Governments rarely lose office because their policies are unpopular or not working. Far more often they are defeated because they have become arrogant and contemptuously dismissive of those promoting different views to theirs. 

Usually, this trend becomes pronounced during a government's second or third term, but there are already emerging signs of increasing arrogance and intolerance from the current government, barely two-thirds into its first term. This week alone there have been three such displays of the government's mounting arrogance and disregard for contrary views.

First was the Prime Minister’s refusal to discuss the government's decision regarding recognition of a Palestinian state, saying that all would be revealed when the Foreign Minister addressed the United Nations General Assembly next week. The New Zealand public will learn the government's decision on what is arguably one of the most sensitive foreign policy issues the country has faced in recent years at the same time as the rest of the world. The government seems more interested in pandering to the Foreign Minister’s vanity of wanting to be on the world stage than keeping New Zealanders in the loop. And the Prime Minister seems unbothered by that.

Then there was the Finance Minister's response to a group of Wellington clergy who sought a meeting with her over the government's approach to the genocide in Gaza. When they chained themselves together outside her electorate office in protest, she crudely dismissed them saying that the way to get a meeting with her was, not to "don an adult nappy and chain yourself to a door".

While she was fully within her rights to refuse their request for a meeting, it was nonetheless unbecoming of a senior Minister to deride them the way she did. It smacked of extraordinary arrogance and a dismissive contempt for which she should apologise.

But the government's arrogance is not just limited to National Ministers. ACT's David Seymour, the Deputy Prime Minister, rejected a call from actress Keisha Castle-Hughes for Māori to be automatically entitled to New Zealand citizenship, regardless of whether they were born here. Seymour correctly pointed out that such a move would be contrary to the rules currently applying to every other New Zealander. But then he added the gratuitous and unnecessary rejoinder that Castle-Hughes “frankly should stick to whale riding.”

In politics, tone is critical. Both Willis’s and Seymour’s remarks failed the tone test, coming across as cheap, nasty and smart aleck. Each could have made their points in a far more considered and reasonable, but no less effective, way. What Willis and Seymour may have considered to be mildly humorous responses looked instead to be sneering superiority.

Their comments, and the Prime Minister’s equally tone-deaf deference to his Foreign Minister’s ego on the Palestine announcement at the expense of the rest of New Zealand reflect the type of response more typical of governments becoming world-weary after a couple of terms in office. But this government is displaying the same symptoms, not even two years into its first term.

Voters turn off governments when they feel they have stopped listening and instead give off the air that they know best.  With the ongoing cost-of-living crisis still hitting many New Zealand households hard, and the economy teetering on the brink of returning to recession, the last thing the government can afford in the lead-up to the election is for voters to conclude that it no longer cares what they think. Yet that is precisely the response the above examples engender.

Times are undoubtedly unchallenging for the government at present, with significant reform programmes underway in health, education and the economy. The pressure is intensifying to produce some positive results before the election. This is even more reason for it to be showing more humility and understanding than this week’s incidents indicate.

People abandoned the last Labour-led government when its unctuous be-nice-to-everyone approach in the absence of policy achievement became overbearing. That should have been the signal to this government to go about its business with quiet determination to make a difference, rather than the strutting swagger it has developed.

The Prime Minister, who presented himself before the election as the solid, determined leader the country required, now needs to live up to that. He needs to re-focus his government, “laser like”, as he used to say, on addressing the things that matter. Otherwise, his government will be defined by side-shows like the continuous pandering to individual Ministerial egos and smart remarks that we are now seeing.

And if that feeling becomes entrenched, the government’s days may well be numbered.