Kielda. I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a daily podcast presented by The New Zealand Herald. The latest Taxpayers Union Courier poll and one News Varian poll show the coalition government is losing ground. Both show the left block of Labor, the Greens and to Boti Maldi, would have enough support to form the next government.
It's all.
While Prime Minister Christopher Luxen's first post cab of the year was marred by questions about ax David Seymour, the man set to become Deputy PM in May. Opposition leader Chris Hipkins has gone as far to call for Seymour to be removed as a minister over what he's calling a pattern of behavior. So is this the start of a fracture that can't be healed and does the public have good cause to be concerned about where we're headed today?
On the front page, Newstalg z B political editor Jason Wols is with us to discuss the state of politics. First off, Jason, what do you make of the latest polling numbers?
Well, we've got polls coming out of our ears. We had a long period where we didn't really hear anything from any polster. And then earlier this week, in the space of two hours, we got two pretty significant polls, and listen, they're both quite similar. But the part that I would say that is worth focusing on is the fact in both the taxpayers Union funded Caurier poll and the One News variant poll, it both showed that if there was an election the day after the poll was done,
that there would be a change in government. It showed that the left block had overtaken the right block in both of them, which is a considerable develop It's not just one rogue poll showing this. Considering they happen so close together of a similar period of time, it does give a lot of palls for thought in terms of what Kiwis are thinking about the government right now. So I would say, if there's any main takeaway from this, it's not about the personal popularity of the prime ministers.
Try saying that four times in a row. It's not about the really the intricate movements of the parties. It's about that left block versus that right block. And both of these polls show that we've had a change.
What Americans leading to that change?
Oh, it's the economy, stupid and that's not me calling you stupid. That is the age old phrase that has been etched in the memory of every politician from around the world because it is the economy. I mean, you just have to look at the right track wrong track.
In both of these polls, which were pretty much remarkably similar, showing that about fifty percent of people in both polls thought that we were going in the wrong direction as a country, and about thirty three or thirty seven percent in between, the two of them show that we're on
the right track. And now, if you're a government, those are terrible numbers for you because you don't win elections when people think that your country is going in the wrong direction and you're in charge of turning that metric around. So I think that that is the one thing that has been driving all of these polls. It does have a bit of a silver lining for the coalition government because we have yet to see the full impact of the interest rates from the Reserve Bank coming down being
fully felt by New Zealanders. It takes anywhere between six to twelve, sometimes even eighteen months for that to fully filter through when those mortgage rates come down, and that leads to people having more money in their back pockets. But now, yes, it looks grim for the government, but the Prime Minister and he has been arguing that things will turn around.
What do you think the general public actually thinks a right direction is Because you mentioned inflation, it's down, cost of living is easy, and interest rates are falling and the seeds of the government's latest push for economic growth are yet to be sown.
Right, yeah, well exactly, And I think the right track wrong track. It's really sort of like a gut instinct, you know. Somebody asked you whether we are on the right or the wrong track, and you just kind of think about it for a couple of seconds. You say, I think we're on the wrong track. I think we're on the right track. And there's a number of things that feed into that, but I would say that the
main one is essentially the economy. People are just feeling poorer, you know, if you're a if you're a homeowner at the moment, like I am in Wellington, you're getting hammered by higher interest rates because mine haven't filtered through yet, and there's still a few quite a few other people in that position as well as well as rates, you know, so they're both coming at you and you're feeling poorer, and if you're feeling poorer, you're much likely to say that we're on the wrong track.
Yep, why not?
Why not?
Why not?
What's the problem The Speaker has said, no, the spegacy.
Yes, I didn't know that. Yeah, all right, there we go, turned out the vegacyd we couldn't do it. Oh well, bureocracy is alive and well in New Zealand. But sometimes things are worth doing for a good course, they probably should not provable, do you think I think? Well, I thought we had it to be hones. Of surprise, we weren't allowed to.
What trouble is David Seymour causing Luxon at the moment.
Oh it's a big old headache for the Prime Minister. And listen, I say right off the back, this isn't a coalition destroying spat that Seymour and Luxon are having. Yes, it looks a little bit silly, Yes, it looks like they're on different pages on things, but it's not going to bring down the government. David Seymour was extremely bold when he told arn Z that the Prime Minister he
was the one that was ill informed. You'll remember that it was the Prime Minister saying that David Seymour writing in defense of Pulkinghorn when he was an electra MP in twenty twenty two and before the trial had even started or anything along that area had even kicked off. The Prime Minister said that was ill advised, and David Seymour went on oran z ed and say that the Prime Minister saying that he was ill advised was ill advised.
