Green alert as Labour soars
Green Party plunges to 4.3 per cent in the latest 1 News Colmar Brunton poll
Labour has soared and the Greens face annihilation in the first political poll since dramatic leadership changes in both parties.
Labour has rocketed from 24 to 37 per cent under new leader Jacinda Ardern, according to last night’s 1 News Colmar Brunton poll.
But the Greens have plunged to 4.3 per cent, below the 5 per cent threshhold needed to get into parliament for parties with no electorate MPs.
The result puts Labour only seven points behind National, which has slipped three points to 44 per cent. Ardern and National leader Bill English are now level on 30 per cent as preferred Prime Minister.
But NZ First leader Winston Peters is still in the driving seat. Both National and Labour would need him for a majority and Labour would also need a second partner to replace the Greens.
Green Party leader James Shaw said the result didn’t feel great but he was confident the Greens could recover.
“I was expecting that we were going to take a big hit because obviously the last couple of weeks have been very messy . . .
“But I am hoping people will look at our track record over the last 17 years and see this as a bit of a blip.”
The poll is the first taken since former Green co-leader Metiria Turei stepped down last week after admitting she defrauded the welfare system as a solo mum in the 1990s by not disclosing flatmates.
Green Party leader James Shaw says a new poll which saw the party plummet below the threshold needed to get into Parliament is disappointing and is appealing to the party’s voters of past elections to get back behind it to ensure it returns to Parliament.
The Green Party plunged to 4.3 per cent in the 1 News Colmar Brunton poll, the first since former Green coleader Metiria Turei stepped down during scrutiny of her admission to welfare fraud in the 1990s.
That is below the 5 per cent threshold needed to get into Parliament for parties which do not have an MP with an electorate seat.
In the same poll, Labour rocketed up from 24 to 37 per cent under new leader Jacinda Ardern. Ardern had rocketed up to 30 per cent as preferred PM, even with National leader Bill English.
Labour is now seven points adrift of National which was also feeling the strain of the tumult of past weeks, dropping from 47 to 44 per cent. Both parties would need NZ First to form a government but Labour would also need another support party — without the Green Party to turn to. Its votes would be wasted and would not count. Shaw said it was clear Ardern had a “huge impact” on the Labour Party’s fortunes and he congratulated her for that. “I think what that means is a lot of soft voters who used to vote for Helen Clark and then John Key will now look at the Labour Party and start to peel away from National. At the same time, you’ll see people saying ‘ well, Labour is now looking like it can form a government but they’re going to need a partner’. And that’s the Green Party.” On the poll, NZ First was down from 11 to 10 per cent. The Maori Party had nudged up to 1.7 per cent and Gareth Morgan’s Opportunities Party had also inched up to 2.1 per cent. Act was on 0.4 per cent and United Future did not register. The 1 News Colmar Brunton poll of about 1000 voters has a margin of error of +/3.1 per cent. The result is devastating for the Green Party which until the ructions of recent weeks had been polling around 10-11 per cent and has not been around the 5 per cent mark since the mid 2000s.
It is now fighting for its survival nearly five weeks before the election.
Shaw, a first term MP, will have to fight his first election as leader without the experienced Turei on hand.
Shaw said there was a lot of work to do to rebuild trust and credibility with the Greens’ support base.
“I’m really disappointed but we’ve still got a long way to go and I’m pretty confident we can rebuild from here.
“You would have seen how dramatic the swings have been in the last few weeks and I think we can recover in the next few weeks. I’m going to appeal primarily to those people who supported us in 2011 and 2014 and say ‘we could do with your support again’.”
Asked how it felt to drop below the 5 per cent mark, he said “it doesn’t feel great, obviously”.
“I was expecting that we were going to take a big hit because obviously the last couple of weeks have been very messy and if there’s one rule in New Zealand politics, it’s that voters hate that kind of messiness when it comes to political parties.
“But I am hoping people will look at our track record over the last 17 years and see this as a bit of a blip.”
The Green Party support had spiked to 15 per cent in the last Colmar Brunton poll at the end of July.
