KEY POINTS:
Back in December last year I predicted to a gathering of Herald columnists that National would win this year's election by a landslide sufficient to allow it to govern alone.
Nothing has happened since to make me regret that prediction. In fact, the political events of this year have confirmed me in my view.
What an annus horribilis it has turned out for Labour. Just about everything that could go wrong has gone wrong, and Helen Clark has found herself constantly on the defensive, a position she is certainly not used to and with which she doesn't cope too well.
Even the tax cuts announced in this year's Budget did nothing for Labour's declining fortunes. That wasn't surprising, of course, because we all knew we should have had progressive tax cuts for years.
And now, right in the middle of the continuing imbroglio over whether Winston Peters did or didn't take money from various people, comes the latest Herald-DigiPoll which puts National on 55.4 per cent, 24.6 percentage points ahead of Labour.
Now I don't put much faith in polls of any sort, but even if this one is out by the margin of error, it indicates that National could win enough seats in Parliament to govern unencumbered by coalition partners.
And that is likely to happen not just because New Zealanders have had a gutsful of Labour's socialist nanny state, but because we've also had a gutsful of MMP.
We gag at the obnoxious wheeling and dealing that goes into forming minority government coalitions; and we cringe when we see the compromises which such coalitions entail, and the paucity of decisive governance.
What makes it worse is that this constant political expediency is not employed for the good of the country, but so that politicians can keep their greedy fingers on the levers of power.
The most outrageous example of this, of course, was the appointment of Winston Peters as Treasurer (albeit briefly) by Jim Bolger's minority National Government and this minority Labour Government's appointment of him as outside-Cabinet Minister of Foreign Affairs.
One of the things a landslide win by National would do is rid us once and for all of this tiresome and turbulent little man. Although I have to say that, but for him, my pension would be even more subsistence than it is.
As John Roughan wrote, in his usual inimitable style, of Mr Peters back in April: "Nevertheless, our politics would be better without him. He has been a misleading voice in national debates, a negative influence on public confidence in the country and those who genuinely serve it, a mischievous, evasive, obnoxious muckraker with the charm of an attention-seeking child.
"He has fooled his admirers for too long. May this be the year that voters wash him out of our public life."
Amen to that.
It remains to be seen, however, whether John Key and National can undo the damage that nine years of socialism has imposed on us. I was surprised to hear him endorse Working for Families for, as this newspaper said in an editorial on Tuesday, "Reasonable people would think it easier all around to lower their tax in the first place, and cheaper since it would save on the cost of passing the money through the Inland Revenue system. Reasonable people would have been thinking that is exactly what a non-Labour government would do."
Just so.
However, when I listened to Mr Key address more than 300 Rotorua movers and shakers on Monday, I was assured that at least some of the worst of Labour's failings would be addressed.
Things such as giving top priority to cleaning up the Resource Management Act, which he undertook that his Government would attend to in the first six months; and making sure more money was allocated to bringing our electricity infrastructure up to 21st-century standard.
Then there was his renewed promise to rein in the bloated Wellington bureaucracy, which under Labour has expanded from 26,000 to 36,000 in five years and which, Mr Key said, would blow out by another 3500 if Labour won a fourth term. This would be dealt with by a natural attrition of between 14 and 20 per cent a year.
How good it was, too, to hear our next Prime Minister tell us that it's all very well to be the world leader in climate change legislation but what Labour proposes comes at a hellish expense and without any guarantee of benefit.
That the National Government will take its time in framing climate change action will be a huge relief to many. However, of all the valid reasons given by Mr Key for us to elect a National government, this was the clincher: "The only time we've won the rugby World Cup we had a male Prime Minister."