He's aware of my views on that, but as you all know, he wasn't the keviinet minister at the time. But there's been no breach to the Cabinet manual. He didn't do this as a minister. I just think seiy Leader was ill a. That's my personal view on it. But ultimately our question's man.
Do you regret writing that letter?
No?
And my response to that is what sill advised is commenting when you don't know all the facts and criticizing a local em pay for doing their work, which is standing up for their constituent.
You just don't see those sorts of things. And one of the most wisest people in all of politics is somebody called Richard Harmon, who's been around since the eighties or even before reporting on politics. He's seen it all, and he said in his blog, and not since nineteen eighty eight when Richard Prebble openly criticized David LONGI have we seen such a challenge to a prime minister as that of David Seymour to Christopher Luxen So and he's got a point. You just simply do not see ministers
undermining their prime minister like this. Sort of the saving grace that Seymour has here is that he is from another party and so the Prime Minister can't just dismiss them from cabinet without there being some serious repri cushions.
Yeah, are you surprised how they're talking about each other in public? I guess it's unusual for a prime minister and deputy relationship. I'm thinking Peter's in the same boat as well.
Yeah, I mean it is quite unusual. And up till this point, I've been very supportive of the Prime Minister the way that he's ran the coalition government because he's not just looking at this term, he's looking beyond into the term after and potentially the term after that as well. And to get there, we're in a modern MMP environment. You need friends, you need support partners. So it's not just about them toying the line this time around, but
it's also about getting them on board next time. And part of that is allowing these smaller parties to not lose their identity, which means it's fine when Winston mouths off about something, gets fine when David Seymour gets really into the weeds about some national policy issue that he doesn't like, that is all absolutely fine. In fact, it's encouraged because it means the base still sees that these parties have not lost their identity. But this is a
whole nother level. I mean, it's just frankly, it's about respect and David Seymour is not showing the Prime Minister respect. We do know that on Monday nights, after both of the respective leaders made their comments about each other, they did have a meeting. Can you describe the tenor of your meeting with him last night?
Yeah?
I was very good, very constructive, for obviously talking about how is the government going to open up to overseas investment, which I'm responsible for, how are we going to do a deregulation program, how are we going to get through this budget? And save New Zealand just money by reducing data literalist payments.
Steak.
I don't know if I've ever heard a single time in my almost ten years in Parliament when I've heard someone say something constructive that they didn't actually mean that it was a bit of a biffer.
Is the problem here that Seymour, who's never been actually in charge before, is still kind of in an opposition mode. And what I mean by that is he's still doing the stunts. He's driving a land Rover up on Parliament steps, for example, and he's still got the soundbitees, he's still got the quips. Does he need to rain that in a bit? No?
I don't think he does. And I still side with the Prime Minister's thinking on this is that you need the smaller parties to retain their identity. Act's identity is inextricably linked to that of David Seymour. I mean, you've got to remember that David Seymour brought this party from zero point five percent in the polls to now it
was a nine or ten percent in the polls. He brought a plethora of new MPs to the table to the point where he's now sitting around the cabinet table to the point where in a couple of months he is going to be the deputy prime minister. He needs to be able to do what he has been doing in so far as that he needs to be able to galvanize that support and let his supporters know how he is fighting for them in parliament.
Will he become a bit of a headache though? Was deputy pm?
The standard shifts when you're the deputy prime minister, and in so far as the fact that when the Prime Minister is away, it's the deputy prime Minister who's in charge, and that means doing post cabinet press conferences, that means stepping in for the Prime minister in the house. That's a lot harder to do. When you have to act on behalf of the Prime minister. You cannot have your own identity. Then you need to be talking as the prime minister. You need to be a statesman, not a studman.
Do you think that having Winston Peters first then Seymour second when it comes to that deputy prime minister role was strategic. I'm thinking who would you prefer to have reined in and buy your side on the election trail.
I can tell you already know the answer to that question, but I do think that it is strategic. I think that probably Winston Peters fought quite hard to be the man that was doing it first rather than second. Now there's two lines of thinking here. The first is, you know there's a recency bias, so that would favor the person that has been a deputy Prime minister closer to
the election time because still fresh in people's memories. But you have to remember Winston Peters usually and historically has seen his vote rise closer to election time, where he's been able to be a little bit more Winston and
a little bit more cavalier about things. And he would have had that in mind in the coalition talks when National and Act and New Zealand First were around that table to say, well, if I want to be my best political self, if you will closer to the election time, I need the space to be able to do that. You can't be a statesman when you're also kicking off about what most people, all the Prime Minister has perceived to be side shows.
Now we've got these salvation Armies State of the Nation twenty twenty five out this morning and it makes for some grim reading. Actually, we've got rising unemployment, with more than four hundred thousand people needing welfare support in December twenty twenty four, the highest number by the way since the nineteen nineties. And food insecurity among families with children has also risen sharply, with half of all fit children
reported as going without food often or sometimes. Figures like this do kind of make you realize perhaps why people are discontent with the government and think why the country's moving on in the wrong direction.
