Confidence in National led coalition plummeting

It’s a damning chart. The National Party, not even two years into its first term of office is trailing the left-leaning parties Labour, Greens and Te Pati Maori on all but three issues across a range of separate policy areas.

But nor is it surprising. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon from Day 1 has shown none of the charisma, people friendly persona of any of his recent predecessors. Even former Prime Minister Bill English, whom many thought was dour and boring in the one year he was Prime Minister seemed to be more empathetic with the broader population.

Nor has Mr Luxon, his Minister of Finance Nicola Willis or any of his lieutenants – Minister of Housing Chris Bishop, Attorney General Paul Goldschmidt, Minister of Health Simeon Brown or Minister of Education Erica Stanford, among all the others – have shown significant ability to understand the mood of the population. Are they even trying?

And it gets worse still, Minister for Regulation, David Seymour is starting to attract negative attention from – of all organizations – the Taxpayers Union. Having initially actively applauded his efforts to cut what they considered to be unnecessary spending on the public service through ruthless slash and burning of jobs and roles at various agencies, they have been less than impressed to find out about the inefficiencies that some of the policies that the Government he is a part of are causing. Maybe it was not such a great idea after all.

The other party in the coalition, New Zealand First, remains steady in the polls, but how much longer can Winston Peters genuinely remain in Parliament before his health gives up or the public make it clear to him, his time is done? How much longer are the mainstream prepared to listen to Shane Jones attacking the tourism industry, to the other minions attacking our valued ethnic communities and in particular, our rainbow community – such negativity and hatred can only last so long.

Of the ones that National still lead on, all are considered – for reasons I will never quite understand – to be conservative strong points, namely economics, defence, and justice. In a country waking up to the failure of privatized prisons, and developing a wariness for overseas entanglements alongside increasingly questionable allies even these might be in question if National are unable to sell their policies better than they currently are.

But are any of these are the real reasons for the public discontent?

New Zealanders wanted an end to what many thought was “rampant wokism”, a general disgruntlement with anything left leaning. They wanted Labour, the Greens and Te Pati Maori gone, but seemed to have not seriously thought about the rather odious messaging from the right about how they would achieve lower living costs, lower crime rates and a better economy.

Violent crime is continuing, even though ram raids may have dropped. The cost of basic foodstuffs at the supermarket is skyrocketing despite the Government talking about making it easier to build supermarkets. The economy is in the doldrums with an exodus in progress to Australia across all sectors of the economy.

Not exactly encouraging stuff is it?

In the meantime, Labour are promising that their tax policy will be released before Christmas and add that broader policy will flow after that. The timing, which seems a bit odd to me over a year out from the election, when election policy is normally all done in the few months prior to the election date, may backfire on Labour, as people might have started to forget what it was that they dis/like by the time the election rolls around.

It seems likely now that Labour are going to stick with Chris Hipkins as Leader, at least until the election – which he will be desperate to win, as Leaders of the Opposition who lose generally leave Parliament within months, if not immediately resigning on the night. Will he have greater confidence than the 2023 edition of him, who had no policy platform whatsoever and led Labour and the left-wing of N.Z. politics to one of their heavier defeats in the M.M.P. era? Labour will certainly hope so, but whether or not New Zealand agrees with them will not be known until the election.

But given the increasingly poor performance of the worst Government I have ever seen in this country, they could do worse.