Week in Politics: On the campaign trail

Analysis: The latest polls show Labour's flagship policy promise hasn't worked, next week's leaders debate could be its last chance. Treasury's PREFU warns there's no more money to spare, pressure mounts on National to explain its "mansion tax" policy and Winston Peters edges closer to a comeback.

Monday's Newshub-Reid Research poll was the most important of the campaign so far.

It was taken after Labour announced its flagship dental care policy - and it hasn't worked.

The party dropped 5.5 points to 26.8 percent, down into the "terrible twenties" as Newshub's Jenna Lynch said, while National gained 4.3 points to 40.9 percent, the first time it has been above the 40 percent line.

Another first was National's Christopher Luxon level with Chris Hipkins as preferred prime minister, both on 22.5 percent after Luxon climbed a remarkable 6.6 points.

The Herald's Thomas Coughlan said it looked like the only thing that could save Labour were prayers and divine intervention.

Coughlan said the last time Labour polled that low in the Newshub-Reid Research poll was when Andrew Little was leader before the last election.

"Something staggering has happened in the past year and it's not clear anyone has fully grasped it," Coughlan said.

"Labour and the left more generally were polling competitively as recently as April and May… since then that lead has evaporated and Labour has become historically unpopular."

Stuff's Anna Whyte described the poll as "devastating".

Then the 1News Verian poll came out on Wednesday, more bad news for Labour.

National was up two points to 39 percent, Labour down one point to 28 percent.

Both those polls showed National and ACT would have enough seats to form a government if an election was held now.

That wasn't new, previous polls have put them there, but the message that's so ominous for Labour was that the gap between the main parties has widened to more than 10 points.

Poll analysis published this week was in line with the latest results.

The Herald's poll of polls, which uses a range of public polls as well as previous election results, reported that National and ACT had a 95.1 percent chance of forming a government if an election was held this weekend, and an 87 per chance on the actual election date.

RNZ's poll of polls, which is the most detailed, showed National winning 50 seats and ACT 15 if an election was held now, a comfortable majority for the coalition.

Although the campaign has a month to run, a change of government now seems inevitable.

Labour can't deliver any more policies that cost significant amounts of revenue. Treasury's PREFU, released on Tuesday, showed both the main parties the cupboard was bare.

Hipkins only chance to close the gap is the leaders' debates, and it's doubtful that beating Luxon in those would make much of a difference.

The mood among the majority of voters is for change, policies don't seem to have had any impact and the polls show Luxon's image is improving by the week.

Ahead of the first leader's debate

The first leaders' debate is TVNZ's, on Tuesday next week (September 19) moderated by political editor Jessica Mutch McKay.

Luxon is trying to ensure he goes into it as the underdog.

This week he described Hipkins as "a champion debater - he's probably the best debater in our parliament, and probably in New Zealand".

He then went on say that by contrast, he had never done a debate and usually lost the ones he had with his wife, the Herald's political editor, Claire Trevett, reported.

"That is complete and utter nonsense, of course, aimed at trying to give Luxon the advantage of low expectations going into the first televised debate," she said.

"Luxon is, after all, apparently confident in his ability to completely fix the economy, give everyone their hips ops and halt criminals in their tracks within days of becoming PM.

"It's stretching credibility to simultaneously claim he can't handle a head-to-head debate with a man he has repeatedly tried to depict as an incompetent nincompoop."

Trevett said debates didn't necessarily change votes but they could reveal a leader to be clever, funny, genuine, a fraud or an idiot.

"A big clanger or mistake, especially in the first debate, can seed a perception or an idea about a leader that is very hard to shed."

Trevett said Hipkins privately thought Luxon would be better than some commentators seemed to think.

Former party leader Richard Prebble, writing in the Herald, said the first leaders debate promised to be the most-watched campaign event.

Weighing up the rivals, Prebble said Luxon had only been in Parliament for three years and it showed.

"He speaks too fast, does not modulate his voice, has not mastered the pause and cannot tell a joke. In a short speech he said 'I have to tell you' or words to that effect, 29 times.

"Hipkins is a professional politician who has been debating since he was a student politician, it is an art that takes years to master."

Prebble's conclusion: "Hipkins must win the leaders' debate by knockout. If he does, National and ACT will fall short.

