Advance voting begins next week. In another campaign that might have driven the parties into a frenzy – but instead, it’s been a muted seven days dominated by half-hearted scrapping over fiscal holes and economic costings. A change of government is extremely likely, and the remaining uncertainty is about the make-up and viability of that new right-wing coalition. But an energised performance from Chris Hipkins in the second leaders’ debate showed there’s still some fire in Labour’s belly.
Friday
Act pledged to roll back the ban on over-the-counter sales of cold medication containing pseudoephedrine. It’s not the biggest or most profound policy in the election, but I think it’s my favourite, because it’s a very simple change that will improve people’s lives with no costs or trade-offs.
In the first term of John Key’s National government, the Prime Minister declared war on methamphetamine. One of his first moves was to ban the over-the-counter sale of cold medicines containing pseudoephedrine, a useful chemical precursor in the synthesis of meth. The government and the pharmaceutical companies assured New Zealanders that they’d still have access to effective medication, and they continued to sell the cold and flu drugs in the same packages with the same names – but they now contained an active ingredient called phenylephrine.
Unfortunately, there is very little evidence that phenylephrine has any efficacy as a cold medication. In 2017, a Consumer investigation found most cold medications were a waste of money, and asked Medsafe to investigate the industry (it didn’t).
The price of meth rose slightly after the ban, but then dropped as the nation’s drug manufacturers found alternative sources for their precursors. And it’s continued to decline, even as the price of everything else rises. The police costed it at $800/gram in 2011, and $400/g by 2019.
So, that was a huge policy failure. And it says something rather troubling about the quality of our government that the failure hasn’t been addressed, either by Key’s government or the subsequent Ardern-Hipkins administration. It makes you wonder: how many government laws and regulations are either completely pointless or actively making the country worse in ways that are less visible than the pseudoephedrine ban?
Sunday
TVNZ’s Q+A show hosted the finance debate between Labour’s Grant Robertson and National’s Nicola Willis. It’s easy to imagine Chris Hipkins and Christopher Luxon cheerfully serving as senior politicians in each other’s cabinet: disagreeing on a handful of issues, but finding compromise or consensus on virtually everything. This is not the case with the finance leaders, both of whom are conviction politicians – at least by New Zealand’s vague standards – with very different ideas on how the government should work, and who seem to genuinely dislike each other.
There wasn’t an obvious winner in this debate – as usual, they fought each other to a standstill. But Willis pledged to resign as finance minister if her government failed to reach surplus in 2027. It was an unusual move. When political leaders make these resignation pledges, they’re usually removing a “barrier to voting” that their market research has identified in their polling data or focus groups: some segment of swing voters who are inclined to vote for them, but don’t because they’re worried Hipkins might introduce a wealth tax, or Luxon might ban abortion. So, the leader will try to take that barrier off the table by pledging resignation.
But leaders have agency over new taxes, abortion legislation or changes to superannuation. Even if she’s finance minister, Willis has limited control over the government’s books. If there’s a major disaster or some other high-cost occurrence, the government will borrow to pay for it and we’ll stay in deficit. Is she really going to resign if that happens? Or refuse to rebuild after an earthquake because she pledged to deliver a surplus? Presumably, she’ll simply insist that circumstances changed, which will degrade the credibility of future resignation pledges.
Monday
Today, Christopher Luxon effected to make a decision that had already been made for him. He agreed to form a government with Winston Peters, while simultaneously signalling that he’d prefer not to. Hilariously, this might make a coalition containing Peters more likely: a significant number of the voters supporting New Zealand First seem to come from Labour, which continues to decline in the polls. They’re switching because Luxon doesn’t want Peters in his government, reasoning that if they can’t have a Labour government, they’ll settle for a diluted National government tied down by Peters.
One political strategist told me that phase of the election campaign is dominated by “second-order effects”: people are changing their votes based on the predictions of the polls, rather than statements or actions of the parties or the politicians. This is a very MMP outcome. In standard two-party systems, most people lock in their votes as the election draws near – but under MMP, you’re voting for coalitions as well as parties, so the campaign becomes more fluid as the probable coalition comes into focus.
Tuesday
National released its welfare policy today. It would introduce a traffic-light system for beneficiaries to ensure they’re actively looking for work. If you’re on a benefit but fail to meet the mandatory check-ins or attend training courses, you would be relegated from green to orange status, which would require more frequent check-ins with Work and Income and regular attendance at job workshops. Failure to meet these requirements would trigger a red light, which would result in sanctions, such as benefit reductions and mandatory community work experience.
The people I know who’ve been on the Jobseeker benefit long-term fall into two broad categories: young men who simply prefer not to work, and people with chronic forms of physical and mental disability who can’t work. If National were able to target the first group and harass them off their benefits and into jobs, that’d be good for everyone. Unfortunately, Work and Income is a notoriously dysfunctional organisation, and under the last National government, it became synonymous with pointless bureaucratic cruelty against the very vulnerable people in its care. It’s hard to believe National has solved that problem over its six years of opposition.
Wednesday
The different polling companies have been fairly consistent throughout the campaign. The Newshub survey earlier this week and 1 News Verian result tonight both show National and Labour trending down, the Greens and New Zealand First trending up. We assume that the only viable government from these results is a National-Act-NZ First – but National and the Greens could form a government on these numbers. Most of the Greens’ voters would punish them by switching to Labour in the subsequent election, and many Green members would resign. But James Shaw and Marama Davidson would have enormous leverage during the negotiations. Would that be worse than allowing the formation of a National-Act-NZ First coalition?
Wednesday night saw the second leaders’ debate, hosted by Patrick Gower, who bullied Luxon and Hipkins into committing to an elaborate shopping list of policy commitments. As of last night, they will:
- Lower the age for bowel-cancer screening
- Deliver pay parity for all nurses
- Lift 80,000 more children out of poverty
- Look at taxing charities
- Support paid leave for menopausal women
- Keep the number of police higher than the number of gang members
It was a more competitive debate than the first, and most political commentators scored Hipkins the winner. Of course, the commentariat found Luxon was the unanimous winner of the first debate, and his party has declined in the polls since then.
