Hipkins has no strategy

But will Peters gatecrash Luxon's party?

Successful strategy means deciding the time and place of battle – or defining the terms of political debate. Knowing that your time, options and resources are limited, the ability to set the agenda, or the terms of engagement, are what counts in achieving bigger goals.

Chris Hipkins has no effective strategy (so far) because his opponents are defining the terms of debate. The election debate has formed around:

• Cost of living

• Law and order

• Tax

• Co-governance.

On each of these, putting aside whether you agree with them, the right has been setting the agenda, while Hipkins is reacting rather than initiating. On co-governance Labour introduced changes, notably in health, without fostering public awareness and support, as they were too scared to have that debate out in the open. They occupied territory that they were neither able nor willing to defend, and now it’s under attack.

And Hipkins’s team have let him down. Losing his justice minister following her involvement in a collision with a parked car, after drinking alcohol, didn’t help with control of the law and order agenda. (Now that she’s facing charges, at least we can say no one’s above the law.) Losing his revenue minister following the announcement to ditch capital gains or wealth tax exposed a split within cabinet and with the other left parties, and it strengthened the right’s voice on tax policy.

For Hipkins to have taken control of the tax agenda, for example, could have meant leading the left by setting out a strong rationale for a tax switch, along the lines explored before the Budget, and building support for it in the centre, rather than capitulating.

Instead, National’s finance spokesperson Nicola Willis is using Labour like a punching bag. And National can link their tax cuts to cost-of-living relief. All that Christopher Luxon needs to do is keep repeating John Key’s mantra – ‘strong and stable government’ – and he’s on a path to winning.

The thorn in the side for National, however, is not so much Labour as New Zealand First. Luxon’s been talking as if Winston Peters isn’t really there. But what are NZ First’s chances of making it back into parliament?

NZ First spent a term in the wilderness from 2008 to 2011, somewhat like the present. At around this stage in the electoral cycle (two and a half months out) in 2011, NZ First were polling around 2 to 3%, well shy of the 5% threshold. Immediately before the election, only one poll put them over 5%. At the election, however, NZ First won 6.6% of the party vote and eight seats. They’d campaigned with the aim of being an opposition party – and succeeded.

Compared with 2011, then, NZ First’s current polling at around 3 to 4% isn’t bad. This time, they don’t have the distraction of a Rugby World Cup tournament on shore. And Winston is doing his usual town hall meetings up and down the country, rarking the audiences up with his special brand of sly old dog, his digs at political correctness and his claim that, after three decades, only he knows how to ‘keep them honest’.

NZ First are targetting the disaffected ‘freedom’ minority that opposed vaccines and vaccine mandates and that now viscerally hates Labour for putting us through all that. So Winston has to employ his best chicanery to explain why he put Labour into office in 2017. Oh, he says, he had to avoid the chaos that was going on in the National caucus. Judith Collins was threatening to roll Bill English, he reckons. And anyway, Labour lied to him, and he won’t let them do that again.

Winston’s cameo appearance at the anti-mandate protest outside parliament in early 2022 is now paying political dividends. Being temporarily trespassed by the Speaker only helped.

None of the far-right parties looks likely to get anywhere near 5%, and we could thank Peters for keeping them out of the game.

Luxon would be unwise to refuse outright to work with NZ First, as they’re on the pathway back and – depending on the numbers – National and ACT may have to swallow their pride on election night.

That’s how politics happens. It helps, I find, to keep a sense of humour.

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Update: The Labour Party will nominate list MP Tamati Coffey, to replace former minister Kiri Allan, as their candidate for the East Coast electorate. Coffey was previously the member for Waiariki, before being defeated by Rawiri Waititi of Te Pāti Māori.

East Coast was won by National’s Anne Tolley in five successive elections, until the big landslide to Labour in 2020. Coffey is a strong candidate, especially in that region, but National will fancy winning it back as a part of its provincial rural heartland. East Coast is now ‘one to watch’ on election night.