Be nice to Winston month

Even National is treating Peters like a constructive member of society.

This is an election by no means short of Labour policy holes, so how the Minister of Finance came to choose one that didn’t exist and nevertheless fall down it is one of the great riddles of this campaign. Steven Joyce’s $11 billion anti- gotcha! on Labour’s fiscals went the way of most deliberately engineered political scandals: on a boomerang trajectory. The fine details are understood only by those who speak accountancy, but the Janet and John version is, “There isn’t a hole, silly, because the money’s over there!” But even a pidgin fiscalspeaker could see by the end of the shenanigans that the most salient fact to emerge is: the Government is bloody scared.

Ordinarily a composed and masterful politician, Joyce seems to have a touch of what afflicted Labour’s Chris Carter after his Government’s 2008 defeat: an attack of “I want my life back!” panic. He was so desperate at his party’s failure to regain command of the polls by 2010 that he faked and leaked a note portending a leadership coup. His ruse became see-through in the space of an afternoon.

Joyce’s, which was no fake but just a too-limited understanding of spreadsheet wonkery, unravelled as quickly – and did Labour’s campaign work for it nicely on several fronts. The main favour was to use up time that could more usefully have been spent critiquing the many genuine lacunae in Labour policy, not least tax and debt risk.

Former leader Andrew Little was so risk-averse that he left the policy cupboard rather bare, with a note: “IOU a tax policy, but not before the 2020 election.” Since Jacinda Ardern took over, Labour has hastily restocked the larder, but its own figures suggest it will run such tight budgets outside of social spending priorities that it will have to raise tax rates, introduce new imposts or ramp up debt to avoid an austerity economy. This is change of a sort that its newly energised supporters may not have envisaged. As the recent opening of the books showed, there’s no gush of new spendables due in the next couple of years.

Even those unhappy about a red Beehive administration could normally comfort themselves with Labour’s track record: more liquidity from all that beneficent social spending. Labour’s usual Keynesian effect has historically kept wolves from doors, and even if they weren’t one’s own doors, there was always a downstream extra buck in such a fiscal mix for many businesses.

Alas, with Joyce doing his “Oh, my ears and whiskers!” down a rabbit hole, this non-Keynesian Labour future may not get the political invigilation it deserves. Being contradicted by several orthodox, independent economists has dented Joyce’s credentials as a clear-eyed technocrat. And the timing of his failed ambush – the day of the second Leaders Debate – made National look rashly desperate.

It has reason to be. The polls now show National and Labour neck and neck, equally prey to MMP’s idiosyncrasies and imponderables. Will New Zealand First still be kingmaker? Will the Greens make it back? What’s happening in the Maori seats? It’s barely safe to make even intelligent guesses,

Beneath all, there’s now the super-volcano option: that we finish the campaign riveted in horror on North Korea.

tactical-voting sentiment being so volatile. It’s even possible that most or all the minor parties will fail to reach the 5% threshold and their votes will get redistributed among those left standing. To whose benefit? Pass.

SUPER-VOLCANO OPTION

Beneath all this tectonic-plate potentiality, there’s now the super-volcano option: that we finish the campaign riveted in horror on North Korea’s nukes, which would probably guarantee a National win, but at that point no one, not even National, would much care. It’s at least safe to predict that the winner on polling day – if not necessarily of the Beehive – will be down to voter turnout.

It’s undignified but not actually disastrous that National is strobing panic, because mobilisation of its support base is among the most useful weapons a party in trouble can deploy. It’s laser-focused on chivvying long-complacent voters out to the ballot box. Labour’s in exactly the same mode.

Close elections can turn on shoe leather rather than voter sentiment. Labour could easily have lost in 2005, our last truly close election, but for a massive logistical effort in South Auckland on polling day. Both parties have meticulous household data about where their supporters and possible supporters lurk, and anyone who isn’t personally reminded to vote by a beady-eyed party activist at least once in the next couple of weeks will be a statistical anomaly.

USEFUL, ESSENTIAL OR IRRELEVANT

Meanwhile, it’s been declared Be Nice To Winston Month. From trying to exterminate New Zealand First’s vote, National is now treating Winston Peters like a constructive member of society, resisting even pouring scorn on his proposal to move Auckland’s port to Northland. Labour, too, feigned polite interest – its activists having spent last week vigorously sticking up for Winston over his leaked pension details. No one knows if NZ First will be useful, essential or irrelevant, but there’s obviously a mighty-effective anti-craw-stick throat spray on the market.

Confoundingly, even the traditional policy bogeymen have no fright-power this election. Asset sales? National will, if re-elected, require at least partial privatisation of Auckland’s airport and port, and the private ownership of some new roads, and school and hospital premises. Labour’s barely even bothering to remind voters about that. Water charges? Waitangi Tribunal hearings will force whoever is in power next to grapple with that conundrum. Capital gains tax? A new poll shows more than half of us think that, save for the family home, it’s a good idea. Tax hikes? The next election is always Clearasil-like with respect to unpopular tax regimes, so it’s seriously unlikely even Labour will go Muldoonish on our tax rates.

For the first time in years, this is quite simply a heart-versus-head election contest. Polls repeatedly show most voters rate English the more competent, but a slight majority nevertheless want Ardern to be Prime Minister. This seeming contradiction may reflect what is, in global terms, a lack of serious difference between our two major parties. Experience tells us that for most, life won’t change much regardless of who’s in the Beehive.

Polls, holes, secret texts, selfies, porcine cosmetics – for all the hustings noise, a Venn diagram of Jacinda’s Let’s Do This and Bill’s Let’s Keep Doing This would be mostly a big common bubble, with most of us in it.

It’s even possible that most or all the minor parties will fail to reach the 5% threshold.