Labour probably expected the odd raised eyebrow at Council of Trade Unions (CTU) economist Craig Renney’s low ranking (51). Renney has spent the term laying siege to the Beehive – an effort so successful that the Government regularly jibes Labour that he’s Labour’s real finance spokesperson.
But many informed observers expected him to get a low ranking – a signal to Renney and to his electorate, Wellington Bays, that his only way into Parliament is by winning the electorate off its effective incumbent, Green MP Julie Anne Genter.
It probably doesn’t hurt to remind the high-profile economist not to believe the opposition’s hype – he isn’t shadow finance yet.
The real drama came from two other candidates. Hauraki-Waikato candidate Kingi Kiriona, ranked at a high 22nd on the list, said during the list announcement press conference that he understood Labour had some “tax relief policies to be announced” in the coming days.
This followed a social media video in which Kiriona said local businesses had suggested the Government “consider tax relief” as a means of helping them.
Now Labour doesn’t appear to be contemplating tax relief this election. Its only tax policy is a tax increase (Capital Gains Tax), and the only other tax policy the party is openly discussing is a ban on interest deductions, another tax increase.
It was an embarrassing flub, which showed that one of Labour’s highest-ranked candidates doesn’t actually know what the party is campaigning on. The embarrassment is heightened by the fact that Labour isn’t so overflowing with policy ideas that it’s easy to forget one.
It’s a micro-scandal that’ll have approximately zero impact on politics, but it’s a good lesson to Labour and every party contesting the election to school up all their candidates on party policy. It doesn’t take much for a mid-list candidate to derail a front bench stand-up.
Of course, the big story of the week is the candidacy of Police Superintendent Rakesh Naidoo. He’s ranked a very high 13th, and just one spot behind the party’s current police spokeswoman, Ginny Andersen.
It emerged on the day Labour announced its list that Naidoo had been less than forthcoming with the police about his intention to become a Labour candidate.
Despite the police manual stating that police who intend to run for elected office must “advise their district commander or director at the earliest opportunity”, Commissioner Richard Chambers was informed only last Thursday that Naidoo was considering running for Labour, and told only on Sunday that Naidoo had accepted the list position.
Superintendent Rakesh Naidoo, MNZM, with Governor-General Dame Cindy Kiro after he received recognition in 2023 for services to the New Zealand Police and ethnic communities.
It was clumsy and careless stuff from Naidoo – and somewhat undermines one of the reasons for having him on the list in the first place, which is to resuscitate Labour’s reputation on law and order. What’s the point in having a cop on the list if they don’t even follow police rules?
And it seems quite clear those rules are broken. A special recruitment process was run for Naidoo, given his employment with the police. It stretches credibility that this special process would have been run without both Labour and Naidoo both having some understanding that Naidoo would eventually accept a role as Labour candidate. That process clearly didn’t begin last Thursday.
The Naidoo scandal capped off a pretty rough Monday for Labour, whose big list announcement was buried under headlines of scandal. None of it feels enough to stick (more on that later), but it should shake the party’s confidence in itself that it struggles to make a big campaign announcement that doesn’t go wildly awry.
Last year’s capital gains tax announcement was leaked, first to the Herald in part, and later to RNZ in full. A health policy was botched after it was accidentally announced, unbeknownst to leader Chris Hipkins, and now this, the list buried under a pretty chaotic news cycle.
In politics, you can expect your set-piece announcements to come under a bit of pressure from the opposition, but Labour should ask itself some serious questions about these unforced errors – particularly when it’s made a point of not doing much policy announcing anyway.
Unless there’s more to the Naidoo stuff-up than meets the eye – and there’s absolutely no evidence there is – none of this feels seriously destabilising. Unfortunately for Labour, it overshadowed the fact that it has some good new candidates.
Alongside Naidoo, there’s Sophie Handford, ranked at 26, who is campaigning to win the marginal Kāpiti seat (which relies heavily on very expensive commuter trains, making Labour’s public transport policy very enticing). She won selection some time ago, and is highly spoken of by existing MPs as one to watch.
