NATIONAL’S CAMPAIGN CHAIR, Paula Bennett, faces a truly daunting challenge in devising an electoral strategy to combat 20 billion dollars. She openly acknowledges the scale of the problem confronting the party in her media release of Friday 15 May.
“The Government’s Budget released yesterday has $20 billion set aside for campaign bribes”, was Bennett’s opening salvo. It’s hard to fault her analysis. That colossal sum sits there, like a huge fiscal fire-brigade, ready to be dispatched at a moment’s notice to douse any and every blaze of deprivation and desperation that might flare up between Thursday’s Budget and Election Day.
Bennett, echoing her leader, Simon Bridges, and the party’s finance spokesperson, Paul Goldsmith, went on to decry the scale of the Coalition Government’s borrowing programme: “The country is seeing an extra $140 billion of debt. That is $80,000 per household, equivalent to a second mortgage.”
That’s a very scary number: not large in the way $140 billion is large, but big enough to make just about every National voter (nearly all of whom are homeowners) recoil in horror. The Government taking out a second-mortgage on their hopes and dreams – not to mention those of their children and/or grandchildren – is not something most New Zealanders are going to feel happy about.
A wiser Campaign Chair would probably have left it there, but Bennett was not willing to keep silent about what she clearly sees as rank Government unfairness:
“With the country now at Level 2 there should be a level of respect for all political parties entering into the campaign period. The daily broadcasts have gone from important health information to a party-political broadcast and ads on TV that feature Ministers are no longer appropriate.”
She’s right of course. The move out of Level 3 and into Level 2 was, indeed, the time for the Prime Minister and the Director-General of Health to announce formally that their daily briefings would cease. No one seriously questioned the need for these daily updates from Jacinda Ardern and Ashley Bloomfield when the threat of the potentially fatal virus left citizens hungry for regular and reliable information. Also beyond serious dispute, however, is the enormous political advantage these daily encounters conferred upon the incumbent political parties. Ardern’s advantage here was no less than Boris Johnson’s or Donald Trump’s: when people are frightened, ideological considerations go out the window.
Bennett is also quite correct about the television advertising. It is arguable whether including Ministers of the Crown in public service announcements is ever appropriate – especially in Election Year. Not that National’s Deputy-Leader had that much to fear from the most egregious example of these exercises – the solidarity shout-out to New Zealand’s small businesses. This condescending assemblage of the good and the great – including Police Minister Stuart Nash and the Prime Minister herself – was cringe-inducingly awful. One imagines thousands of stressed and anxious small business owners raging furiously at the television screen: something along the lines of: “What the f**k would you c**ts know about running a small business!!” It’s difficult to imagine anything more calculated to rally National’s base.
The most daunting challenge confronting National, however, is finding a way to win and hold more than its base. The COVID-19 pandemic is one of those all-encompassing exogenous shocks that elicit public responses that have much more to do with basic anthropology than they do with political science. Under threat, the tribe will always turn to the Chief – or Chieftainess. Hers are the reassurances they reach for; hers the instructions they are so eager to follow. More concerning, from the Opposition’s point of view, is the tribe’s passionate intolerance for anyone who speaks out against its leader. Bridges knows all about this – and he’s got the political scars to prove it.
In this anthropological context, the National Opposition’s one route to victory lies over the tribal leader’s broken body. Only when the tribe is forced to endure not only extraordinary privation (which often, paradoxically, binds it even closer to its leaders) but also a massive and irretrievable collective reversal (like total defeat in war) will it turn on its Chieftainess.
As the COVID-19 Crisis has unfolded, the Prime Minister’s actions have come nowhere close to meeting these criteria. Not even the predicted rise in unemployment from 4.2 to 9.8 percent is likely to shake the tribe’s confidence. (20 percent would be a different matter!) Not while Ardern is treating the electorate to a bright shining vision of the “broad sunlit uplands” to which she has promised to lead them – on the other side of the COVID storm. And certainly not while she and her Finance Minister are demonising the policies of their National Party opponents.
Attacks like this:
“[T]he notion that at this time of need we would make cuts to the essential services so many New Zealanders need more than ever is not only immoral, it is economically wrong.”
And this:
“Now more than ever we need our schools and hospitals, our public houses and roads and railways. We need our police and our nurses, and we need our welfare safety net. We will not let our team of 5 million fall when the times get tough, instead we will strengthen the blanket of support the Government can provide. We are rebuilding together, not apart.”
This is the election narrative which Bennett should fear the most. The story of a brave and compassionate young woman doing all she can to lead her people through the Valley of the Shadow of COVID Death and out the other side, while behind every rock, every tree, lurk the evil agents of the people’s enemies, doing everything within their power to prevent her success – and the “team of 5 million’s” escape.
Extracting National from the role of villain in this election narrative will not be easy. Attacking Ardern and her colleagues constantly, in hopes that such assaults will eventually undermine the tribe’s faith in their Chieftainess, might work if her Government was powerless to intervene to shore up the economy, protect people’s jobs, and/or enrol them in a free retraining programme.
Unfortunately, “Jacinda” has just equipped herself with 20 billion good reasons why National cannot rely upon either government powerlessness, or prime-ministerial failure, to save the day.
No wonder Paula’s worried.
If you enjoyed this Insight Politics article please consider sharing it with your friends.