Coughlan says we’ve seen this in Australia and increasingly in New Zealand.<\/p>\n
“Because when you run on a lot of policies you get stuck in the weeds, you have to get people explaining the policies. Obviously you’re just an opposition party with 30-odd MPs and a small research unit – you haven’t thought of everything, and all of a sudden someone doorstops you and says, ‘have you thought about this in relation to your policy … if you do this then the sky will fall in, in this particular industry’.<\/p>\n
“And some MP sort of says ‘actually you know what, I haven’t thought about that, maybe our policy isn’t a very good idea after all’.”<\/p>\n
Labour has locked down its Capital Gains Tax plan, proposed a Future Fund, talked about returning the Reserve Bank to a dual mandate and increasing film production and video gaming rebates.<\/p>\n
“It’s not very transformational stuff .. it’s little wee policy tweaks, but nothing that major.<\/p>\n
“That does suggest that at the moment Labour is thinking, the strongest policy we have to take to voters is to get rid of the government,” says Coughlan.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\nTe P\u0101ti M\u0101ori co-leaders Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer.
\nPhoto: RNZ \/ Russell Palmer\n<\/p>\n
Te P\u0101ti M\u0101ori’s role<\/p>\n
RNZ’s Midday Report presenter Guyon Espiner concurs.<\/p>\n
“I suppose Labour’s operating on that ‘don’t interrupt your enemy when they’re arguing with themselves’ sort of philosophy, and they’re trying to make this small-target philosophy where they’re not giving their opponents something to aim at,” he tells The Detail.<\/p>\n
“Usually you’ll see an opposition really waiting till a few months out. I don’t think that’s a good idea.<\/p>\n
“I think you should put your policies up for scrutiny and debate a lot earlier.”<\/p>\n
But Espiner points out that for Labour, it won’t just be about policy, but about laying out a path for victory – and the behaviour of potential coalition partner Te P\u0101ti M\u0101ori could be a danger to that.<\/p>\n
“Rightly or wrongly, Te P\u0101ti M\u0101ori and the Greens to some extent do worry some New Zealanders in terms of their policies, and some of those mythical centrist New Zealand voters – will they frighten them off?<\/p>\n
“So I think Labour needs to work that out.”<\/p>\n
On today’s podcast Espiner and Coughlan also discuss New Zealand First and Winston Peters, including how reliable he is when saying he definitely won’t be going with Labour this year, and the spanner in his king-making works that might come in the shape of an electoral accommodation in the Mt Albert electorate.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Coughlan says National’s leadership issue isn’t going away as long as Luxon’s popularity continues to sink …. in spite of the Prime Minister’s insistence that it’s all over, and blaming the media for the whole soap opera.<\/p>\n
Check out how to listen to and follow The Detail here<\/a>.<\/p>\n You can also stay up-to-date by liking us on Facebook<\/a> or following us on Twitter<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Guyon Espiner and Thomas Coughlan on coalition partnerships, economic headwinds and burying a leadership crisis When the election…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":403673,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[48,47,42,43,49,46,44,45,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-403959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-audio","tag-current-affairs","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-podcasts","tag-public-radio","tag-radio-new-zealand","tag-rnz","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=403959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403959\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/403673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=403959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=403959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}