There’s also Max Harris, who is unlikely to wrest the seat of Tāmaki from Act and National, but, depending on how Labour fares in the electorates, stands a decent chance of getting into Parliament from his place at number 29. Harris is something of an anti-Hipkins.
Labour candidate Max Harris. Photo / LDR
Author of the 2017 hit The New Zealand Project, a wonkish manifesto for a better New Zealand, Harris is not much of a small targeter like Hipkins. His work in Britain for then-shadow chancellor John McDonnell suggests he’s probably not of a feather with Hipkins’ relative conservatism, but his strong ranking is a healthy sign the party feels comfortable enough with itself to embrace a bit of ideological diversity.
Likewise Warrick Cleine, at number 30, a top KPMG exec in Asia, might help mend Labour’s bruised relationship with business.
That’s not to say Labour isn’t without its ideological problems. Everyone wants to know what smart and hardworking Arena Williams did to be ranked so low (41). Equally and oppositely, what did Willow-Jean Prime do to be ranked so high (7)?
It has the look of a factional squabble the party is keen to avoid tumbling into the public domain.
Napoleon famously advised never to interrupt your enemy when they are making a mistake. Sadly for the coalition, it spent much of the week doing just that.
Police Minister Mark Mitchell had a grizzle on Monday afternoon about Naidoo’s candidacy, saying he could have been privy to sensitive information. The remarks had the faintest air of sour grapes that Labour had bagged a top candidate in one of the few policy areas in which the coalition has a strong lead.
Police Commissioner Chambers later got in on the game on Tuesday, announcing a review to be sure Naidoo hadn’t passed any “sensitive” information to a third party (read: Labour). Naidoo created a rod for his own back in handling his announcement so poorly, but launching such a public review without a shred of evidence that Naidoo had passed any information to Labour was a clear overreaction from police.
Things got even more ridiculous when Mitchell and Andresen faced off during their weekly Newstalk ZB debate on Wednesday morning.
Mitchell noted Naidoo’s botched candidacy wasn’t helping police recover from their recent “integrity issues” – a comment that may be the biggest overreach of the year. Being a bit tardy in informing police of his candidacy is one thing – it’s ridiculous to the point of being defamatory to imply that it was implicitly bundled up with the Jevon McSkimming and Andrew Coster scandal.
To adapt a phrase Judith Collins used when the McSkimming cover-up was revealed, this doesn’t look like a duck, it doesn’t quack like a duck – it ain’t a duck.
Labour seized back the initiative, announcing a public transport fare cap on Wednesday.
Anecdotal reaction to the policy has been extremely positive, although it’s hard to know without more polling whether it will shift the dial for Labour. Even in Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch, where public transport is best, there are large pockets where services are slow and infrequent. The last time Labour tried a policy like this, officials said that improving service frequency was as important as price in shifting people on to buses and trains.
Although to be successful politically, people only need to think they’ll take it up – regardless of whether or not they actually do.
The obvious flaw of the policy is that there’s no money to pay for it because the National Land Transport Fund is oversubscribed to the tune of $6 billion a year by 2030. The problem for the coalition is that it’s just as culpable as Labour for oversubscribing this fund, having come into office on a platform of building very expensive roads.
Not since Richard III pledged his kingdom for a horse has a public official gambled so much on a single mode of transport.
That’s left the coalition unable to seriously mount an attack on the policy, because to do so would only draw attention to its own profligacy – and to the fact that Labour was right when, in 2023, the party said the roads National promised to build were poorly costed and unaffordable (it must be said the same was true of Labour’s roads).
The coalition’s strategy with Labour’s cost-of-living pledges appears to be an attempt to bring the promise back down to earth by explaining why the promise won’t work or why it’s poorly costed. Each attack is essentially “why risk it?” It’s a strategy that would probably be more successful if voters had more trust in the coalition itself. Voters’ response often feels something like, “What have I got to lose?”
Labour can feel like a breath of fresh air compared with the fire and brimstone from the coalition parties. It’s a hopeful kind of politics and, despite the coalition’s attempts to paint Labour as hopeless, voters seem to like it.