The polls come at a time when Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s first media session of the year was marred by questions about Act’s David Seymour – the man set to become Deputy PM in May.
Opposition leader Chris Hipkins has called for Seymour’s removal as a minister, over what he said was a “pattern of behaviour”.
Within the past week, Luxon has said Seymour’s 2022 letter on behalf of Philip Polkinghorne was “ill-advised”. Seymour quickly hit back, telling RNZ: “What’s ill-advised is commenting when you don’t know all the facts and criticising a local MP for doing their work, which is standing up for their constituents.”
Newstalk ZB political editor Jason Walls told The Front Page that Seymour has been a “big old headache” for Luxon.
“I’ll just say it straight off the bat, this isn’t a ‘coalition-destroying’ spat that Seymour and Luxon are having. Yes, it looks a little bit silly. Yes, it looks like they’re on different pages on things. But, it’s not going to bring down the Government,” Walls said.
“It’s fine when David Seymour gets into the weeds about some National policy issue that he doesn’t like. That is all absolutely fine. In fact, it’s encouraged because it means the base still sees that these parties have not lost their identity.
“But this is a whole other level. Frankly, it’s about respect, and David Seymour is not showing the Prime Minister respect,” he said.
Of the 1000 respondents to the 1News-Verian poll, 50% believed the country was headed in the wrong direction, 39% thought it was headed in the right direction while the remaining 11% didn’t know or didn’t say.
The Salvation Army’s “State of the Nation 2025″ released today shows New Zealand has rising unemployment, with more than 400,000 people needing welfare support in December 2024 – the highest number since the 1990s.
Food insecurity among families with children has also risen sharply, with half of all Pacific children reported as going without food often or sometimes.
Walls said figures like this show why people feel discontent and think the country is moving in the wrong direction.
“If you’re the Government, those are terrible numbers for you because you don’t win elections when people think your country is going in the wrong direction and you’re in charge of turning that metric around,” Walls said.
“It does have a bit of a silver lining for the coalition Government because we have yet to see the full impact of the interest rates from the Reserve Bank coming down being fully felt by New Zealanders. It takes anywhere between six to 12 months, even 18 months, to fully filter through,” he said.
Listen to the full episode to hear more about how the coalition government can turn the polling numbers around, and how the left bloc could increase momentum.
The Front Page is a daily news podcast from the New Zealand Herald, available to listen to every weekday from 5am. The podcast is presented by Chelsea Daniels, an Auckland-based journalist with a background in world news and crime/justice reporting who joined NZME in 2016.
You can follow the podcast at iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
