DON'T PANIC!

The poll last night on One News was the first poll to show the two parties of the right in a position to narrowly take government and while there are chickens to be hatched it is safe to say that the poll will not discourage either party from the rhetoric and tactics they have been engaging in.

To those of us that were so relieved when Key finally left office and then when the government changed we were just overjoyed, including bloggers that may or may not have literally wept with joy - this is unfathomable.

Still there is no need for the left to panic; there is more than a year to go.

But it is time for the parties of the left to start considering what we will see from National and ACT for the next year and how they can counter it.

In a disastrous polling period for the leader of the opposition, and although the vote for both National as a party and Christopher Luxon as preferred PM were down, it was an excellent result for the possible coalition showing they are on target for the next election.

The tactics being employed by National and ACT are divisive and working. So no doubt they’ll not only keep doing it but they may feel as they are doing so well there may a case to go even harder.

Not the usual left/right trade off between taxation and social spending but fundamentally how we see each other, how we want to treat each other as a society.

Some people are bored with being part of the team of five million and all pulling together, many will no doubt be keen to get back to everyone for themselves and stuff the other guy. You can see why ACT are polling well.

Many have had enough of this “kindness” malarkey and are ready to get back to “us” and “them”. It is a perfect time for National to continue its divisive themes pitching one group of society against another. You know townies vs country folks, Maori vs non-Maori, hard working kiwi battlers vs “bottom dweller” spongers.

Get the ‘nefs off the couch was introduced at the party conference – what other policy would you focus on at a time of high employment? Makes no sense.

But any time is a good time for beneficiary bashing, and even better if you can target young, Maori (but don’t actually use the ‘M’ word), unemployed people. Target them with a stick and wait for the approving cheers.

The policies National are putting forward could only come from people that have never actually known someone who relied on welfare to get by. Clearly to them these people are an inconvenience, annoying in their very existence but also an opportunity to scare middle New Zealand who just know all those young people are on welfare and ram raiding shops without any consequence.

They are not policies looking to actually help people have better lives but to punish and dehumanize them for the entertainment, and votes, of their core supporters.

How long before one of them goes full Jenny Shipley and starts claiming that brown people are climbing through your window at night to rob you?

National will have a dilemma as to how hard to push the race card. On the one hand there is a rich vein of racism to tap into by having melodramatic outrage at co-governance, on the other hand most Kiwis are fair minded and can see it is ludicrous to equate the meager initiatives to ensure a Maori voice at the table as some great move to apartheid and a dawn of Maori superiority.

Go too easy on the race card so as not to alienate fair minded folks in the centre and they run the risk of those votes going to ACT who will be seen as the true champions of ensuring the status quo and that power stays just where it is - thank you very much.

I posted recently about the large number of vacancies National will have on their party list firstly through attrition and secondly because they will have a lot more MPs than they currently do after the next election. Labour should go over the background of these people with a fine toothed comb.

Especially given the debacle with Sam Uffindell and his fake apology for beating up a kid only given when he was entering politics. You can assume those on the right famous for Dirty Politics tactics are already investigating any candidates on the left.

It makes you wonder, if with the background he has the Tauranga selection committee thought Sam was the best bet how bad were the backgrounds of the candidates of other ethnicities? I'm joking, of course there weren't any.

National do face a number of risks that could influence their role in the next government.

Further scandals with candidates or current MPs, things the religious fundamentalists already on their benches might continue to say. They will also be nervous after the performance of the last fortnight that voters who may be unhappy with the current lot are seeing that Luxon is certainly no Key.

National will be wary of Labour competing hard in the middle, and ACT picking up the Trump type voters here - or worse lots of those votes from people who are angry with the government being wasted on fringe parties who don’t get into parliament.

ACT should keep doing what they are doing; they are the only party that seems to have identified specific trigger issues and targeted their message at voters open to them, as we have seen overseas. You would think politics 101 but the other parties seem quite poor at actually doing it.

Election year tax cuts can be easily countered by Labour, certainly it would be a no-brainer to adjust the tax brackets for inflation. Beyond this they could offer a broader tax package that would for example see those earning below $100k pay less tax, those earning more than $150k pay more tax, and those in between pay the same as they currently do.

Make it really clear that the majority, including Christopher Luxon’s “squeezed middle”, will be better off whereas under National’s tax cuts the majority, including those who need it most, will get a pittance.

Labour will need to determine the extent to which they are willing to die in a ditch over policies like the co-governance aspects to the Three Waters or Local Government legislation. It would be appalling to have to give into the dog whistle politics of the right, but is losing government over those issues a stand they want to take?

They have a similar risk to National that in focusing on voters at the centre where the election overall is won, they bleed votes to their coalition partner. Supporters disgruntled that after a term with essentially unlimited power more has not been done to address equality, housing affordability and climate change.

The Greens should focus really hard on a few key issues to differentiate them from Labour, as ACT has with National. Chloe Swarbrick should be on every student campus promising universal student allowances for example. Target the youth vote really hard and take that generation, and future ones, with them to build on top of what, even in this polling period with the leadership debacle, is clearly a solid foundation to build on to become a 15% party.

Certainly the likely outcome at the next election will be a much greater influence from third parties, either ACT or the Greens will play a major role in the next coalition government. So of course we will get the accompanying narrative too. A vote for National is a vote for ACT; a vote for Labour is a vote for the Greens.

How can we even consider departing from what some consider to be the greatest leader of New Zealand in our lifetime? A leader recognized around the world be it for her handling of COVID or her actions in the wake of the Christchurch terrorist action?

Who in their right mind would consider getting rid of that leadership to go back to a corporate talking head and stuffed suit, who having seen Q&A this week makes Key look like a world class statesman, and highly articulate, by comparison? It is mind blowing.

Such will be the closeness of the next election that the supporters of the block that loses are going to be devastated. So what can you do if you really don’t want to see a change in government, if that thought physically sickens you?

Well probably start with how you’re engaging with that friend or relative who is considering voting NACT. Maybe don’t tell they are a greedy, probably racist, self-centered jerk for doing so - even if you think it.

Arm yourself with information as to the things this government has actually achieved, where we would have been after another 5 years of centre-right government, what the implications of National’s tax cuts for the rich are on social services and those who will face austerity to pay for them.

Talk calmly and clearly if they have drunk the Kool Aid. If they start parroting that the government has destroyed the country maybe pull back the curtains to reveal the country actually intact, much the same as ever, and not in fact a smoldering post-apocalyptic ruin.

I guess the one thing we can be certain of is there will be a lot fewer photo opportunities with the All Blacks than traditionally occurs near an election.

Supporter on the left shouldn’t worry too much; it is just one poll, one with a dubious methodology having 50% of respondents signed up and not random. There are plenty of opportunity for election year policies, scandals, and debate performances – and those debates will be a massacre.

This isn’t even close to being over, there is much to be done!