Photo: RNZ
Analysis - National's "soft on crime" taunts finally get a response from Labour with three youth crime announcements in three days, National's Christopher Luxon puts his foot in his mouth in Parliament and a new poll shows Labour's support hasn't collapsed.
For months now National MPs have been inserting "soft on crime" into anything they said about the government and this week Labour struck back.
It's been a long time coming.
"This is a very belated admission of just how much of an Achilles heel law and order has become for Labour," said Stuff's political editor Luke Malpass.
"In last month's Ipsos Issues Monitor, law and order jumped to a clear second on issues that voters care about."
The first announcement was on Monday, and it did not go well.
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins announced a new offence was being created for adults who commissioned children to commit crimes.
He answered questions on it as though it was a new offence, and a press statement described it that way.
A couple of hours later out came a correction - it would be an aggravating factor in sentencing, not a new offence.
The next day Hipkins told Morning Report the government was originally considering targeting gang members through a new offence and details of the two options were conflated in the preparation for his announcement.
"I didn't pick that up in the preparation for my press conference so yes, I absolutely accept responsibility for that, it was a mistake," he said.
Unfortunately for Hipkins, it was a mistake which appeared to show he did not know what he was talking about.
ACT leader David Seymour taunted him in Parliament that afternoon: "The prime minister of the country doesn't even know the difference between a crime in the Crimes Act and an aggravating factor in the Sentencing Act."
The second announcement, on Tuesday, was simple. The government was going to build two new youth justice units for up to 30 higher-needs youths.
But neither Hipkins, nor Children's Minister Kelvin Davis who was with him, could give a cost or timeline other than "as soon as possible".
That made it look like a rushed job.
The third announcement, on Wednesday, was much better.
Hipkins and Justice Minister Kiri Allan said there would be a new criminal offence targeting ram-raiding, with a maximum sentence of 10 years.
There would also be an amendment to the Oranga Tamariki Act so that a 12 or 13-year-old who committed a ram raid could be sent to the Youth Court.
"We have been failing as a country to deal with the youth offending we are now seeing, and we need to do more," Hipkins said.
Claire Trevett, the Herald's political editor, was impressed with the way Allan handled the announcement.
"Allan proceeded to deliver a masterclass on how a minister should contend with a policy announcement," she said.
"Allan was totally on top of her brief. It was obvious this was not back-of-the-envelope stuff: it was explained well, the rationale was solid and there were figures and evidence around it. Allan had an answer for every question that was asked."
Trevett said it might well be seen as coming too late but that was not because the policy had just been conceived.
"The ram-raiding offence was initially developed by ministers (Hipkins as police minister and Allan as justice) in the latter months of last year," Trevett said.
"However, squeamishness about taking a hard stand against young people meant it was knocked back by cabinet colleagues. So they waited to see whether ram raiding would abate, and whether earlier steps aimed at preventing re-offending would work.
"Clearly, the closer the election drew and the more political mileage National made out of ram raids, the more ministers warmed to the idea."
All three announcements came with assurances that the government was not into locking young people up and there would be intensive support programmes to turn their lives around.
The Greens did not like any of it.
Co-leader Marama Davidson said the main parties should be focused on the drivers of crime and resources should go into community-based projects.
"When the community is resourced to step up in place of youth justice facilities, they are having better outcomes," she said.
National simply said all the announcements were last-gasp attempts to show Labour wasn't soft on crime.
"Kiwis don't feel safe in their own homes or businesses or communities," party leader Christopher Luxon said on TVNZ's Breakfast programme.
"Now, two months out from an election, the government decides it's going to get tough on crime. It's just not credible."
Parliament resumed this week after a two-week recess and National was in prime position to really take it to the government.
It started well enough with searching questions about tax policy but then, as the Herald's Thomas Coughlan reported, Luxon "managed to embed his foot so firmly in his mouth that all the free prescriptions in the world would not have disgorged it".
It happened as Finance Minister Grant Robertson was interjecting on Luxon. When Luxon paused, Robertson said "no, no, carry on".
He should have just carried on, but instead said "don't worry, we've got years of this".
"A brief second followed, in which the House couldn't quite believe its collective ears," Coughlan said.
