KEY POINTS:
It is an axiom of politics that Oppositions don't win elections; Governments lose them. Until last week that was a truth that looked likely to be proved again in the next triennial poll. The National Party would like to think that John Key is the new broom that will scrub its slightly grubby face clean, but the evidence was more that the incumbent was starting to look a tad tired and out of touch.
The polls reflected this public disenchantment. In August, National was a full 15 percentage points ahead in the Herald-Digipoll and, if the figures had translated into election votes, could have governed alone. By the end of September, the gap had narrowed to barely five points. The explanation did not lie in any perceptible change in the Government's performance; rather, National took its first steps towards the Treasury benches and stumbled.
The first gaffe came when deputy leader and finance spokesman Bill English floated the idea of selling up to 50 per cent of selected state-owned companies to help finance improvements to public infrastructure. His announcement was inevitably reported as favouring "privatisation" and "asset sales" - both concepts that raise the hackles of many voters who can remember as far back as the 1980s. Then, in a Rogernomic frenzy, the last Labour Government sold off anything that moved in the name of efficiency and freeing up cash.
Those who do remember back that far and beyond will acknowledge that improvements were made, but other matters are fresher in the mind: the bailout of the BNZ and Air New Zealand; the ruinously expensive buy-back of the run-down rail network; a privatised Telecom that frustrated competition until it was forced to stop and ran an email service that collapsed for the better part of a fortnight during an "upgrade".
Unsurprisingly, the mention of the "P" word went down with the electorate like a lead balloon. But, undaunted by the figures, National leader John Key started talking up the idea of having schools built and operated by private enterprise and leased back to the educational establishments that occupied them. He paused briefly on the way to comment that the war in Iraq was over, a piece of good news that does not seem to have filtered through to the Iraqis or the US military.
That he had not, apparently, discussed the school-building matter with his education spokesperson, Katherine Rich, seemed slightly odd. But when he said that the idea was not policy but "seriously under consideration" and that the party had not assessed the viability of - much less private-sector interest in - the idea was frankly bizarre. An Opposition seeking to style itself a Government in waiting needs to do better than run ideas up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes them.
Rich, warming to her leader's theme once she found out about it, said sneeringly that encouraging private sector investment in state schools was mainstream Labour Party policy in the UK and Australia." But that hardly makes it right. In the UK, major authorities - Liverpool is one - have said they won't go along with the private-fuding package because it is too inflexible. And the Nats have conspicuously failed to offer any fiscal rationale for the idea by explaining how it is better than traditional borrowing for the life of the asset.
The suspicion suggests itself that National is costing the tax cuts that it will promise next year and realising that it will have to get private enterprise to take over some state duties so it will have enough cash in the kitty. Such pragmatism will not do. It needs to think up justifications for the move before announcing it to an electorate that is still very chary of the "P" word. Otherwise it looks like a party testing the political wind rather than offering itself as a credible alternative government.
