Bad day for the right; may not matter (Patreon)

By nearly any metric, National had a shocking Sunday. And given Luxo’s predilection for all things fundy, this was possibly especially upsetting. Day of faith indeed.

It started with Luxo on Q+A where he got kinda destroyed by Jack Tame (side note: when Jack was announced as the new host of Q+A I was skeptical, but he’s proven to be one of the toughest interviewers on TV and has no fear or favour across the political spectrum; pissing off fans of all parties).

First up, Jack wanted to know if Luxo’s magical “downward pressures” on rent would mean that he’d lower the rents on his seven investment properties. Luxon floundered. Hard. I would’ve thought that you’d consider this ahead of an interview, but seemingly not.

Then Jack asked Luxo about National’s tax cut plan which is still very unclear. Luxo didn’t really have an answer to that and refused to release their modeling which apparently backs up National’s plan, but you wouldn’t know it, it goes to another school.

Then Jack moved onto the biggest hole in National’s tax cut plan, the foreign home-buyer tax. Jack pointed out just how unlikely it would that enough houses would be sold over $2M every year to foreigners to get the amount of revenue that would allow National to fund its tax cuts. He asked Luxo to justify it. Once again Luxo could not.

Then this happened. Which… I don’t know what is going on.

And then on Newshub, the very impressive Jenna Lynch interviewed the even more impressive CTU’s Craig Renny. The CTU has been the best campaigner of this election. Renny claimed that the pool of money that National said would get cut from the public sector was fucking small, and that it would mean likely cuts to things like courts, passport processing, and even emergency management, which just goes to show you National’s perspective on climate change – when after the costliest cyclone in NZ’s history, followed by regular flooding of our biggest city, National still thinks that our emergency management agency should have its funding cut to pay for tax cuts.

And Luxo wouldn’t answer. Lynch tried to ask him several times about it but he just ignored her and swanned off from a press standup. Wild stuff.

This came hot on the heels of ITO leaders expressing horror at National’s policy of abolishing Workforce Development Councils that set standards and qualifications for trades. It seems to happen a lot. National releases a policy, a bunch of experts show up to say this doesn’t stack up, or it will have terrible consequences, and then they move on to the next horror show.

Meanwhile ACT is also having a mare. With I think six(?) candidates now pulling out of the election for reasons both known and unknown and unprintable. Seymour has also thrown out there that he will potentially refuse a confidence and supply agreement with National should National not want to be as psychotically extreme as ACT wants to be.

For all Luxo’s claims of a “coalition of chaos”, it seems his own mate is likely to provide the most chaos in government. And potentially way more chaos in the lead-up to the election…

So all in all it’s been a rough old time for the right.

But…

The toxicity that the electorate seems to hold Labour in seems awfully sticky, if not baked in. So it may not even matter.

It may not matter that National’s plans are so full of holes that they’re a punchline. Or that ACT is proposing some genuinely terrifying policy ideas or that its candidates keep pulling out for increasingly bizarre reasons. National has a pretty healthy lead over Labour. And this is a fairly recent development. When Chippy took over as PM, Labour was ahead in the polls and on course for another term. But since then, yes inflation has bit, and yes, interest rates have gone up, but Labour has also expressed a desire to hurt itself over and over.

Once the public decides you’re too shit to govern, it’s a hard road back. There’s a month until the election proper, and only a handful of weeks before early voting begins so I’m not sure that Labour has enough time to turn this around.

Which sucks for the Greens. Because the Greens have run the best campaign that party has done for years. It helps when you haven’t done something bananas during the campaign that just surviving becomes your main focus.

But each week the Greens roll out a policy that is thoughtful, costed, and tries to solve long-term problems. Not just short-term populist sloganeering like our two biggest parties do. As Marama Davidson said at the launch of the Greens’ ocean protection plan, all National and Labour are doing is “bickering over inconsequential issues”. Which is bang on. The Green Party has always been ahead of the curve by about 10 years, proposing solutions to problems that get waved away before being recognised later as being actual problems that need solving.

Overall this election is very dispiriting. Neither party from which our Prime Minister is likely to come from is offering inspiring policies (barring maybe free dental for under 30s, love that). It’s just a gluey, muddy, state of inertia that has gripped New Zealand to some awful centrist governments for three decades now. And worst of all is the possibility that NZ First might get back. I don’t understand how there are people still buying Winston’s bullshit. Every campaign he makes a bunch of promises and commitments that he has no interest or desire in following through on and yet mugs still line up to support him. Give me strength. And take it from Winston.

*I will concede that vaccination targets are probs a very good idea, and having incentives to achieve them is not terrible either.