Editorial: Election year and we now have lift-off

On cue, the politics of election year have combusted. Public opinion polls which have for so long reflected a one-and-a-half-horse race now show minor parties re-emerging in the field. Labour is losing some of its lead and National is settling around the mid-30s support, well off the pace but with Labour now in its sights. It is a predictable pattern, but no less fascinating for that. With no more than 21 weeks left to the general election, which must be held by September 24, the campaign has been engaged.

It is an election which is all Labour's to lose. Its second term in office has floated along on a cushion of economic growth, benefiting from favourable commodity prices and providing record income from taxes and low unemployment. The ministry is now experienced, its leadership acutely pragmatic. Knowledge is power, and after six years the Labour-Progressive Cabinet has got to know every dark corner of government. The polls, though ebbing, show a strong base support which ought to translate into a third-term Labour-led government, all things being equal.

Inevitably, its equilibrium is now disturbed. A two-term Government cannot shrug off the mini-scandals of election year by blaming others. At the six-year mark the public familiarity with those appearing, directing and hectoring on the small screen can easily tip over into contempt. Voters can, and do, get sick of the sight of incumbents. Robert Muldoon's National Government barely survived its third election. The Fourth Labour Government was routed on its third examination by the electorate. Jim Bolger's National Administration of the 1990s squandered political capital in opinion polls in 1996 to be forced into coalition with Winston Peters.

This year, the accepted orthodoxy is that even an ordinary performance by Labour will deliver it power because it, unlike National, has a range of potential coalition partners in the Progressives, Greens, United Future, New Zealand First and Maori Party. That may be so but going backwards during an election campaign is never auspicious for a new term; Tony Blair's result last week in Britain will not inspire the incumbent.

Helen Clark has acknowledged that Labour faces a free-for-all over the next four months as all opposition parties attempt to undermine that big red L of support in the centre. But she points out that even as Labour's polling slips, it remains about the level of what was a conclusive victory in 2002.

The run of politically untidy controversies which have erupted in the past fortnight - from her own manipulations of the Doone affair, to the Government's culpability in the fate of Te Wananga o Aotearoa, to Mr Peters' exposure of immigration failings involving Saddam Hussein-era Iraqi officials - will bite. Uncharacteristically, Labour has failed in all three instances to shut down avenues of political attack. Opposition parties will hope that to the mind of an imaginary middle New Zealand voter, the Prime Minister's dark exercises of power, the $239 million funding blowout for the wananga and slipshod migrant-vetting will spell doubts about integrity and accountability. They will also provide ammunition for attack advertising and will be of continuing nuisance value in soaking up the time of Helen Clark and her ministers.

Will these, and the certainty of other mini and major controversies, be enough to shake the electorate's determinedly sanguine view of this Government? That depends, partly, on how they are handled and by whom. This close to an election the Prime Minister cannot laugh off questions of integrity. Her attack minister, Trevor Mallard, cannot simply label the former Police Commissioner a "drunk" under parliamentary privilege - an underhand hit-and-run.

Yet even then, it is hardly to the point of death by a thousand cuts. The economy, a strong platform for the election-year Budget next week and unlikely to take any severe turn before the campaign, is a remarkable clotting agent.