That was in the immediate after- math of Turei’s admission she defrauded the welfare system as a solo mum in the 1990s by not disclosing flatmates.
That sparked a series of events including the change over from Andrew Little to Ardern as Labour leader after Labour’s polling dropped to the low 20s.
Turei stepped down as co-leader on August 9 and has opted not to return to Parliament after scrutiny of her admission and a further admission she had breached enrolment rules to vote for a friend took its toll.
She will stand in the Te Tai Tonga electorate to help the Greens get party votes.
Stand at the gate of Laurie Abernethy’s lifestyle block and the whole of Taihape spreads out below. A near-constant procession of trucks rumble along State Highway 1 through the heart of the town, past the McDonald’s M and the old church spire.
Some mornings you wouldn’t know any of it was there, he says.
“We sit in the basin here and the river runs through there, just below the town. And that seems to be the way with these little river valleys — they just fill up with fog in the morning if it’s cold.”
Abernethy has lived in the area for about 50 years. He and his wife raised their four boys on a 485ha sheep, beef and deer farm at Mataroa. Now retired, the couple live on 2ha with their 12 Shetland ponies.
“They are characters. They are just a lovely little animal to have around.”
Abernethy has a long view of the town’s fortunes and says Taihape has gone backwards, with a particular blow being the loss of railway-related jobs.
“We had three banks in town, we have one left . . . this IT thing, to me it has wrecked the whole system.
“We haven’t got a hospital any more, we have a doctors’ surgery. We also had an old folks’ home, which the local community actually financed, and it’s gone too. And those sorts of things don’t sit very well with an old man.”
Despite that slow decline, Abernethy, who speaks to us a few weeks ahead of his 80th birthday, says life is good here. He marvels at Donald Trump and the uncertainty overseas.
“I’m pleased to be where we are. My mother always said it was God’s own country, and I reckon she was right.”
Taihape has recently experienced a lift, he says, thanks in large part to its position on SH1.
“Saturday, Sunday, you can hardly get a park in town. They go to the coffee shops and eating places. I think there is an opportunity now for boutique businesses.”
Michelle Fannin is behind the counter at one such business, the Wild Roses furniture and gift store.
One of the volunteer organisers of the famous gumboot day, Fannin says the town’s community spirit has helped pull it through setbacks.
“From my memories we had over 5000 people in the area, and in the last Census it was 3000. But houses are selling like crazy. People are moving to Taihape for a lifestyle, so they are buying houses to live in. We haven’t got rentals. The new principal at Mataroa School struggled to find a place to rent.”
There are a number of manufacturing businesses in town, including Incept Marine, which produces rafts, and kayak-maker Bliss Stick, but Fannin, 48, would like greater support from government to attract businesses to smaller towns, perhaps in the form of tax breaks.
Another issue important to her is lifting wages.
“I know a lot of businesses would struggle. But our people are struggling on that minimum wage. I think that’s something we seriously need to start working towards.”
KiwiRail still has a team in the town, employing about six, all with young families. Other locals are bused out to the Winstone Pulp Mill near Ohakune, and the Tangiwai Mill.
Ngahina Transom works for Mokai Patea Services, a service provider set up by local iwi that works with Winz and other agencies, and says employment picks up in summer because of shearing.
That transience is reflected in the local area school, a decile 4 school with 265 students.
Transom, a trained teacher and past principal of two rural schools in the area, chairs the board as an appointed iwi representative.
“Education is my biggest issue. It is huge. We don’t get enough money to do what we need to do. When teachers
are Watch the video at nzherald.co.nz expected to do lots and lots of other things. Like, where does it stop?”
Transom grew up on a farm which her brother now runs. She married a local and they now have 11-year-old twin boys, living on their own sheep and beef farm.
Her Pakeha family have been in the area for seven generations and her iwi side goes back 16 generations. Those deep roots meant Transom chose to raise her boys here.
“What I love is the rural aspect of life here, and the qualities and attributes that contributes to a person — work