A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.
A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.
Most commentators have called the first leaders' debate as a win for National's Judith Collins, and she needed that after the 1 News Colmar Brunton poll released just before it showed her party on 31 percent against Labour on 48 and able to govern alone at a pinch — andwith its natural partner the Green Party there as well, up an all-important point to 6 percent despite a rough couple of weeks.
Collins was combative and will have impressed some of the multitude of supporters the party has lost to Labour thanks to a successful pandemic response in Government, and more recently to ACT which gained again to 7 percent in last night's poll. Remember, the Nats were on 46 percent in this poll as recently as early February, against 41 percent for Labour . . . then came Covid-19, then a series of setbacks, embarrassments and two leadership changes for National.
Asked about the poll, Collins put the party's result — 1 point less than the last Colmar poll in late July, soon after she took over — down to the second lockdown halting campaign momentum, and pointed to the 14 percent undecided who National would be targeting.
Jacinda Ardern was measured and on top of detail, but relatively flat. Afterwards she said voters knew politics as a bloodsport was not her style, and that the debate felt like more of a “contested conversation, rather than an argument between political foes” . . . which earned another guffaw from Collins, who said she had really enjoyed herself, got “a lot of policy out there” and wished it had gone on longer.
Both leaders stressed that they had the plan New Zealand needed to recover from the economic shock of Covid-19, but there was little detail on those plans as the debate traversed key broader issues of climate change, infrastructure deficits, the housing crisis, poverty, inequality and job creation.
Collins played to her base on climate change, twice referencing New Zealand's small share of global greenhouse gas emissions (which are high per capita, because of our reliance on agriculture to earn a living in the world) and saying farmers felt bagged by Labour and the Greens.
Ardern responded with the need to collaborate on solutions, like they had done with the Zero Carbon Act, and for incentives to reduce emissions as well as the importance of a pumped hydro scheme for the country's renewable energy future. Collins said such a scheme would raise power prices, and ensured she had the last word on that.
