It’s Luxon’s time, but he has Bridges to cross TALKING POINT

• Published date: 08 November 2021

Judith Collins’ comments after the death of former Auckland mayor and governor-general Dame Catherine Tizard may not have been intended as nasty, but were capable of being read that way. They reminded National MPs of their deep concerns about Collins’ judgment. Nevertheless, as I discussed just before lockdown in August, the real danger to Collins is not the certainty of failure in 2023, but the chance National could win — and that probability is rising.

Polling, including by Talbot Mills, Curia, Roy Morgan and Lord Ashcroft, all indicates Jacinda Ardern remains by far the most popular political figure in New Zealand. Yet it is also unanimous that her star has waned. While Ardern’s overall COVID response is still backed by a strong majority, there is grumpiness over the delay in the vaccine rollout and increasingly haphazard and poorly communicated reopening programme.

COVID Minister Chris Hipkins seriously musing about issuing holiday permits to Aucklanders underlines how out of touch Wellington-based decision-makers have become.

This will all pass with the arrival of the new normal in Auckland later this month and throughout the country by Christmas. But COVID is no longer the indisputable positive for Ardern it was in 2020.

Even many who regard the anti-vax and other protesters disrupting her schedule as loons feel free to chuckle in polite company that Ardern is finally having a rough time. Unless it is held entirely behind closed doors — like this weekend’s Labour Party conference — her visit to Auckland next week is unlikely to proceed without negative press.

Once all this is behind us, and Ardern and her senior ministers have themselves had a decent holiday to get their heads back together, attention will quickly turn to rising inflation and interest rates, difficult public-sector wage rounds, Labour’s complete failure on housing, poverty and inequality, and the demands of the most radical reform programme of any Government since 1993, much of which will be met with bitter opposition through 2022 before going the same way as the capital gains tax and KiwiBuild.

Like 2020, Labour’s 2023 campaign could still be based on the powerful proposition that you or your grandma might have been one of Shaun Hendy’s 80,000 people who would have died of COVID were it not for Ardern — but by election day, that will be at least two years in the past.

A National Party with anything remotely new and attractive to offer the middle class has a good chance of winning...