"But if Luxon can put up a credible performance he will demonstrate that he is ready to be prime minister… should Luxon surprise us and be judged the winner, he will achieve a landslide election victory."

Winston Peters and NZ First

The fascination with Winston Peters and NZ First's chances of getting back into Parliament continued this week.

The Newshub-Reid Research poll gave it 4.6 percent while 1News Variant poll put it on 5 percent, which would mean seven seats in Parliament.

It has been steadily inching upwards in recent months, and Peters said he was increasingly confident of returning, RNZ reported.

His contribution to the campaign this week was highly controversial, as he probably intended it to be.

Speaking to an audience of mostly white-haired voters in Nelson he said: "Here's the rub if you are Maori. We're not indigenous," Stuff reported.

"We come from Hawai-iki. Where's our Hawai-iki? We think it is in the Cook Islands. We think its in Rarotonga… but we're not from here."

According to the report, he linked this with the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which the National-led government signed up to in 2010.

NZ First's policy is to formally withdraw from it.

His comments were criticised by National, Labour and ACT.

Asked on Morning Report why he had made the comments, Peters said he couldn't understand why they were being contested because "it was a fact". He said he wasn't concerned about arousing anti-Maori sentiment.

National's tax plan rubbished by economists

National's plan to fund its tax cuts mainly through a tax on high-value property sales to foreigners continued to come under strong attack this week.

"Economists analysing National's foreign buyers tax have found it would likely raise $210 million a year - falling well short of the $740 million a year National expects to rake in," RNZ reported.

National has repeatedly refused to release the underlying assumptions and modelling behind its tax plan, despite being challenged on the large sums it expects to generate.

Independent economists Simon Redell, Sam Warburton and Nick Goodall crunched the numbers.

Redell said National's numbers weren't credible.

"I've looked at revenue estimates from Toronto and Vancouver: both had a 15 percent foreign buyers tax, Toronto's bigger than New Zealand, the budget estimate last year was that it would raise $175 million and that's a tax that applies at all price bands," he said.

Warburton said it was "not in any way plausible" National's proposed tax would raise $740 million. "The estimates do not stack up. Their estimates are just too high," he said.

Economist Shamubeel Eaqub put it more bluntly: National's figures were "bullshit".

Nicola Willis, National's finance spokesperson, did what she and Luxon have done from the start - simply say they're right and everyone else is wrong.

"We think that they are wrong, we think that their modelling is flawed, that it makes flawed assumptions and we stand by our costings," she said.

Luxon had an uncomfortable time with his party's figures during a Q&A interview with Jack Tame.

The Herald's Trevett said it made Luxon look like the first term MP that he was, and he found out the hard way the campaign was about more than "larking about for the cameras and taking potshots at rivals".

"As Tame interrogated him on whether National would raise as much as it claimed from measures such as a foreign buyers tax , Luxon tried to answer by simply saying over and over again that what was important was National offering tax cuts to the 'squeezed middle'," she said.

"He claimed there was no issue with the numbers."

He's going to hear about those numbers again before long, because Labour will be looking for ways to skewer him on them during the leaders' debates.

None of this will greatly worry National. It's on the way up, it knows there's a mood for change and it knows voters won't be all that worried about how their tax cuts will be paid for.

National will deliver, and then figure out how to pay for the tax cuts if its costings turn out to be as wildly optimistic as critics claim they are.

And the reasons why Labour is falling in the polls just keep coming.

Treasury's PREFU said inflation was proving to be more stubborn than originally expected and forecast interest rates staying higher for longer.

That's basically what has brought Hipkins and Labour crashing down - the soaring cost of living at the same time as the Reserve Bank cranked up interest rates which fed through into fearsome mortgage payment increases.

Then there's the relentless stream of health service horror stories.

On Thursday this week Stuff's newspaper The Post ran a front page story under the headline 'After-hours on life support'.

It was yet another report about the dire conditions facing emergency departments and fears that after-hours clinics couldn't cope.

It's a vicious environment for Labour to campaign in.

It's all happening under Labour's watch and people are over it. On 14 October they're very likely to show they're over Labour as well.

*Peter Wilson is a life member of Parliament's press gallery, 22 years as NZPA's political editor and seven as parliamentary bureau chief for NZ Newswire.