There’s nothing like a positive poll to boost the mood ahead of a caucus retreat.
The Taxpayers’ Union-Curia poll, released last week, put Labour (30.9%) ahead of National (29.6%) — the first time this polling outfit has done so since April 2023.
Also encouraging for Labour was 53% of poll respondents believed the country was heading in the wrong direction compared with 39% who thought the opposite.
Labour’s apparent bump in support was not reflected in the preferred Prime Minister rankings for leader Chris Hipkins, who had dropped 4.6 percentage points to 15.3%. National leader Christopher Luxon held a commanding lead at 24.5%, albeit dropping 2.6 points from the last poll.
Support for their leader aside, MPs are buoyed by the poll as they converge on Palmerston North for their caucus retreat today, one day after National held its own retreat in Hamilton ahead of Luxon’s State of the Nation address from Auckland later today.
Many are quick to note one poll is just that; a rough snapshot of the country’s mood that has every chance of changing.
Hipkins, who traditionally doesn’t jump to place too much stock in a single poll, is using its results and those of previous polls as proof the public wants to hear more criticism of the Government from Labour after its so-called listening tour in 2024 to hear from disgruntled voters.
“The polling is also telling you that the public has started to lose faith in the Government after only a year in office, and I think that’s pretty unusual for the Government to lose support as steeply as they have,” Hipkins told the Herald.
“I think there’s a lot of Kiwis now who feel like they’ve seen enough of this Government and so they want to hear a bit more critique from us, so we’ll dial that up a bit this year.”
Hipkins said that would be one of his key messages to his caucus, alongside a warning against being distracted from core issues by what he deems to be “culture wars”, citing the Treaty Principles Bill and transgender rights in sport.
“We should always be who we are and we should always speak up for those groups who rely on us to speak up for them.
“We’ve actually got to continue to focus on the basics as well, so things like the state of the economy, the rate of unemployment, healthcare, education, those kind of core areas that people want to see the see the Government and us focusing on.”
In the weeks and months following Labour’s defeat in the 2023 election, much was made of Hipkins’ fate as leader and the potential for the party to follow the example of previous caucus’ of both Labour and National that were plagued by leadership challenges, infighting and leaking.
Luxon uses it as a regular attack line against Hipkins, taunting the former Prime Minister that MP Kieran McAnulty was waiting in the wings to take his place. McAnulty has repeatedly said he is not seeking the leadership and has agreed to be the party’s campaign chairman for the 2026 election.
However, public signs of infighting within the caucus have been largely absent from 2024.
“2024 was an incredibly good one in that regard for us, and it could have been a very messy one,” Hipkins said.
“I think that the challenge will be to sustain that for another year because election years tend to be quite unifying for political parties.
“This year will be the tester for us. We’ve had a really good year last year, if we can do that again this year, I think that sets us up very, very well for next year.”
Acknowledging predictions of Labour’s demise were already being made, Hipkins believed it would not come to pass.
“They’ll try very hard to suggest that infighting is already happening in order to provoke that infighting starting and like last year, I don’t think they will succeed.”
Hipkins claimed a positive caucus culture had been fostered through promoting “disagreement and dissent”, which he said was absent in previous Labour Oppositions.
“As a result of creating that environment, people don’t feel the need to kind of break ranks because we’ve created a genuinely collegial environment where people get to have their say internally in shaping what our message is going to be.”
Adam Pearse is a political reporter in the NZ Herald Press Gallery team, based at Parliament. He has worked for NZME since 2018, covering sport and health for the Northern Advocate in Whangārei before moving to the NZ Herald in Auckland, covering Covid-19 and crime.