On Labour's Soft Support In The Polls

Scoop

15 hours ago

Currently, Labour is a receptacle for the widespread public dis-illusionment with the Luxon administration. However, this week's poll results– which would deliver a hung Parliament in which the centre-right and centre left blocs were tied on 61 seats – flatters to deceive Labour about its chances in Election 2026. Australia can offer an illuminating example of this popularity-by-default during the year before an election. Consider the fate of Peter Dutton's Liberal-led coalition.
When voters were solely focussed on the many failings of the Albanese government, Dutton's fortunes rose, such that he looked like the prime minister in waiting. That mood lasted until January 2025, when the election year kicked off in earnest. Voters then began looking at their political options through a different lens. With Dutton, they began asking: is this really the guy, and is this the party, and are these the policies we want to elect ? And the answer was no, not now, not ever.
Meaning: once the public begins to take a hard look at the options before them, some of Labour's preceding soft support will ebb away, since it is largely based on an anything-but -this attitude towards the incumbent. That situation will change, as Dutton found to his cost. Albanese managed to make this year's Australian election campaign all about Peter Dutton, and hardly at all about his own track record. Similarly, National will be trying to make next year's election campaign all about scaring the electorate out of its wits about the prospect of a Labour/Greens/TPM governing arrangement.
Labour is giving every sign of walking straight into this trap. To date, it has made no effort to look like a confident alternative government in waiting. It seems happy to be a blank state. It has put forward no new policies, and has actively distanced itself from the policies being put forward by the Greens, the partner that Labour needs if it is to govern at all.
On the left, we are seeing nothing like the collusion we have seen on the right, where National is willing to let ACT set the policy agenda, because ACT and National have the same goals in mind, and serve the same corporate interests.
Quite a different story on the centre-left. It is unclear whether Labour agrees with the Greens about anything of substance, including the pace of change required on the policies that do overlap. Sure, they compete for centre left votes. But ultimately, they're supposed to be allies. Routinely however, Labour treats the Greens as a liability that it needs to keep in check, rather than as an electoral asset.
No wonder this week then, that the Greens were talking up their role in driving a future Labour-led government. In doing so, it was mimicking ACT's role in the coalition government, and was also trying to draw Labour into acting like an alternative government that has joint solutions to offer for the public mood of discontent. By refusing to take any policy positions now, Labour makes it more likey that its belated revelations will become THE focus of next year's election campaign, rather than the coalition government's manifest failures.
Running scared
Some of Labour's current obfuscation borders on the ridiculous. Apparently, Labour has spent the past 18 months debating whether to adopt a capital gains tax – even though this was settled party policy eleven years ago, when David Cunliffe took it into the 2014 election. Since then we have had the Cullen Tax Working Group mull over its merits and endorse it, as have any number of economic experts, both here and overseas. What's been left to debate?
With elephants, the gestation period is only 22 months. Currrenty, nearly six generations of elephants have been conceived and born since Labour first tried to convince the public to embrace a capital gains tax in an election year. Yet all outward appearances, Labour still hasn't quite made up its mind.
Labour's skittish tendency to treat its core policies as hand grenades likely to blow up in its face at any moment, has also been evident with regard to the oil and gas exploration ban. When in government, Labour immediately enacted the ban (a) for climate change reasons and (b) in the knowledge that the ban was largely symbolic, since no untapped deposits appear to exist, and no multinational companies seem willing to go to the trouble and expense of conducting further searches in our waters. (That's why the Luxon government is currently offering Big Oil $200 million + in subsidies, to get them to try, try, try again.)
Righto. So would Labour re-instate the ban, if re-elected? You'd think this would be a no-brainer. Yet despite her eloquent criticism of the Luxon government's rescinding of the ban, Labour's energy spokesperson Megan Woods twice declined in this interview to say whether Labour would re-instate it. A few days later, she told Carbon News that a new Labour government would re-instate the ban, but would also honour any exploration pernits issued in the interim. Why? If you truly want to deter fossil fuel exploration, let that risk be on their own heads. Taxpayers will have already paid them those huge subsidies to cover their risk.
It really shouldn't be this hard to figure out where Labour stands on issues that should be a slam dunk for a centre-left party. It bodes badly for Labour's ability to emerge from its corner next year and (a) confidently promote its own policies, and (b) not run in fright from the policies of its partners. Just as well Michael Joseph Savage isn't trying to convince this lot to create a welfare safety net.
Footnote: All the same, there has been hints aplenty dropped to prep the media for the news that Labour is likely to be taking a capital gains tax into the next election, and has rejected the wealth tax proposed earlier this year in the Greens alternative budget.
If and when Labour do publicly commit to a capital gains tax, it would be good to know that they have prepped themselves on how to handle the question that tripped up David Cunliffe in the leaders debate in 2014. Would the tax apply, John Key asked, to family homes held in trusts? The answer that eluded Cunliffe on the night but which was later clarified by David Parker went like this:
'If it is a principal family home there's no capital gains tax payable," [Parker] told Radio New Zealand's Morning Report programme. "If it's not a principal family home then there will be, although if it's a holiday home and it's passed through the generations that doesn't attract a capital gains tax either."
The capital gains tax policy is meant to have a symbolic value. Yet these wrinkles and exemptions suggest that a capital gains tax is not going to provide Labour with a clear and ringing expression of its core identity, heading into the next election. It is a policy devised by policy wonks, and will be mainly of interest to pundits and economists. Moreover, back in 2018 when such a tax was being seriously proposed (by the Cullen Tax Working Group) as a necessary corrective to an economy wedded to housing speculation, bank economists were claiming that such a tax would cut house prices by 10%.
In today's depressed housing market, a CGT wouldn't have such a serious impact on house prices. But that won't stop National and ACT from painting it as a tax grab likely to reduce in value the main investment/retirement asset held dear by many New Zealanders. That's not a good reason to abandon the policy. For decades, this country has suffered from the extent to which our domestic economy has consisted of us buying and selling houses to each other, for the untaxed capital gains.
At the same time, one can feel worried about Labour's ability to convince voters that if a capital gains tax does impose some pain, this pain will (a) be only fleeting (b) be shared equally and (c) will be outweighed by tangible benefits. So far, Labour has shown no such ability. Under Chris Hipkins, Labour was cringingly risk averse when in government, and it has carried that over into opposition.
Big Thief Kills It (Again)
Breakup songs are a dime a dozen, but post-breakup songs that deal with what kind of relationship (friendship?) is now possible - after time and distance have taken the edge off heartbreak - are much more rare. I'm guessing, but on this new Big Thief track, Adrianne Lenker seems to be re-addressing her former partner Indigo Sparks, two years or more after they went their separate ways.
Earlier Lenker songs ('Zombie Girl' and 'Anything' in particular) were inspired by her raw feelings for Sparks. This new song is more ruefully optimistic:
To measure the distance that's been travelled, here's how things were for Lenker back at the time, on 'Anything:'