Christopher Luxon speaking with media in Paerata, South Auckland in November. Photo / Sylvie Whinray
OPINION:
As we say goodbye to 2023 and welcome in 2024, it’s a good time to catch up on the very best of the Herald columnists we enjoyed reading over the last 12 months. From politics to sport, from business to entertainment and lifestyle, these are the voices and views our audience loved the most. Today it’s five of the top columns from Heather du Plessis-Allan.
On Thursday night at a function, I got talking to a well-regarded real estate businessman. We got on to the subject of National. The real estate boss told me he’d been really worried about Chris Luxon lately. But it changed this week. His confidence was restored. Luxon had done a good job and looked decisive. Luxon had ruled out working with the Māori Party.
There was actually nothing special about what Luxon said this week. He’d only stated the bleeding obvious. TPM were never going to work with National. TPM co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer laughed when she was told. “What’s changed?” she asked.
But that is how low the bar is. Voters are even impressed when the National Party leader takes a decision that’s already made for him, agrees with it, and says it out loud with confidence.
Even though the polls are tight, there’s one indicator consistently signalling a change of government is the most likely outcome. It’s the right-track/wrong-track question. According to the leaked Talbot Mills poll this week, only 40 per cent of voters think the country’s headed in the right direction, while 52 per cent say it’s on the wrong track. The last time we were mostly collectively set to “wrong” before an election was 2008 and Helen Clark lost.
You can’t rule Labour out altogether. They’ve still got a budget up their sleeve this week. The man putting that together is a master at winning over voters with a well-aimed bribe and a well-spun line. Labour will probably throw everything at holding on to power.
But after five and a half years of promises that never happened, the bar is very high for Labour. By contrast, the bar is embarrassingly low for National. Read more >
It’s become hard to believe that Labour’s fibs about National and Act were mistakes. It looks more like a planned campaign of misinformation executed so badly that Labour got busted.
Someone in Labour put out an Instagram post warning that “A National/Act coalition will not only cut fees free for first-year students, but they will also add interest back on ALL current student loans.” It’s not true.
National had already said it would keep fees free more than a week earlier. When Labour was busted the party said it was an “outright mistake” and took the post down, and they got the benefit of the doubt.
The second fib also looked like a mistake because the perpetrator was the infamous blatherer Willie Jackson. In a debate, he said National and Act would scrap the minimum wage. It’s not true. When he was busted he corrected it.
Porkies aren’t a surprise in politics. Parties do this all the time. But generally they’re a bit smarter than this. They might warn that a minor coalition party will force the major coalition party to introduce something unpopular, like a tax. That’s much cleverer and harder to deny than just telling outright lies.
Clearly, Labour has got desperate. They’ve run out of every other strategy. Policy hasn’t worked. The big one was supposed to be GST off fruit and vegetables. They’re so embarrassed by it they barely talk about it anymore. Hipkins hasn’t worked. He’s now neck and neck with Christopher Luxon in polls. Going dirty is all Labour has.
Going dirty is not a good strategy though. Telling fibs, calling Act racists, making excuses for their union buddies buying attack ads on Luxon can backfire. Read more >
It’s uncomfortable to say this while our national crisis unfolds, but political calculations are changing right now. The politicians know it. They’re all calculating Cyclone Gabrielle in their heads.
As brutal as that is, this is how politics works. It is at least part of the reason why Prime Ministers and Ministers throw on NEMA jackets and jump on helicopters to fly to ground zero. Some of it is to provide moral support to heartbroken communities. Some of it is to understand the scale of what they need to do. Some of it is simply to chase time in front of cameras.
The calculation currently favours Labour. At least in the short term.
A crisis always favours the incumbent simply because it means more publicity for the person already in the PM’s job. Labour’s lucky that person is Chris Hipkins. The man is doing his job like he’s been in it for 25 months, not 25 days.
It’s hard to believe Hipkins has been PM for less than a month. He’s hardly put a foot wrong. Even Act’s David Seymour has conceded it’s hard to fault the Government’s response.
Hipkins has had a baptism of fire. He’s already faced two major crises: the biggest weather event to ever hit Auckland, followed by the biggest weather event to ever hit New Zealand. Coming through both without stuffing up is no small achievement. Read more >
There’s a thing you learn in the sleep-deprived craze after having a baby: do not for the love of God ever give parents unsolicited advice on how to parent.
Like the time when our little mate started waking up twice a night again because of the triple combo of a cold plus teething plus a developmental leap. I moaned to a colleague. She responded with, “Oh I don’t have that because I learned very early on to put her in bed with me.” I wanted to punch her right in the face.
Or the time I broke the no-advice rule. I bumped into a peer at an evening function. She had her six-month-old baby on her hip. Before I could punch myself in the face I’d said, “Shouldn’t he be in bed?” I’ve hated myself ever since.
There are a lot of new parents in Labour. Tāmati Coffey had his second six months ago. So it’s surprising none of them passed on the golden rule and stopped Labour making a prat of itself over paid parental leave.
It has gone down very badly with even Labour luvvies that the party voted against Nicola Willis’ parental leave bill. What makes Labour’s move worse is that this would not cost the country anything extra. Read more >
Chris Luxon should’ve ruled out working with Winston Peters. He’ll regret not doing it. Everyone, in the end, does.
But Luxon’s probably missed his window. It’s probably too late now that Peters’ party, NZ First, has hit 5 per cent or above in three polls in a row. At this rate, he’ll get even higher on election night. Short of a disaster, Peters is almost certainly in the next Parliament.
The trouble for Luxon is that Peters in the next Parliament looks a lot like Peters in the next Government. On the Taxpayers’ Union-Curia poll out this week, Act and National only just scrape together the required 61 seats between them to form Government. If either of them drops even 1 per cent, they need Peters.
That’s bad news.
The country can’t afford NZ First. In 2017 the price they charged Jacinda Ardern for putting her in government was $3 billion. They called it the Provincial Growth Fund. It was actually a slush fund to spray around the regions buying goodwill for NZ First in the next election. Covid meant it didn’t work. The money was handed out so fast and so sloppily officials didn’t even keep proper notes.
We can’t afford the drama NZ First will create. The party will stop any of the reforms this country desperately needs. Peters is not a reform politician. He’s a nostalgia politician. He would much rather take us back to his halcyon days of 1975 than make the changes necessary to supercharge us into being a competitive First World trading nation in 2035.
And then there’s the David Seymour thing. Winston doesn’t like David and David doesn’t like Winston. A lot. Enough for Act to pay for billboards warning voters against Winston.
Voters aren’t stupid. They’ll see an Act-NZ First coupling for the disaster of nothing doing it would be. Act would probably spike NZ First’s plans out of snobby principle and NZ First would probably spike Act’s plans out of spite.
The Nats probably thought they were clever not ruling out Winston. It gave them options. It gave them insurance in case their vote fell. It gave them negotiation leverage over an increasingly cocky Act. But actually, it’ll give them a headache. Or worse, Winston in Government. Which they will regret. Everyone, in the end, does. Read more >
Heather du Plessis-Allan Drive, Newstalk ZB, 4pm-7pm, weekdays.
