Analysis from the Parliament Press Gallery
Peter Wilson
Wellington, August 4, 2023
The Week that was- Another poll points to a change of government and pushes Labour closer to the danger zone, David Seymour says he won’t sit at the cabinet table with NZ First, National announces a huge road building plan which the government picks holes in, and there is an interesting look at which MPs could be in a National/ ACT cabinet.
This week’s Newshub-Reid Research poll followed the trend of Labour losing support and National being able to form a government with ACT if an election was held now.
Labour was down 3.6 points to 32.3%, National was up 1.3 points to 36.6%.
With ACT also up, 1.3 points to 12.1%, the two parties would have a total of 63 seats in a 120-member Parliament, a comfortable majority.
The Herald’s Poll of Polls, which runs simulations based on multiple polls and previous election results, showed National and ACT now have a 59.1% probability of being able to form a government if an election was held now.
Labour, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori have just a 17.9% chance – lower than the likelihood of a hung Parliament which is 22.9%. Labour is now dangerously close to the demoralising 30% mark; going below it would make recovery extremely difficult.
Trust issue for Luxon
The Poll’s downside for National was that only 35% of respondents said that they trusted Party Leader Christopher Luxon, down 1.9 points since the question was last asked in January.
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins won the trust of 51.5%, which was down 1.4 points.
And the preferred Prime Minister poll gave Luxon 15.9% compared with Hipkins’ 24%.
Luxon shrugged it off. “It is not about Chris Hipkins or me. It is about who has got the best ideas to take the country forward,” he said.
Former United Future Party Leader Peter Dunne, an astute political observer, said that Labour’s falling support did not surprise him.
“I think it is locking in a trend that has been developing over the last two or three months of the gap between the centre-left and the centre-right starting to become clear and become more established,” he said on Newshub’s AM Show.
“I think that recent events have made that even more definite, so it is a hard road to home for Labour from here on in… it is pretty difficult to see this being turned around.”
The Poll was the first taken after Kiri Allan’s downfall, the latest in a series of ministerial mishaps, and Hipkins said there was no question that would have played a role in the minds of voters.
“We have had a bumpy ride as a team over the last few months. I am absolutely confident that is going to end,” he said.
Not yet disastrous for Labour
The Herald’s Political Editor, Claire Trevett, said that the Poll showed Labour’s position was bad “but not yet disastrous.”
She pointed out that National did not gain much from Labour’s fall of nearly four points, with the Greens picking up nearly half of that and the other small parties, ACT and NZ First, picking up just as much as National.
“As things stand, National has an easier road ahead of it than Labour. It is heading into the campaign period from the starting line, while Labour is well behind that line. Labour has to convince people the troubles are over and that it is stable before it can even start to sell itself again,” she said.
Trevett did not think that Labour was ready to panic because it was still rolling out its new campaign policies. “Labour’s powder is still dry; it can only hope the firing pin is working once it gets going,” she said.
Something else that the Poll showed was ACT’s upward trend.
The Party gained 1.3 points to 12.1% which would give it 16 seats.
In 2020 it won 7.6% of the vote which gave it 10 seats.
Seymour’s discomfort with NZ First
Party Leader David Seymour clearly thinks that his Party is on a roll.
In Palmerston North this week, he drew a crowd of 450, telling his audience “Wow! This is a phenomenal number of people to a supposedly minor party 75 days out from an election.”
He is confident, and this week upstaged Luxon by saying that he will not sit around the Cabinet table with NZ First in a post-election government.
He was interviewed by Tova O’Brien, who has joined Stuff.
“ACT Leader David Seymour has finally slammed the door shut, turned the key, fastened the deadbolt and latched the door chain. There is no room for Winston Peters in any Cabinet shared with David Seymour,” she said.
Asked if National must rule Peters out, or he would not sit around the Cabinet table with National either, Seymour said: “Yeah, I think that is pretty clear. There is no way that you are going to solve the problems that New Zealand needs to solve when you have got someone who has had so many chances and screwed it up so many times before,” he said.
That comment should make for an interesting chat the next time the two Party Leaders meet.
(RNZ Photo by Samuel Rillstone)
With NZ First edging up in the Polls – this week’s Roy Morgan poll gave it 5%, which would put it back in Parliament – Seymour’s stance puts Luxon in an uncomfortable position.
Luxon has been asked many times whether he would work with NZ First and has never given an answer. His standard response is that the question is hypothetical because NZ First is not in Parliament. He is right, but it might be after 14 October and then what? Luxon wants to keep his options open and that’s why he won’t answer the question.
