Collins veers off-road to hunt culture wars vote
The Newshub/Reid Research poll that showed both a significant drop for Labour and an extraordinary failure by the National Opposition to capitalise on it suggests a bumpy road for both political parties ahead to 2023.
If the poll demonstrated anything except the inexorable gravity of political reality, it showed that National leader Judith Collins’ attempts to consolidate the centre-Right vote by chasing the same issues as ACT are simply hitting a wall of the smaller party’s superior organisation, clearer messaging, and more popular leader. David Seymour, in the second poll over a number of weeks, is ahead of Collins as preferred prime minister, both among the general public and, humiliatingly, among National voters.
Rather than tacking back towards the centre, where National gains would be most helpful in creating the possibility of a centre-Right government, Collins has gone off-road completely. In the immediate aftermath of the poll, she used precious media time to talk up a national referendum on whether or not government departments should be able to use the word ‘‘Aotearoa’’. As bewildering a proposal as this is for a mainstream political party leader to seize on, Collins’ subsequent commentary (that government and big business had started using the term by ‘‘stealth’’) added strange, conspiratorial overtones into the mix.
It’s now an unavoidable conclusion that Collins has decided an American-style culture war focused on issues of personal identity is her best shot at retaining her leadership, a strategy that seems counter-intuitive given the current myriad real issues affecting the electorate (from inflation, to house prices, to labour shortages, to nurses’ strikes) – and downright confounding in light of the polls showing National spinning its tyres without movement in that direction, stuck in a polling ditch between Seymour and the centre.
If Collins is increasingly without fellow travellers on this confused path to nowhere, her greatest hope remains Jacinda Ardern’s lieutenants. To paraphrase the American political columnist PJ O’Rourke, the major parties’ positions on the so-called culture wars are Collins saying ‘‘culture wars are ruining our country, and we can fix it’’, to the Government’s ‘‘culture wars aren’t a problem at all – but we’ll fix that!’’
Justice Minister Kris Faafoi has been benched by the Beehive from talking about the proposed hate speech laws, after his early interviews demonstrated a resounding lack of knowledge about which kinds of speech he intends to criminalise. This week he has spent two days dithering on what should be a fairly straightforward question on legislation to ban ‘‘conversion therapy’’, and is probably close to being locked in a boot by Ardern’s fixers.
It’s a reminder of Labour’s teething pains after 2017’s shock election result that Faafoi was identified not just as a ‘‘safe pair of hands’’ but a breakout star in its first year of government. With his fellow freshman colleagues such as Clare Curran and Phil Twyford lurching from disaster to catastrophe, Faafoi’s administrative competence was treated as brilliance.
The minister who has said that policy is ‘‘not a strength’’ now finds himself hopelessly over-extended, with complex legal reforms in the justice portfolio, and responsible for the post-Covid flashpoint area of immigration. His interviews give the impression of a minister at capacity, unable to absorb more information about what are admittedly two heavyweight portfolios, and utterly unable to communicate what the Government intends to do. The weekend’s poll may have had a clarifying effect on the prime minister as she looks at Faafoi becoming bogged down.
There is no political gain in the Government holding its fire on crucial reforms; the things it sees as necessary to bring about its vision of a better New Zealand. Barring a further Covid catastrophe, it cannot hope to retain more than 50 per cent of the vote through the next election. Despite Ardern’s avowed preference for incremental change, the sooner it implements its policies, the more likely they are to endure.
However, there are hard limits to her Cabinet’s ability to progress and persuade. Faafoi’s seeming paralysis is a reminder that Winston Peters’ handbrake was working on a car that already had baggage weighing it down. If it wants to get to its destination, it may have to lighten the load.
There’s a minor issue here worth noting, which is that some government agencies do need to do a little better in matching the formality and familiarity of their communications to constituents. As with personal pronouns, the guiding rule is respect: whether a citizen writes to their government saying ‘‘Dear Minister’’ or ‘‘tena koe’’, it should not be too taxing for public servants to respond in kind, as long as a certain level of formality is met. This is not an issue that needs a million-dollar referendum to fix.
It’s now an unavoidable conclusion that Collins has decided an Americanstyle culture war ... is her best shot at retaining her leadership.