National gambles on its record
Only a few weeks ago, election 2017 had looked like the dullest of done deals. National was odds-on favourite for a fourth term, and voters were facing the prospect of multiple television debates between Bill English and Andrew Little, two of the least charismatic figures in our parliamentary history.
Since then, three party leaders have bitten the dust, and the Jacinda Ardern phenomenon has triggered a tactical rethink by all the main contenders. In Ohariu, the Greens are suddenly trying to harvest the handful of extra party votes that could mark the difference between survival and extinction.
Just as suddenly, tax cuts are off the table. Even though last week’s book-opening exercise revealed a sizeable surplus, the prior spending commitments and some less-than-rosy forecasts have seen National – surprisingly – back away from the tax cuts that had been widely expected to be the crown jewels of its campaign launch. Tax reductions have been shelved until 2020, much to the annoyance of Act Party leader David Seymour.
While economic realities drove the deferment, there was also a political strategy involved. During the 2014 election, the government had cleverly managed to make the campaign debate all about the Opposition’s policies and shortcomings, and not its own. It has been trying the same gambit this year, too.
In the face of Ardern’s poll numbers, the fewer controversial policies that National puts up – such as tax cuts in a climate of considerable hardship and ailing public services – the easier it will be to make Labour’s proposals once again the main talking point of the campaign.
Easier, but not plain sailing. The policies of austerity have generated a surplus that the government has been spending judiciously all year to its electoral advantage. That reality will make it difficult for National to credibly paint Labour as the ‘‘tax and spend’’ party.
More to the point, it will be harder this time for National to generate fear of the alternative, given that the option is now being led by Ardern. Thus far, the public seems to genuinely like the alternative, much more than they fear it.
All along, the government’s Achilles heel has been its image of complacency. National is vulnerable to the criticism that it has governed more by tinkerings and photo ops than by policies of genuine substance. Meanwhile, some serious social problems – housing, child poverty, and an overstretched health system - have gone largely unaddressed.
In that respect, the taxation moves that Ardern has hinted at – on capital gains to address housing speculation and on irrigated water to create a price restraint on the pollution of our rivers and lakes – look to be defensible, as targeted responses to the government’s relative inaction on those fronts.
Tactically, the government appears to be putting most of its eggs in the one basket: namely, its management of the economy. That’s a gamble. How many voters feel their jobs are more secure, their wages are rising and their family budgets are now in better shape than they were nine years ago? Not enough, perhaps, for National to be as sure of victory as it had been only six short weeks ago.