. Secondly, to try to stop Peters getting in. Good luck with that.

National’s earlier attempts at this had failed: Luxon initially refused to rule Peters in or out, then Peters rose in the polls so Luxon ruled him in – but made it clear he would need a very long spoon to do so, saying it would be a “last resort”.

Luxon told voters that a government involving Winston Peters would be better than another Labour-led Government. He then said he did not know Peters at all. Better the devil you don’t know.

For a party that is not a dead cert for the 5 per cent mark, Peters has sucked up a lot of oxygen.

Peters has become the common enemy of the campaign: every other party in the contest now seems to be as hell-bent on stopping people voting for NZ First as they are on getting people’s votes for themselves.

Illustration / Guy Body

In fact, they have been so busy doing that, that at times they have forgotten about the actual voters.

All the political parties have a job to do in the week ahead. Advance voting numbers are lower than in 2020. National is campaigning in fear of complacency hurting its turnout; concerned voters see a win as a dead cert. Labour is campaigning in fear of apathy affecting its turnout, for the same reason.

Both National and Labour need to be more focused in the last week.

The goal is to snare the undecided or the apathetic, rather than trying to dissuade people who have already decided which way to vote.

Labour leader Chris Hipkins emerged from his Covid-19 pause yesterday and went straight back on the road. He has a lot of lost time to make up for: too much lost time.

He no longer has the luxury of being able to spend time visiting places where he might eke out a handful of votes – such as the provinces and regions.

That was a job for last week, and his Covid-19 meant he missed it.

His last week will be fishing in the big voting pools of the cities, as well as shoring up Labour’s existing support base. That means Auckland, Auckland, Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and, yes, Auckland – the biggest pool of all.

National’s Christopher Luxon has a lot more potential in the regions – and has already spent a lot of time in Auckland. His last week is partly about the optics: being seen to be hustling for votes right up to the last moment and right up and down the country.

His goal remains what it was at the start: to get enough of the centre votes to deliver him the clean result he wants.

National needs to refocus on itself. Its recent preoccupation with starving NZ First out and Labour’s “attacks” has meant a campaign that started off as tidy and focused has now frayed at the edges.

It had a campaign that was heavily targeting the cost of living, “squeezed middle” centre voters, and letting the voters get to know Luxon more.

The getting to know Luxon part of it has worked – partly because Luxon has proved a very good campaigner on the ground. It has seen him rise as a potential Prime Minister in voters’ eyes, whether they like him or not.

But National’s vote has stalled and, in some polls, dropped as its tax cuts promise was interrogated and found wanting – first in terms of the costings behind it, and this week in terms of the extent to which it will actually deliver bounty to voters.

The latter was a very successful – and legitimate, if belated – blow by the Council of Trade Unions, which worked out that only 3000 families would get the $250 a fortnight sum that National was using as the headline number for its policy.

National couldn’t refute that number, so instead fought back by accusing Labour of using the CTU to “launder” its attacks for that and another CTU newsletter which depicted National’s allies’ policies as National’s own.

Labour and National both seem to have forgotten that the primary aim is to get votes for themselves, and have instead been busy trying to stop other parties from getting them – notably NZ First and each other.

National doesn’t even really need to try with Labour: Labour’s polling is about as bad as it has ever been. There are precious few votes left for National to take from them.

Labour has had little choice but to try every tactic possible.

Attempts to fight its way out through attacks on National’s tax policy offering might have been successful in making people think twice – but have done nothing at all for its own polling. Nor have Hipkins’ repeated attacks on Peters, aimed at getting voters to be wary of Luxon of entertaining the NZ First leader.

They have, however, been effective in getting National to take its eye off the ball.

Every day there seems to be another thundering press release or press conference by National’s designated bad cop, campaign chair Chris Bishop, accusing Labour of desperate attacks or misrepresentation. There was a ridiculously prolonged defence of whether or not Luxon had chickened out of taking part in an election debate that was scrapped after Hipkins got Covid. National takes the bait every time.

Such things sometimes work, but it is a stones-in-glasshouses scenario and does little to show voters that you are focused on the issues that matter to them. It is part of the game of politics, and voters are not particularly enamoured with the game.

The last week has given us red-on-blue attacks (on National’s tax policy), blue-on-red attacks (over the utterances of Labour candidates on wealth taxes) and the blue accusing the red of unfairly attacking the blue. All of them have been attacking the black and white (NZ First) in between.

It’s messy and scrappy.

So far for every broadside launched at him, Peters’ polling has nudged up a little bit more.

The more it has gone on, the bigger Peters’ grin has got – everywhere, all at once.

Claire Trevett is the NZ Herald’s political editor, based at Parliament in Wellington. She started at the NZ Herald in 2003 and joined the Press Gallery team in 2007. She is a life member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery.