National's cursed period

The last week was National's worst week in a very long time. And today brings more news that add insult to injury.

Apparently the party made the strategic decision to launch its tax policy earlier in the week to get ahead of whatever it was that Labour was announcing at its campaign launch. So then we got the tax policy of seemingly unceasing errors.

Initial reactions were all very positive with "election winning" being thrown around willy nilly. But then the holes started appearing. Labour's strategy of rolling out different Ministers to highlight those holes was the best piece of strategy I've seen from them since Andrew Little resigned and Jacinda Ardern stepped up. 

Each hour seemingly brought a new cock-up in National's tax plan. The one that seems to have resonated is the breaching of double tax rules that prevent National from collecting tax from residents of many countries if they bought a house over $2M here - this was the biggest source of funds for its tax cut programme.

But there's also the cruelty. As Shane Te Pou noted in his herald column:

Most disabled people survive on less than $474 a week. Labour’s policies to remove the $5 prescription charge, reduce the price of public transport, and tie benefit increases to wages rather than inflation (so they go up faster) have been a big help for people with difficult lives. National’s plan of taking all that away just seems cruel.

National would bring back the $5 prescription tax on medicine, cut the rate that benefits increase by, and remove the public transport discount. All in exchange for a tax cut of as little as $2 a week for the typical disabled person. 

Complete bastardry to be honest. 

Then came Labour's campaign launch, and despite the best efforts of some cookers to disrupt it, it was a pretty big success. The free dentistry for under 30s didn't generate a tidal wave of excitement but it at last gave people something to vote for. Which has been sorely lacking from Labour's campaign to date.

And so all eyes (of political losers like me) turned to National's campaign launch. It was like a Republican/Democratic National Convention in the US. Loud pumping music, hyping each candidate as they ran in, having Luxo's kids introduce him. Bananas stuff. And then Luxo's big announcement was ... a postcard. After blowing their wad earlier in the week with the tax announcement, National had nothing to announce. Which meant all questions were focused on the tax policy, and whether or not it was workable - or even legal!

That is not a headline you want from your campaign launch.

Nicola Willis had gone on Q&A that morning to try and better explain the policy, but instead had it explained back to her better by Jack Tame. There were claims of legal advice that said it was workable, but then that emerged had only been sought on Friday, two days after they'd released the policy.

And then today there was the announcement that DIA is appealing to have SkyCity lose its casino license for breaching host guidelines. This is the same SkyCity that its been reported helped National design the online gambling portion of its tax increases. 

None of this is to say that it will tilt the election one way or the other. National had a pretty healthy lead over Labour, and this might shift 1 or 2 points but that may not be enough. However, as is tradition, National tends to bleed out over election campaign periods, while Labour gains. And if that history repeats then it's likely to see Labour stumble over the line like 2005.

If that is the case, then you could mark this last week as the turning point. 

ACT under scrutiny 

The other interesting thing that's happened is that the ACT MPs and candidates have started coming under real scrutiny. We've seen candidates pulled from contention, others with ropey social media histories of climate change denial and MAGA support, but then there was yesterday's Q&A interview with ACT candidate Todd Stephenson who is #4 on their list and almost certainly likely to get into parliament (unless ACTs vote completely collapses due to ...whatever). I recommend you watch the whole thing, but the real psycho moment comes when Stephenson seems to advocate for eugenics when deciding who should get  government funded treatment - if you are more able to provide to a nation's economy, then you should be ranked higher for getting treatment. That shit is fucking bananas. 

We've seen ACT's vote drop a bit in the last couple of weeks, it has now fallen behind the Greens which could become very important come election night, given that Labour also has Te Pāti Māori to add to its overall total.