Mike's Minute: The beginning of the end for Hipkins

The Mike Hosking Breakfast

It's only when you read the full detail in the latest Taxpayers’ Union-Curia poll that you start to get a feel for where the Government currently sits.

Firstly, the poll is for corporate clients and reportage is usually limited to a few basic numbers, i.e. National up or down a point and added together that means “x” number of seats in the house.

The full report has the gold and everyone in corporate New Zealand will be seeing that this current Government is on somewhat of a roll.

Here is the really worrying thing for the opposition parties; these numbers are produced at a time the economy is still rubbish and it's entirely possible we are still in a recession.

So, the things for Labour, especially, to worry about:

1. The coalition have 67 seats, which is an easy majority.

2. Every single issue, bar one, they are more trusted on. In areas like the economy and spending, the Government wins by a mile, so much that the gap is embarrassing. The only area Labour claim victory is poverty and even then it's by a single point.

3. The right way/wrong way tracker has turned in spectacular fashion since the election. Many argue this is the true indication of Government support. If you get the country going right, you're in every time.

4. The Labour leader's popularity has tanked. The favourable/unfavourable numbers have cratered. Chris Hipkins isn't liked, isn't backed and is, as they say in America, under water.

Now, fair is fair, it's just a poll, not an election

But get some steam into the economy, get a growing level of confidence as the Reserve Bank cuts rates and people start to spend and feel good again, get some real growth into proceedings and it's at that point any Government of the day starts to feel like they are re-electable.

We have seen this past week the seeds, the shoots of progress; the crime stats, the increasingly determined action around the Treaty, the reportage of schools talking of a change of culture after a phone ban. These are small, but tangible, wins.

If by the end of next year the economy is back, and the rest of the tangibles are falling into place, an opposition will have very little left in which to enter election year with.

And Chris Hipkins won't just be under water, he will be out of a job.

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