Last month Nicola Willis released Labour’s leaked policy on GST: to make fruit and vegetables exempt. At the time Labour refused to confirm or deny it was their policy. Grant Robertson was actually against it. Even he had worked out the many fishhooks that would eventuate. A lawyer’s picnic. Like David Parker before him, Grant was unable to convince his leader. Should we now be expecting Grant to relieve himself of the finance portfolio?
Last weekend Labour did release their GST policy, their Grand Statement of Truth. Indeed GST will come off fresh fruit and vegetables. By doing so the party has drowned themselves in criticism, even from their own supporters who are obviously brighter than they are. Grant Robertson is now fully on board and is on the road to Damascus – where the Israelis have just blown up an Iranian ammunitions site so he’d better be careful. Having announced Labour’s ridiculous policy, Nicola Willis found a $240 million hole in it. So much for criticising National’s costings.
At the same time as the GST announcement, Hipkins revealed changes to their Working for Families policy which would give some people far more than the GST savings. This was drowned out, predictably, by the furore over the GST. You wouldn’t want this lot strategising a war, would you? The removal of GST, according to an expert talking to HDPA, will cost $100 million in administration EVERY YEAR. So the ‘$5 a week’ saving is actually less than a third of that figure. The whole thing is laughable.
Drowning in a mess of their own making, Labour desperately needed to come up for air, i.e. come up with a new policy. Just by chance, the latest Talbot Mills Corporate poll, from their own internal polling company, landed on their desks. This is the poll that was leaked to the leaning tower of Tova the previous Friday. And, would you believe it, as Tova published on the weekend, Labour was above 30 percent, as opposed to three other polls released last week which had them all, correctly, below 30.
Not being sure that was enough to get voters on side, they decided something else might be needed. But what? Exercising what little collective grey matter exists around the Cabinet table, someone came up with the brilliant idea of lifting all Covid mandates. Next thing along comes the boy from the Hutt to make the big announcement and thank everyone for obeying the rules the entire time. Most of us moved on from Covid a long time ago and mandates have been rarely observed.
Now we can all evidently get a jab for free as the millions of vaccines being stored at our great expense are expiring. Will anyone bother? Does anyone think this announcement would have been made if this motley lot were way ahead in the polls? Of course not. There’s an election just around the corner. All they’ve done with this announcement is prove that the whole Covid fiasco was political from the start. The only unfortunate thing is that the right would have done exactly the same, although maybe not for the same length of time.
So three announcements, four if you count the Working for Families one, and they will all resonate a big fat zilch with voters. Labour and Hipkins can say what they like, but more people have the phone off the hook than the polls are showing. HDPA did an excellent job of riling up Robertson on Monday evening. He got a good old-fashioned scolding from her. It rather resembled a mother disciplining an errant child. It was a delight to listen to.
Their road to victory looks like many of the country’s roads – full of potholes. By the time of the election, the wheels will have well and truly fallen off and by 8 o’clock on the night their suspension will be wrecked in a head-on collision with the voting public. The Labour bus will be a write off and those in it should be held to account for gross dereliction of duty. It will be a long night and probably many moons before they see daylight again.
