This week’s Taxpayers Union/Curia poll attracted far more attention than a single poll should. This was principally because it recorded support for Labour now being below what it was at the time of its defeat at the last election. However, at their best, polls are but a snapshot in time, with the long-term trends they disclose being far more significant than the individual result. So, it would be unwise to treat this Taxpayers Union/Curia poll, or any other single poll for that matter, in isolation from the wider context.

The significance of the Taxpayers Union/Curia poll is that it confirms a trend that has been apparent since about April – and that is bad news for Labour. Across all the polls since then, support for Labour has been in steady decline, while support for National has risen ever so slightly. The main beneficiary of the fall in Labour’s support appears to have been the Green Party, and more latterly, the Opportunity Party.

Given that the fall-off in support for Labour has been clear from all the public (and presumably Labour’s private) polling for nearly six months, Labour leader Chris Hipkins’ response that he was just getting into campaign stride was more than a little surprising, to say the least. There are, after all, just over eight weeks until the election. Advance voting begins in six weeks, and just over 45% of voters voted early at the 2023 election. So, the time for Hipkins to hit the decks running is rapidly running out.

It is becoming all too reminiscent of Labour’s unsuccessful and lack-lustre 2023 campaign. As the incumbent government at the time, Labour was fighting an essentially defensive campaign, both regarding its record since 2017, and, like today, strong attacks from National and its allies about hidden tax agendas. Labour’s current floundering in the wake of National’s somewhat inaccurate nine new taxes campaign has a strong sense of déjà vu about it. Compounding Labour’s difficulties then was Hipkins’ being laid low with Covid19 in the latter stages of the campaign.

Although Hipkins must shoulder the primary responsibility for Labour’s current shortcomings, he is not solely to blame. The bigger problem is the wider public perception that the Labour Caucus lacks talent. While there are likely capable people in the lower ranks of the Caucus, they are not being publicly promoted. Except for finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds, the senior ranks of potential Ministers still look too much like the tired, poor performers that were thrown out in 2023.

Indeed, the probable main reason Hipkins has survived the current Parliamentary term as party leader is the lack of a credible alternative. Edmonds has consistently said she does not want the job, while the other often mentioned contender, Kieran McAnulty, is simply too rough and ready and deliberately provincial to be likely to appeal to the middle-class urban voters Labour needs to attract to get across the electoral line.

In any case, as National came to realise with Christopher Luxon’s leadership, it is simply too late in the electoral cycle to change leaders. Some have drawn parallels to 2017 when Andrew Little stood down in favour of Jacinda Ardern just over seven weeks before the election. But this is not 2017 and there is no Ardern standing in Labour’s wings today.

Therefore, the obvious deficiencies in Labour’s Caucus notwithstanding, the party’s fate at the coming election will all come down to Hipkins’ performance over the next few weeks. He has been promising a strong campaign with exciting new policies for some time now, but to date there has been little evidence of it.

First, Labour was waiting for this year’s Budget numbers to be released before making firm policy commitments. That came and went in late May, with little response form Labour. Now Labour says it is waiting for the Pre-Election Economic and Fiscal Update (PREFU) due to be released on 29 September before making final commitments.

But time is running out for Hipkins and Labour. Labour keeps promising that “Better Starts Now” but not just yet. The more it says good things are coming the more suspicious and weary voters get that when opened Labour’s policy cupboard eventually opened, it will be largely bare.

What should be of greater concern to Labour is that elections are rarely decided on the spur of the moment. The trend line from all the polls has been clear for some time now. Not only has Labour’s support been falling for some months, but the centre-right bloc’s lead over the centre-left has been steady and slightly increasing since early this year. The advent of the Opportunity Party has only slightly dented these trends. So, the electoral die may well therefore have been cast.

When all the hype is stripped away, and the facts are confronted, Hipkins still faces a mighty uphill battle. His plaintive defence at a meeting with his own constituents this week in what was remarkably his first public campaign meeting that he is “just getting warmed up” simply smacks of too little, far too late. After nearly three years of apparent inaction in Opposition, the odds are firming against him that he can turn Labour’s campaign into a winning one.

Has Te Pāti Māori just ruled itself out of government, or will Labour’s Chris Hipkins cave in, in the pursuit of power? 