"Then, like water breaching a dam, the Labour benches erupted in peals of laughter at Luxon inadvertently conceding he and National would be in opposition for 'years'.
"The National benches were deadly silent, a thicket of 34 death masks, desperate not to add to Labour's joy by conceding it was quite funny."
Coughlan thought the incident was "a frightening reminder" to National that Luxon was fresh and untested - and four leaders' debates away from the Beehive.
It was one of those blunders that would not mean anything to anyone outside Parliament, but in the debating chamber such moments can, as this one did, destroy the opposition's momentum and leave an MP looking silly.
Much more serious for the main parties was this week's 1News Verian (previously Kantar) poll.
National and Labour both dropped two points. National was on 35 per cent and Labour on 33 per cent.
The poll showed a National/ACT coalition would hold a wafer-thin advantage if an election was held now, with 61 seats, a one seat majority, over a Labour/Greens/Te Pati Maori combination with 59 seats.
The Herald's Trevett summed up the likely reaction.
"Labour's will be that it could have been worse… National will be that it should have been better."
It must have been a relief for Labour because two polls which preceded this one both showed support slumping to 31 per cent.
There were predictions that the tide was turning, that Labour's support could collapse, but that did not happen.
The new poll showed Labour had weathered the terrible few weeks it went through, probably the worst it's going to go through between now and the election, and had escaped more or less intact.
However, the 1News Verian poll was conducted between July 8 and 12, so it barely captured Hipkins ruling out a capital gains tax or a wealth tax under his watch, which was announced on 12 July.
That upset Labour's potential coalition partners the Greens and Te Pāti Maori, and it clearly also upset young and left-wing Labour voters.
So far there has been no hard evidence of the extent of the damage, but it is having an impact if two letters published by Stuff are anything to go by.
"Until his 'no wealth taxes' decision Chris Hipkins was rocking," said Marg Pearce from Whitby.
"But he has lost my vote and I believe the vote of hundreds of thousands of Labour supporters… I feel kicked in the head."
Bernard Long, from Waiterere Beach, said he was in despair.
"This is in the face of the reality that 311 families own around half of the wealth in this country," he said.
"Such taxes must be a major part of a wealth redistribution strategy to address rampant inequality… of the two major parties, Labour is the only one that can show leadership on this issue."
The writer felt that if Labour campaigned on a wealth tax it would probably gain votes.
In an article, Stuff quoted an unidentified 21-year-old Labour activist who said his generation was feeling increasingly disillusioned and there was a growing feeling Labour would lose votes to the Greens.
"His disillusionment echoes the cries of many younger voters on social media after the prime minister moved quickly to scotch talk of either tax," it said.
There is something unusual about the polls at this stage in the run-up to the election, and it is the weakness of the support for both main parties.
National is not near 40 per cent and Labour is way off.
This was picked up by Ben Thomas, a Stuff columnist who was a press secretary for National and is now a PR consultant and political commentator.
"One salient feature of this election campaign is the comparatively low combined polling of National and Labour, along with the lack of daylight between their support," he said.
"This is itself unusual. In MMP elections over the past two decades, the share of the vote held by the two major parties has been the largest when the competition has been the closest."
Thomas said that when the contest was close, support had previously flocked to the major parties.
It was when one held a strong lead that voters tended to look at the minor parties more.
"In contrast, in this election the major parties are both languishing in terms of their historical highs; in around three-quarters of the public polls their combined vote share is less than 70 per cent," he said.
Could it be because neither has come out with any ambitious, ground-breaking policies?
The Herald asked Victoria University politics professor Dr Lara Greaves why National and Labour seemed to be so risk-averse.
She said they were both going for swing voters and were unlikely to do anything to spook those in the centre.
"There are still people who like the status quo, and that is why it's popular," she said.
"Labour and National do a lot of market research, a lot more than we see for media companies. That's probably something that they're being guided on."
Greaves said voters who wanted something more radical should try to increase the likelihood of the minor parties having more sway in the next government.
"If someone doesn't think the centre parties are doing enough, you go to the flanks. You go further to the left or further to the right," she said.
* Peter Wilson is a life member of Parliament's press gallery, he spent 22 years as NZPA's political editor and seven as parliamentary bureau chief for NZ Newswire.