Hey, well, yeah, absolutely, And now all of these sort of reports will give sort of credence to the cause from the left that the government need to be doing more in a lot of places in terms of their
economic priorities. And I mean you can almost script the response from the Prime Minister on this issue before he even makes his comments later today, which is that he'll say the best way to get people out of poverty is to grow the pie, to grow the economy, and that's why he'll write off a bunch of things that the government's been doing. I'm not saying he's wrong, in fact that it is economically speaking, that is one of
the ways to do it. But it really leaves them quite vulnerable to attack from the opposition, And HARKing back to the polls, when you see there is so little between the left and the right, reports like this really do go to feed the narrative that the government is not helping as much it needs to be.
I think the people can see that the country's going in the wrong direction. Actually, Labor has been going up and all of the recent poles that have been released since Christmas. I'm encouraged by that. But we know we've got a lot of work to do. You know, we've still got a year and a half to go. So polls at this point, you know, are interesting and it's nice to be doing well in them, but you know, I think we've still got a fair amount of water to flow under the bridge.
Just yet. When we talk about the polls, Labor jumped four points to thirty three percent. Can you think of anything the party's done to deserve that jump? I mean, have they been a good opposition thus far? Is it just a case of the government underperforming so they look better in comparison?
Oh, listen, the best thing that the Labor Party have done is not do anything. They've let the government kind of almost fall over themselves. And that's not the sense that the government has technically done anything that would warrant the fact that they're in They fell into the twenties. It's again, it comes down to the economy. There's nothing that the opposition can do about that in opposition apart from taking cracks at the government and saying things that
aren't good enough. And that's because of you. But eventually the Labor Party is going to have to start introducing some policies. They are going to have to start talking in a very tangible way about what they would do to make things better. Now. I know it's still early days, it's still about a year and a half till the election, but those conversations need to start happening because voters need to have some alternatives to the barracking.
And while we're talking about the left block as well, Tabati Mali is down three points on five percent. Is this surprising because I thought the party had gained some serious momentum there for a second, No, it's.
Not surprising at all. The last poll that was taken from TV and Z was December ninth, and that incorporated the HIKOI, that incorporated Hannah Rachdi Mighty Klark's viral Harker. They had a lot, a lot of momentum, and between then and now we really haven't heard all that much from Tiparty Mardi. They were up at win Tonguey, Yes they were in the news for that, but there was nothing further to add in the respect of their momentum
than than what we saw in December. And it goes to show, you know, Tiparty Mary are at their best poland wise when they're really really able to get in front of a camera and mobilize that support. So I wouldn't be surprised to see more of that sort of action closer to election time to be able to bolster their support.
And what about the Greens. They're steady on ten percent after a pretty dramatic year last year, to say the least, do you reckon things will only continue to improve for them with Mortimer Davidson's return.
It's hard to say. I mean, the Greens do also suffer from the same problem as Labor is that people do get a little bit annoyed and a little bit tired of the repetitive criticism from the opposition, which puts them in a really hard place. Because if you are the opposition, your job is to oppose and where you know, press gallery journalists don't do soft news on parties just trying to get the good word out there. It's not
how we fold political parties to account. So the best way that you can get in the news is with ideas or with you know, frankly quite witty and clever criticisms of the government. So you know, Chloe Sawbrick is good in that respect. However, you know she has the tendency to sometimes sound a little bit like a university professor, and it's quite hard to put that into a sound bite. That's not to say what she's saying isn't good, it just sometimes can get a little bit long winded. So
I reckon they've got the same problem as labor. They're going to have to start proposing for something soon. And I know that they have been, but we need a bit more of a green wave for people to start taking some more notice. But we still got time.
And what do you reckon the coalition needs to do to improve their numbers within the next What are we a year and a half out?
I reckon they just need to wait it out. I mean, you need the business of governing. You need to create strong message that you're creating growth, that you're trying to create jobs, that you're bringing inflation down. Nikola Willis it's all she talks about, and quite rightly, she's the finance minister. They just need to wait for the economic prospects in this country to turn around, when those interest rate cuts start flowing through, and then their fortunes will turn around.
Then they can change the narrative slightly. But until that happens, it's going to be very very hard for them to turn that right track wrong track measure around.
Thanks for joining us, Jason, No problem at all. That's it for this episode of The Front Page. You can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage at enzdherld dot co dot MZ. The Front Page is produced by Ethan Sills and Richard Martin, who is also our sound engineer. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to The Front Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts, and tune in tomorrow for another look behind the headlines.