One day you've been re-elected as your nation's leader with an historic level of support for your party and overwhelming personal poll ratings, then suddenly a few months later you can't seem to get anything right, your friends are rapidly disappearing and you're forced to contemplate making up with a sworn enemy. Tracy Watkins asks whether we are witnessing John Key's midterm blues?. She reports on a school visit yesterday where Key 'asked a group of school kids if they dreamed of being prime minister, Mr Key told them: "Frankly, the way it's going at the moment you can have the job". Watkins says that Key's demeanour of late means 'there is no doubt that the prime minister is more jaded than the man who packed his bags for Premier House 3½ years ago.'
National's coalition prospects are undoubtedly contributing to Key's problems, and Audrey Young reports that, when questioned, Key said that before the election the National Party would reassess their self-imposed 2008 ban on working with New Zealand First - see: National to review working with NZ First. Young also points out the irony that the coalition partner which has given them the least grief lately - the Maori Party - actually needs to distance itself from National to survive - see: John Key's problem with partners.
The National Party Board minutes that Trevor Mallard has gleefully revealed may not have been leaked but instead appear to have been sent to the wrong address, according to the Prime Minister - see: Key suggests leaked minutes were stolen. If so, it will be a relief that they weren't deliberately leaked, but it doesn't reflect well on the party's management skills.
It was entirely predictable that any policy to do with contraceptives and beneficiaries would generate a lot of headlines and comment. Vernon Small and Claire Trevett both claim the policy, along with the changes to refugee policy, are diversions from National's bad news stories and a trap for Labour. Small says that National are trying to dig 'a politically correct man trap for Labour to wander into' by raising emotive issues that they know crucial swinging voters will agree with National on but that Labour's liberal sensitivities won't be able to resist attacking - see: Labour resists National's trap. While Small thinks that Labour has so far avoided the trap, Trevett says 'the parties on the left fall for it every time'. Trevett compares Metiria Turei's 'hands off my womb' reaction to the Greens 2008 Population Policy which proposed an upper limit on population size and advocated better access to Family Planning and education about family size and spacing - see: Minister sets off collision of taboos.
The idea that the contraception policy is a deliberate political sideshow is backed up by Tim Watkin's insightful Teen breeders a national scourge! Time for Mythbusters. Watkin looks at the actual numbers of teenage beneficiary 'breeders' and points out that there are twice as many women aged over 55 on the DPB as there are teens.
