This may be a blessing in disguise for the parties of the centre left as it immediately threw light on just what policies might come with a right-wing government heavily dependent on the Act Party.
National Party leader Christopher Luxon was immediately driven to disown two of Act’s headline policies, that of repealing the Zero Carbon Act and passing legislation defining the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi.
Expect more of this from Luxon. Act’s policy also includes putting interest back on student loans and abolishing the winter energy payment made to beneficiaries and superannuitants.
There is more to come.
There will be a question concerning whether National would cease contributions to the sovereign wealth fund known as the Cullen Fund as National did in its last term in office.
This was just one of the measures the Key National Government adopted to fund its tax cuts for the well-off which included increasing the goods and services tax (GST) to 15 per cent (after having denied any intention to do so), reducing the government contribution to early childhood education and selling off state houses.
Luxon will face questions on all of these matters when National finally confirms its tax policy.
A retirement from the National Party and one effective dumping of a former National Party minister are losses the party does not need.
Former National Party leader Todd Muller will not be standing again and will leave a deficit in the party that will not be easily replaced. Unlike several of his colleagues, Muller is a climate change believer and managed to get his party to support the same Zero Carbon Act that the Act Party wants to do away with.
His major contribution was to normalise mental health problems as something real that we should not be afraid of openly discussing.
He put his resignation from the National Party leadership after fewer than two months down to mental stress.
This was courageous and unprecedented. During my term as Labour Party president, a Labour MP suffered what my mother would have called a “nervous breakdown”. This was not allowed to be discussed at the time and not mentioned when the MP recovered and returned to duty.
Thanks to Todd Muller, this situation has changed for the better. He will be missed but not, I hope, forgotten.
Former National Party minister Michael Woodhouse resigned from the National Party’s list in protest at his low ranking. He will, however, again stand in the safe Labour seat of Dunedin. He has little chance of winning this seat, so this effectively means he has retired from politics. Woodhouse’s reaction to his effective dumping obscured any positive publicity National might have gained from its list announcement.
Woodhouse was a solid performer and should have been retained for his ministerial experience.
These developments amount, in my view, to the general election remaining too close to call.
I have become increasingly dubious about political polls particularly when we see the degree of dissonance between individual polls we have recently witnessed.
When three partners, including myself, launched telephoned-based polling in 1987 with Insight Market Research Ltd (now Talbot Mills Research) interviews were entirely conducted over landlines as virtually every home had one. The exception was Māori households, making polling in Māori electorates chronically inaccurate.
The dominance of cellphones and the widespread penetration of the internet has contributed to the demise of landlines and complicated what was a straightforward method of taking the political temperature.
Some polling companies have resorted to randomly dialling cellphone numbers to get their samples and others are using internet panels.
None of the published polls now use the same method of capturing their samples, meaning that comparisons between polls are now fraught.
The recent Spanish general election where the Socialist Party did as much as 10 per cent better than polls predicted is just one example of the difficulties facing pollsters.
One polling company will get the election roughly right. Only election day will tell.
Mike Williams grew up in Hawke’s Bay and is a former Labour Party president
