Leaders square off as election looms

The election is barely five months away. Currently, the government looks to be increasingly ineffectual, and driven by a palpable desire to offend as few voters as possible. The Opposition appears just as committed to harm minimisation.

Last week for example, National was touting a tax cut package that on past performance will mainly benefit those least in need.

Allegedly, the $1.8 billion cost will be met by firing a few communications consultants and by squeezing the ‘‘flab’’ out of existing public services. Conservative parties have been looking, line by line, for that flab for the past 40 years.

In other words, real solutions for the problems voters are experiencing at the supermarket, and/or in paying their mortgages or rent, seem as distant as ever.

Arguably, such solutions would require structural, supply side changes that neither major party is willing to embrace.

Instead, a few dollars are being offered on the demand side of the economy, to help voters pay their bills.

The vagueness is deliberate. Promises are being made to release the full policy details later, when voters will have less time to analyse them and react.

Being in government has required Labour to be a bit more forthcoming. All the same, the Labour caucus picked Chris Hipkins as Prime Minister in order to defuse the public’s negative feelings about several of Labour’s key policies.

Since then, Hipkins has seemed happy to be defined less by what he’s done, and more by what he hasn’t. Three Waters and co- governance are off the table, So are new taxes.

Policies polling badly have been trimmed, re- branded or postponed. Under Hipkins, fewer Labour MPs are likely to lose their jobs in October. Mission accomplished.

Meanwhile, structural change is off the agenda. There are reasons why our supermarket chains are the most profitable in the OECD, and why the Aussie-owned banks are our four most profitable enterprises. Neither situation is set to change, anytime soon.

National has been equally coy.

Rather than release details (and full costings) of his policy intentions, National Party leader Christopher Luxon has largely stuck to asserting that National would just so much better at running the economy and tougher on law and order.

Reportedly, Luxon will also dial back concessions made to Mā ori.

Beyond that point, Luxon has become adept at turning the media spotlight back onto the government’s performance.

Previously, New Zealand has liked to think of itself as a progressive social laboratory. Yet in a recent Stuff column, Verity Johnson argued that the reverse is more often true: ‘‘I’ve long thought that New Zealand isn’t progressive, it’s permissive. We’ll let you do anything, as long as it doesn’t cause trouble.’’

Obviously, this bi-partisan aversion to anything that might look like trouble impedes progress towards real solutions.

The prevailing vagueness also runs counter to the notion that in a social democracy, voters should be able to make an informed choice at election time between clearly defined alternatives.

Come October, those options will be mainly (and fuzzily) image-based: Chippie from the Hutt Valley versus The Man Who Used To Run an Airline.

Voters will be assured that there won’t be any trouble, afterwards.

Labour leader Chris Hipkins seems happy to be defined less by what he’s done as Prime Minister, and more by what he hasn’t.

Opposition leader has largely stuck to asserting that National would just so much better at running the economy.