O’Brien reported that when Seymour’s “ultimatum” was relayed to Luxon he again gave a non-answer. “No disrespect but I am not doing coalition agreements through the media,” he said.
It will very likely prove to be irrelevant. Luxon would only need NZ First if National and ACT failed to hold enough seats for a majority, and that isn’t what the polls are showing.
Peters’ dilemma
Peters has said he won’t work with Labour, so if he does get back, he will not be able to play off the main parties against each other as he has in the past.
When it comes to forming governments, the Herald’s Audrey Young was brave this week. She named a likely National/ACT Cabinet and had some interesting picks.
Foreign Minister Judith Collins was one of them, with National’s current Foreign Affairs spokesman Gerry Brownlee becoming the Speaker.
Her list gives ACT six out of 28 ministers, and she thinks that the most difficult for Luxon will be Agriculture.
“National has run out of farmers. ACT recruited a President of Federated Farmers as a candidate, Andrew Hoggard, and has placed him at number five on its list, and the Party has every claim to the job,” Young said, pointing out that National’s agriculture spokesman, Todd McClay, is a townie. So he gets trade and picks up biosecurity and food safety as well.
It’s an interesting read. Young will have a crack at a Labour/Greens/Te Pāti Māori Cabinet next.
National’s Transport Plans
National chose this week to announce its huge $24.8 billion transport policy with new roads and a rapid transit network for Auckland using a mix of government funding and private equity to pay for it. Radio New Zealand reported that Labour immediately started picking holes in it, saying that it appeared to be based on old costings with the price of just four of the projects coming up between $2.8 billion and $4.8 billion short.
National said it would scrap the $7.4 billion Let’s Get Wellington Moving project, which has achieved very little since it was launched in 2015 and would instead invest $4 billion in the capital’s transport networks.
This was of great interest to Stuff’s Wellington newspaper The Post, which ran the story as a front page lead for three consecutive days.
National’s Infrastructure and Housing Spokesman Chris Bishop, a Wellington MP, said that Let’s Get Wellington Moving was “a toxic mess of a programme” and the only thing it had delivered was a set of traffic lights on SH1.
National is promising to build a second Mt Victoria Tunnel, badly needed for decades and a four-lane highway to the airport.
“Wellingtonians are just sick of the dithering,” said Bishop, and he was probably right with that. There has been so much bickering, controversy and delay over it that most residents probably will be sorry to see it go.
There were plenty of critics, including Wellington’s Mayor Tory Whanau, who said that axing the project would be a blow to the City.
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins added to the uncertainty around Let’s Get Wellington Moving when he would not commit to it.
Questioned at his post-Cabinet press conference, Hipkins said it was being reassessed as Labour developed its transport policy for its election manifesto.
The project is partly funded by the government.
“It is something we will be looking very closely at,” Hipkins said.
He didn’t think it had delivered what it was set up to deliver.
He was asked: “Doesn’t the confusion that you are creating just delay those projects even further?” Hipkins said he didn’t believe so.
Another MP in hot water
Parliament’s Privileges Committee has never been so busy.
In recent weeks it has had to handle rule-breakers including Labour’s Michael Wood and Jan Tinetti, and ACT’s Simon Court.
Now it is going to have National’s Tim van de Molen in front of it.
He is alleged to have stood over Labour’s Shanan Halbert at the end of a Select Committee meeting, prompting other Labour members to surround their colleague, RNZ reported.
Halbert is the Chair of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, Van de Molen is a member.
Halbert told the media that he had felt threatened.
“Yes. That is why there is a complaint sitting in front of the privileges committee,” he said.
Speaker Adrian Rurawhe said that if the allegations are true, the National MP’s behaviour could amount to threatening or intimidating a member acting in the discharge of their duty.
Van de Molen said he would cooperate fully with the investigation.
This latest incident to go before the Committee was the last straw for the Herald which published an editorial titled ‘Disorder in the House Deplorable.’
“Upheld or not, the latest episode of an MP being referred to Parliament’s Privileges Committee is another slap in the face for the New Zealand public and to the dignity of our democracy,” it said.
After running through the list of errant MPs who had been in front of the Committee, the Herald concluded: “This country has more important challenges than dealing with members who fall short on basic rules, human decency and decorum.”
Peter Wilson is a Life Member of Parliament’s Press Gallery, 22 years as NZPA’s Political Editor and seven as Parliamentary Bureau Chief for NZ Newswire. The above article and pictures have been reproduced under a Special Agreement with www.rnz.co.nz