Te Pāti Māori's "bottom line" policies of subordinating the sovereignty of Parliament to the Treaty of Waitangi and a separate Treaty of Waitangi Commission, together with a contestable $200 million fund to promote Māori sovereignty issues raise that question. If ever implemented these changes would be the country’s most profound constitutional changes since the establishment of Parliamentary government in 1852.

Two immediate questions arise from these proposals. First, in the highly unlikely event Te Pāti Māori finds a partner in government willing to implement them, how would that occur? A major constitutional change of this magnitude, assuming it was adopted by Parliament, would have to be endorsed by a public referendum, presumably by a two-thirds majority. Or is Te Pāti Māori intending to avoid that path and simply impose its plans as a political deal, the price of supporting a government to take office?

That raises the second more immediately important question. What is the attitude of the Labour Party, the only major party Te Pati Māori will support to lead a government, to these proposals?  So far, unsurprisingly, Labour has not responded to Te Pāti Māori's announcements and their implications, but it will not be able to remain silent throughout the election campaign. National and its allies will ensure that the spectre of Te Pāti Māori's bottom lines hangs over Labour, whatever Labour’s response.

Meanwhile, Labour has raised again the co-governance issue which was so controversial at the last election. Its loose-lipped liability, Willie Jackson, told a weekend television interviewer that Labour would probably have to find different words to describe its co-governance plans, and said subsequently that Labour would not be promoting “silly” co-governance arrangements. All this did was make it clear that co-governance in whatever form remains on Labour’s agenda.

Te Pāti Māori's announcements and Jackson’s comments highlight Labour’s problems when it comes to meeting Māori aspirations. On the one hand, it cannot afford to ignore them and expect to retain its Māori support base. But, on the other hand, it cannot be seen as embracing them too fully, for fear of alienating its own conservative working-class base and floating, middle of the road voters, wary of such issues.

Chris Hipkins’ ongoing equivocation about whether
Labour could work with Te Pāti Māori in government constantly highlights this dilemma. In the current situation, he knows that if he concedes before the election to Te Pāti Māori's bottom lines he will likely not be able to even contemplate forming a government afterwards. Yet without Te Pāti Māori on board, especially if its electorate-vote only strategy succeeds in creating a substantial overhang, Hipkins is unlikely to be putting together a government anyway.

There is a way out of Hipkins’ dilemma – if he is courageous enough to adopt it. He could take the position that Te Pāti Māori's bottom lines effectively rule the party out of being a credible potential partner in government, and that Labour would instead look to form a government with the support of the Green Party and the Opportunity Party. On current polling numbers, that combination would be a real threat to the current government.

Such a decision would put pressure on Te Pāti Māori's electorate-vote only strategy. If voters in the Māori electorates saw there was little likelihood of Te Pāti Māori being in government, they may well conclude they would be better off voting for Labour candidates. That would be to Labour’s clear advantage.

On the other hand, Te Pāti Māori may well be trying to provoke Labour to proactively rule it out of government contention, and so give it a form of martyr status, enabling it to campaign in the Māori electorates that the whole current political system is conspiring against them and Māori aspirations. If it succeeds, it could then choose to sit outside government on the cross benches and use its numerical strength to oblige whoever is in government to have to negotiate with it on every issue of significance.

However, another consequence could be adverse for the Opportunity Party and the prospects of a centre left government. Any increased overt reliance on the Opportunity Party by Labour before the election might lead voters attracted to the party by its stated non-aligned positioning to conclude it really is a centre left stooge after all, and to desert it. That would not be to Labour’s advantage.

Through all this Hipkins’ problem remains that in trying to balance these competing pressures, alongside Labour’s avowed small target strategy which has left the party looking as though it stands for very little, he continues to look uncertain and indecisive. On that basis, rather than rule out Te Pāti Māori's bottom lines altogether, he is likely to look to pouring enough cold water on them to soothe the concerns of anxious voters, while still leaving the door open to some form of post-election discussion.

Whether such a formula will defuse the issue is highly doubtful, especially if National, ACT and New Zealand First, as seems certain, seize upon it, and Jackson continues his record of unguided mouthing-off.

The Opportunity Party may yet hold the ultimate key, should it make it to Parliament. In what is describes as the interests of commonsense, it has already ruled out supporting any government that retains Winston Peters as Foreign Minister. So, it will now be interesting to see whether it chooses to apply the same yardstick to working with any government that embraces Te Pāti Māori's bottom lines to overturn New Zealand’s current constitutional arrangements.