The post-RWC zombie shuffle has turned into a permanent game-changer, writes Jane Clifton.
John Key shuffles to victory. Not really.
All of a sudden, the two major parties have the same new election campaign slogan: last one to grab the third rail with both hands and post yourself doing it on YouTube is a wussy blouse. For a campaign that portended less a sleepwalk than a zombie shuffle to a seemingly inevitable result in the post-Rugby World Cup daze, this one is going off its medication in a most welcome fashion. Labour was the first to adopt self-sacrifice chic, with its promise, effectively, to make its wage-slave voter base work two years longer, for less money in the hand. But National plunged right in after it, making a virtue out of asset sales, and toughening up on benefits.What a relief. For a long time it seemed voters were so distracted and/or disempowered by the enormity of the dark forces menacing our economy that politicians couldn’t see the point in trying to engage them.
Labour’s eat-the-rich mantra, and National’s “muddling through” approach suggested this would be a line-of-least-resistance campaign all round. Now it’s clear that even if the poll gap between Labour and National doesn’t close up enough to make it a real race, this campaign is going to be a permanent game-changer.
Thanks to Labour, we are on course for compulsory pension savings, and the age of superannuation entitlement will be chipped out of its concrete bunker. Equally, capital gains tax will no longer be the crucifix-and-garlic deal it has always been supposed to be. Labour’s mild, slow-acting prescription has put the tax-broadening option on the agenda without giving voters the vapours.
It’s a remarkable thing to see a political party with seemingly little chance of getting to the Beehive nevertheless changing the political landscape from the Opposition benches – and at the height of its rival party’s popularity.
Its superannuation policy might not win it many more votes, but Labour has garnered respect and attention the party sorely needed. It has also caught National flatfooted. John Key’s almost superstitious ruling out of changes to super entitlement now looks rather gutless, even though it’s understandable in historical terms. National’s reversal on the superannuation surtax in the 90s caused it no end of political damage – damage that proved permanent, and manifested itself most nightmarishly in the person of Winston Raymond Peters. It’s a sound political rule that you don’t muck about with the elderly – who have few life options to cope when the rules are changed on them, but who do have a vote.
However, Labour’s phase-up of the entitlement age is calibrated to cause minimal casualties. And it simply acknowledges what we all know. On its current course, the system is unsustainable. And whatever the actuarial truth about Super, more long-term savings in the economy are vital, and other countries with compulsory schemes are miles better off than we are.
Labour’s strategic flourish has come at a discount, though, since it effectively gave its own leader an atomic wedgie just as he was poised to get serious traction on the campaign agenda. This business of making a virtue out of “not running a presidential campaign” was as good as signalling to voters that the party hierarchy had no confidence in Phil Goff’s ability to impress them. Worse, it looked like a sort of double-blind manipulation of voters. If you have to spell out what your cunning strategy is and how it’s supposed to work – guess what? It’s no longer a cunning strategy. It’s a bit like the problem with the proposed “Wellywood” sign: if you have to point out that you’re cool then, by definition, you’re not.
It’s not that this isn’t a sound strategy, to concentrate on policy ahead of leadership. Of course John Key has exponentially more “presidential” firepower than Goff. And as we’ve seen with the Super debate Labour has touched off, the campaign can be about policy rather than personality. But in spelling out to the media that Goff would not be on its billboards, would not be given the platform of a traditional campaign launch rally and would not be treated as a prime campaign asset, Labour’s strategists committed a cardinal sin.
They disrespected their leader. Goff was all set to be the plucky underdog in this race, a figure New Zealanders always understand and empathise with. Now he’s the underdog within his own party. That’s way too confusing. Voters are now entitled to wonder whether the party, or forces within it, are setting Goff up to fail in order to pave the way for a new leadership order. So if – and it’s not a huge stretch – National’s vote took a sudden hit and Labour was in a position to form the next Government, how safe would Goff’s position be? Probably not very.
Perversely, the plan to keep Phil tucked away in the pinny pocket has ensured him far more intense media scrutiny than otherwise. And he has stood up to it remarkably well. But with it being tougher than ever to judge the solidarity of the senior party behind him, the case for voting Labour is still hedged about with doubts.
Not that that’s necessarily good news for the Nats. They are in serious danger of massively overdoing the Key factor. His happy chappy routine – genuine as it is – will not appeal forever. He can hardly be expected to run screaming from opportunities to pose with hobbits and All Blacks, but there’s come to be something a little cheap and inappropriately cheerful about his face beaming from every National billboard.
Still, there’s no doubt that when he stops grinning and starts talking, he’s National’s best salesman. It’s not quite on a par with selling ice to Eskimos, but his stewardship this past week in explaining National’s asset-sales policy is up there with getting a polar bear to take at least a passing interest in a parka. It’s a golden rule of politics here that voters hate asset sales, but arguing that the partial privatisation of the power companies to raise capital for their development will result in the Crown having more, rather than less value on its balance sheet was smart – and puzzlingly overdue – advocacy.
The Air New Zealand analogy Key used is apposite. Once a basket case, Air NZ is now a prized asset – and it only got that way because we allowed private investment to fatten it up. We have capital-hungry assets that will lose value and even function if they don’t have serious money spent on them. But we can’t afford to feed them, because we’d have to borrow even more from overseas lenders to do so. Which is, of course, how we, and much of the developed world, got into the pickle we’re in now. Sadly, none of this logic extends a solution to what we’re supposed to do with “assets” like KiwiRail, which will probably never make a positive contribution to the balance sheet, however much we spend on them of our own or other people’s money.
The other enduring problem for National on this sticky wicket is that few voters trust any politician in respect to the “partial” bit of the deal. And when a major party can’t even decide whether its own leader is an asset or not, and tries to partially privatise him on the quiet, that’s probably understandable.