by Peter Williams

Another week and more polls, but all telling pretty much the same story.

National and Labour are not becoming any more popular. In fact, their numbers are heading south or, at best, holding. The Greens – for some reason this old bloke cannot comprehend – are holding steady at around 16% support yet still promoting mad policies – while Act and NZ First are battling to get past 10% each, Opportunity is still hanging around like a pleasant deodorant that we know will turn putrid if they get half a chance, and the Maori Party looks like it’ll provide at least a two-seat overhang, possibly three with their campaign only for electorate seats.

TPM went further in their MMP manipulation this week by releasing a party list – with one person on it, and he’s not even an electorate candidate. By putting up party secretary Lance Norman as the only list candidate, it ensures that they get an overhang because if there’s no list, they don’t qualify for any list seats and therefore only get the electorate seats they win, and the parliament stays at 120 seats. It means they also qualify for hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer-funded advertising spend.

This is about as cynical a manipulation of the MMP rules as it gets, but it’s within the rules so we shouldn’t complain. Just like the left should not be complaining about the campaign for vote splitting among right-wing voters. The National Party is just being utterly dumb by not embracing the principle. I heard one of the most prominent promoters of the idea, Harry Mowbray, explain the extreme potential of vote splitting – that is, National in the electorate and party voting Act or NZ First – would be an overhang of about 35 seats because the National Party vote would completely collapse and those votes would be with their coalition partners.

There’s still enough tribal Nats to ensure that doesn’t happen, but for the blue leadership to still be punting two ticks blue is just nonsense. They should be out pushing like hell their candidates in Auckland Central, Whanganui, Hutt South, Wigram, Wairarapa, West Coast Tasman, East Coast, Mt Albert .. and in Tamaki to win that seat back off Act. If the Nats win those and hold 33 other seats they already hold with a comfortable majority, that is over 6000 votes, then that’s 42 seats, about seven or eight more than they’re entitled to on current party polling.

The utter reluctance of Chris Luxon and campaign manager Simeon Brown and their mentor John Key to embrace this is more than baffling. It makes you wonder if they actually want to win the election and hand power to a coalition led by Chris Hipkins, the same Chris Hipkins who told Newstalk ZB today that co-governance is working well in the Uruwera National Park. Really? How about all those DOC huts that were burnt down? How many have been rebuilt? And of course, part of that coalition would be the Green Party, which at number 4 on the party list has a somewhat deranged woman who believes that being a billionaire is not something to celebrate; in fact, it’s morally wrong. Mind you, Hipkins didn’t sound overly enthusiastic about the concept himself. What is wrong with these people?

What is so wrong about creating an enterprise which employs people who pay taxes and pays company tax itself? OK, the Mowbrays, Graeme Hart and Peter Beck make most of their money in other countries, but Rod Drury doesn’t; the Talleys and the Todds and the Stewarts of Calder Stewart don’t. The country would be worse off if all those people went out of business or were forced away because of the envy taxes the Greens and the Opportunity Party want to impose.

The Greens also want to return to some mythical age whereby we all travel by train between the main centres. As someone who spent eight years commuting regularly between Auckland and Tauranga, I would love there to have been regular train services between those two cities, especially as the driving time increased from two and a half hours to three and a half hours over the years that I was doing it. But I know it’s just not practical because, one, there’s not enough regular passengers to make the service economical, and two, because the single-line route is really busy as a freight route to and from the Port of Tauranga and scheduled passenger services will just complicate the busiest freight service in the country. In other words, the idea is just nuts.

The other big political events of the week have been a couple of debates – one with just the National and Labour leaders on TV 1, and one about the future of the country with a whole raft of business and iwi leaders, entrepreneurs – and Sir John Key.

As a viewer, I thought both the Chrises were uninspiring. Neither of their performances on Tuesday night will make me vote for their parties. Even Luxon wouldn’t confirm that billionaires were morally acceptable. Dear Lord, what is wrong with the man? And Hipkins wants to take away the compulsory one hour per day of reading, writing and maths instruction in our primary schools. He still seems to believe that some bizarre student-led system of learning which saw the curriculum essentially emptied of knowledge is the way forward for the next generation. Has he not seen the comparative reduction in our learning standards in the last two decades?

Then on Wednesday night was the Herald’s Future of New Zealand debate which had a revolving cast of panellists all enthusiastic about the future of the country through innovation in various technologies. One could only admire their enthusiasm. The politicians came on for the final segment. Perhaps not surprisingly, that rather took the air out of the tyre, although Tamatha Paul again raised questions about her sanity with bizarre claims about billionaires getting government subsidies!

NZ First has released its party list. The top four stay the same; there’s a move to claim the Christian and family values vote through Alfred Ngaro at number 5, with Michael Laws, Craig Stobo and Taine Randell all pretty much guaranteed to make it into parliament, although probably not into cabinet. NZ First have eight MPs at the moment. Current polling says they’ll have 12 this time round, which means that most of the current demoted MPs like former Wellington mayor Andy Foster and one-time broadcaster Jenny Marcroft will keep their jobs.  Beyond that first dozen, those on the list like Ron Mark, former Westport mayor Jamie Cleine and Southland Federated Farmers boss Jason Herrick will have a future dependent on the way the split voting campaign goes.

Amid much rather ordinary, mundane and plain dopey policy across the spectrum comes one gem – the Act idea to stop taxing returns on Kiwisaver investments. Yes, it will cost a few billion in the short term, like $2.4 billion over the first four years, but it could save billions decades down the track. For a 20-year-old making sixty grand a year at the moment and contributing 8% of that to Kiwisaver, it could make that saver another $209,000 better off by the time that builder is 65. Hopefully that builder won’t be getting National Superannuation in 45 years, so his Kiwisaver balance will be able to keep him secure until he starts collecting the super at, say, age 68.

It’s a great idea – let savers keep more of their own money to help the country in the future.

What’s not to like, Winston?