National will rebuild into a formidable force in the coming three years, especially if Labour rolls over on the wealth tax and starts taxing capital gains on residential property.
Those soft centre voters who voted Labour but normally favour National will return to the fold in 2023 if Ardern caves on tax.
Judith Collins, a polarising figure, could be gone by then, replaced by a more palatable choice for the centre-right.
Ardern knows this, as do the clever strategy wonks in the National Party.
Ardern says she intends to govern for all New Zealanders. This is a kind and aspirational soundbite but is it realistic with house prices so high now?
Especially in the main centres where young first-home buyers, even with the bank of Mum and Dad, will find it difficult to impossible to scrape together a deposit, let alone ask for a mortgage that will need to be five or more times their joint income. Interest rates are low but may not stay that way forever.
Young couples from the working end of town or from families with low incomes have no chance of owning their own home in this current climate unless they all shift to the West Coast. Even that area is now becoming a stretch.
Ardern simply condemning rising house prices is not going to make them stabilise or come down anytime soon. Her government, if it is truly for all Kiwis and truly wants to be transformational, needs to take a page out of the first Labour Government's song book and make housing all New Zealanders who want their own home a simple priority, getting them away from the usurious grip of landlords.
What is wrong with the state being the biggest landlord in the country but with a rent-to-buy scheme similar to the scheme introduced by National in 1950? That enabled hundreds of thousands of working and low income New Zealanders to become house-owners overnight at the flourish of a pen.
If a family was renting a State Advances property they were offered the option of buying it and continuing to pay the rent, which in reality was a mortgage payment, and the house became theirs.
That is how the working middle-class emerged in New Zealand, eventually bequeathing that wealth to their children and making home purchases, while always a challenge, achievable for baby boomers and their children.
All New Zealanders dream of their own home. It is in our DNA harking back to the early days of this nation where many settlers from severely disadvantaged backgrounds in the Old World were able to dream and plan for their own home.
Labour now has the chance and all the power it needs to really make a difference to the lives of all young New Zealanders who want to fulfil that dream, not just the kids who have the advantage of family help or who come from the very well-heeled suburbs.
Labour should not worry about the envy and anger of the far left towards people who have money.
Any amount taxed would be small but it will, without doubt, cost Labour the next election.
Better to let that go and concentrate on housing that is accessible and affordable to people starting out with young families.
If they do a decent job of it, build thousands of decent basic homes, they will be rewarded as the first Labour government was with several terms in power.
The far left will always want to be in power and will be there to be courted by Labour when the time comes.
If Labour puts together a decent rent-to-buy state-run scheme for housing they will be thanked by a lot of people currently either sitting in rentals or having to live with family but all dreaming that New Zealand dream.
