Parties sharpen up for election battle
It’s Labour Weekend already, and the next general election is probably less than a year away. That means the Labour-led Government’s ‘‘year of delivery’’ declared by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is fast coming to an end.
While that statement at Labour’s party conference in February might have turned into a rhetorical crutch, what will really matter for the Government is whether enough of its work and legislative programme is bearing fruit by the time of the election.
Ardern showed this week what pragmatic government can achieve, with a deal giving farmers the ability to sort out their own greenhouse gas reductions on each farm, and gave them until 2025 to do it.
If agriculture reduces emissions, it will stay out of the Emissions Trading Scheme, which farmers have always complained won’t change farmgate behaviour that much and impose bureaucratic and economic costs on them.
The fact that National had little to say about it spoke volumes: supported by basically the whole farming sector, it’s a deal the Nats probably would have been happy to make themselves.
The ETS and the expected passage of the Zero Carbon Bill, now likely to pass before the prime minister jets off for Apec in Chile in mid-November, will clear the political decks for the party. It will give Labour room to launch into an election year with a pretty big surplus, having put the complex and torrid fight over climate largely behind it.
Expect to hear Labour start to talk about the choices that having a surplus gives New Zealand – particularly heading into an election-year Budget next May. This will be an effective political line because it happens to be true: the advantage of running surpluses is that it does give governments choices in the form of more spending and/or tax cuts, or even broader tax reform.
The surplus may have come from a higher tax take, but the point stands. For a small capitalimporting, commodities-exporting country such as New Zealand,
Political editor surpluses matter and sound fiscal management has been a strength of this Government.
Add to that very low unemployment, new funding for mental health, new hospital construction and some free university fees that Labour hopes will more fully flow through to voters.
The ability to cut deals such as a farmgate emissions one will also be crucial to Labour’s fortunes in the next election. In some ways, although Labour might be loath to admit it, some harder heads within the party accept that Winston Peters has probably saved Labour from itself.
By insisting that the Government hew to the centre on many issues, bills have probably been better, accepting the political reality that less than 40 per cent of the country voted for Labour in 2017. Now Labour is consistently polling at 40 per cent or above in both public and private polls.
Aside from the emissions announcement, NZ First’s insistence that 90-day trial periods for employees remain for small business, and that a capital gains tax was politically unwise, have probably been good for the Government. A CGT in particular – regardless of the merits of the policy, which were arguable – would have been electorally disastrous for Labour while doing little to curb house prices. Ditching that has cauterised Labour against a potentially potent Opposition attack.
For the Opposition, the next year will likely bring a laser-like focus on cost-ofliving issues, and lack of delivery – an area it sees as a
Government weakness. It points to KiwiBuild and the Auckland light rail debacle, extensively reported on by Stuff this week. Expect to hear a lot about power prices, gas prices, fuel taxes and the Government’s big surplus that National thinks should be in your back pocket.
After a shaky start as leader and coming through the torrid JamiLee Ross affair, Simon Bridges has now taken charge. He is sticking to centre-Right issues (economy, tax, law and order) and doesn’t care if he’s seen as a polarising or anything else.
Public polls appear to have rewarded him with a high party vote – even while maintaining a lousy personal vote. Buoyed by Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s surprise win in Australia in May – which featured a significant ‘‘shy Tory’’ vote, where lots of voters didn’t want to admit they would vote for Morrison – Bridges and the National leadership team think they can do the same.
Morrison ran almost exclusively on hip-pocket cost-of-living issues.
Yet National understands that, in the new year, it will need to have positive policies to take to the electorate: not merely criticise a Government led by a very popular leader. National has also been running a sophisticated below-theradar targeted ad campaign on Facebook that doesn’t make the news.
For a small capitalimporting, commodities-exporting country such as New Zealand, surpluses matter.
For the Greens, the next year starts the challenge of convincing enough of its voters that the party is getting wins in government. The history of MMP shows that, for minor parties in government, the biggest challenge is brand differentiation.
The fact that the Greens have been consistently polling around 7 per cent in published opinion polls augurs well for them, but it will be a challenge, particularly with the likes of former leader and now Greenpeace head Russel Norman accusing the Government – and therefore the Greens – of capitulating to the farming lobby on climate.
The same applies to NZ First. The party has had a significant effect on Government policy and has got wins for its voters. Again, however, the spectre of MMP’s history hangs over it.
True, it is a polling around the 5 per cent threshold, which compares very favourably to its previous stints in government.
But campaigning from government is a matter of convincing voters that you are good at making the political sausage: which is more difficult than finding a couple of strong issues from opposition. Expect NZ First to get more vocal on the wins it has achieved for its voters closer to election time.
Labour can rightly argue that the March 15 Christchurch shootings put it behind where it wanted to be, but yielded positive policy such as tightening gun laws and the gun buyback scheme among others.
For the Government, the next year will be about convincing the public that, even if it hasn’t achieved all it wanted, or all it said that it would, it has made enough progress and is headed in the right direction.