John Armstrong's opinion: Northcote byelection to become a question of trust

National will win the Northcote byelection. That is a dead cert. Moreover, the margin of National’s victory will more than likely be quite comfortable.

True, Labour’s candidate trimmed Jonathan Coleman’s majority by more than a third at last year’s general election. 

That minor shift in votes really only marked a return to the status quo which operated prior to the collapse in support for Labour across the country at the 2014 election.

Labour will continue to peddle the line that it seriously weakened Coleman’s grip on the seat which he captured from National’s old foe in 2005 and held onto through four subsequent elections prior to his retirement from Parliament earlier this month.

What you won’t hear from Labour is reference to the former Minister of Health capturing close to 53 per cent of the constituency vote in last September’s ballot.

In doing so, Coleman ended up with a massive 17 percentage point lead over his Labour rival.

For Labour to have even a remote chance of winning back the seat in the byelection triggered by Coleman’s exit, some things will have to happen which are simply not going to happen.

For starters, there would have to be a massive surge in tactical voting. It would require every individual who cast their electorate vote for either the Greens or New Zealand First in 2017 to back Labour’s byelection candidate.

That is not going to happen. Even if it did happen, Labour would still be quite a long way short of closing the gap on National’s replacement for Coleman.

To do so would require an accompanying shift of a substantial chunk of those who backed Coleman in last year’s constituency contest to switch their support to Labour’s wannabe MP.

That is not going to happen either. As confirmed by Monday’s 1 NEWS Colmar Brunton poll, backing for National has remained rock solid during the seven months which have passed since the election. 

That National is continuing to poll in the vicinity of 43 to 45 per cent is of more significance beyond the obvious.

The party’s big fear was that its continued high rating in the polls was a function of the Sir John Key-Bill English duopoly. The worry was that once the pair had quit the political stage, a sizeable portion of National’s support would decamp with them.

That has not happened. Instead, Simon Bridges has made a reasonable debut as National’s leader in the preferred prime minister ratings, hitting 10 per cent in the 1 NEWS poll. 

The poll also hints at the possibility that backing for Jacinda Ardern may have plateaued at around 40 per cent.

If confirmed by subsequent polls, Ardern will be rating well below the levels registered by Key at the height of his popularity— and even Helen Clark for that matter at the height of hers.

If the past month’s worth of mishap, mistake and mishandling exhibited by Ardern, her colleagues and her party have done nothing else, they have put a big dent in what was previously her seeming invincibility.

Losing a byelection — even one it had no real chance of winning— will do nothing for Labour morale.

Having been dragged through the wringer for a fair part of the last month or so as mishap piled on crisis which piled on blunder which piled on scandal, Ardern somehow has to regain control of the political agenda. And even more so given her six-week stint in a very different role draws ever closer and will drag her out of the political limelight, if not the media spotlight.

Not that you would notice, Labour is readying for the fightback.

Labour may not be able to win the byelection. But it can win the preceding campaign. 

For once, luck seems to be on its side.

Bridges will have been understanding of Coleman’s wish to leave Parliament just a few months into the current three-year term.

From Bridges’ point of view, however, Coleman’s timing could hardly be worse.

The date on which any byelection is held is determined by the prime minister.

Labour has used that advantage to schedule the Northcote byelection three weeks after the delivery of this year’s Budget.

This timetable will enable Ardern and Finance Minister Grant Robertson to sustain their attack on National’s “nine years of neglect” in failing to replace what is literally rotting social infrastructure in the form of dilapidated hospitals, ancient school building and poorly maintained state houses.

It is more than happy coincidence for Labour that Coleman’s signature is at the bottom of letters sent by him in his capacity as Minister of Health demanding that district health boards such as Counties Manukau, which runs the third world-like disgrace which is Middlemore Hospital, “assist” the then National Government to remain in Budget surplus by continually pursuing “efficiency gains”.

National thus stands accused of putting staff and patients’ health at risk to fund tax cuts for people who did not need them. And who it would seem —judging from this week’s 1 NEWS poll — no longer want them.

It is also more than happy coincidence that Coleman effectively pleaded guilty to that charge by declaring there should be no more tax cuts until health and education were “properly funded”.

That wish — expressed after he threw his hat into the caucus ring as a candidate in what turned out to be a non-contest for the job of National’s leader — was ignored by Bill English who got that job and Steven Joyce who took over the Finance portfolio.

National is now paying a big price for failing to wean itself off the political dividend that tax cuts were always expected to deliver, but which have become proof of the law of diminishing returns.

As a political weapon, tax cuts have been neutered. Labour lost many battles in getting to this point. But it has won the war. Voters want the deficit in New Zealand’s social infrastructure fixed. 

The 1 NEWS poll had 30 per cent of respondents citing health as the main priority for any extra spending in the coming Budget, against 13 per cent favouring education and 10 per cent preferring anything extra be diverted to housing.

Only one per cent said tax cuts were the priority. 

Those numbers are highly advantageous to Labour’s cause. National's great strength is the party’s capacity to adapt to changing circumstances, however.

It won’t be long before National starts lashing Labour for being too slow in getting various infrastructure projects under way. Indeed in areas such as the construction of so-called “affordable” housing, National is already tiring to call the shots from the vantage point of Opposition.

To shut National out of the debate, Labour needs to turn the whole issue of deteriorating social services into a question of trust.

Labour needs to ask voters in Northcote whether they can afford to trust a political party which sucked money out of a DHB which services many of the country’s highest scoring suburbs when it comes to measures of socio-economic deprivation.

That has to be Labour’s byelection message. If Ardern and other Cabinet ministers can get that message to resonate with voters on the campaign trail, then Labour may be able to retain a glimmer of hope that victory on June 9 is not completely out of the question.

If it doesn’t strike such a chord then the by-election will be over before it has barely begun.