Kerre Woodham: It's getting harder to decide who to vote for

A friend of mine said to me the other day, “do you have the cliff notes of Labour's policies going into the election? I haven't heard much from Chris Hipkins.” I said, “well, you haven't heard much from Chris Hipkins because he doesn't need to say much.” The best tactic for Labour right now, and they've they copped onto that very early, was to stay shtum and let National and its coalition partners do their very best to lose the election. Christopher Luxon's suck it up cupcake to business owners in Rotorua and then the subsequent apology was yet another case of him having to explain himself. “I didn't mean it like that, you know what I'm saying.” He's done it so many times before. He did it with the bottom feeders comment, he did it with the sorted comment. He doesn't mean it, but it comes across badly, it's mischaracterised, it's misrepresented, he has to explain himself, and when you're explaining, you're losing. 

He doesn't trust journalists because he feels he's misrepresented, mischaracterised, misspoke every time he opens his mouth, but then that makes it very difficult to get the message across that National is the best party to lead the country. Why should Hipkins open his mouth? He'll only cop flak every time he does. Far better to stay shtum. He doesn't need to say anything. And it's Luxon's inability to connect with the public. One on one, he's absolutely fine as anyone who has met him can attest. As an orator, yeah, not so much. It's costing National. I mean, look at Jacinda Ardern. She was able to sell us a whole bunch of nothing in 2017, and then during Covid was able to sell us a whole bunch of draconian, and then increasingly odd, nonsensical rules that people, a lot of people just swallowed. And that was because she had the ability to communicate and connect. 

It's a shame that personalities play such a big part in politics, but that's the reality. Always has been. If you go back to the fourth Labour Government, David Lange was selected, elected, voted in as a leader because he could sell incredibly divisive and game changing and society changing policies to the electorate. You had a group of people who were working very hard on completely transforming New Zealand, and he was sold to the New Zealand public as “you can trust me, nothing can go wrong while I'm in charge”, and people believed it. They would never have got away with introducing as many of the radical policies that they introduced without having a brilliant communicator at the helm. 

When I read Sir Ian Taylor's opinion piece in Stuff this morning, I thought, yeah, I could have written this myself, but I didn't, and I probably wouldn't have written it as well. But I am so exactly like Sir Ian Taylor, apart from the brilliant creative and millionaire bit – I'm just nodding along as I'm reading it. Like Sir Ian, for most of my life, I have been a centre left voter. Like Sir Ian, I too turned off them in Covid when their ability to deliver on the most basic of the policies became abundantly clear and that there were a bunch of numpties trying to put legislation in place. Like Sir Ian, I found National MPs were willing to listen and they were coming up with good sound policy they'd been working on in Opposition. I liked many of their would-be ministers and I really hoped that by voting centre right, we'd find a clear path through the mess that had been left behind. 

But then along came ACT and New Zealand First, and as Sir Ian says, and I quote, “I was left with the uncomfortable realisation that my vote had helped create a coalition increasingly shaped by minority party ideologies that ran directly against many of the things I believed in.” Amen, Sir Ian, that's exactly how I feel. I'm okay with with centre right, but with those divisive policies from ACT and now —now that it's election year— from New Zealand First, they don't sit well with me. And that's why people are looking at TOP and that's why Sir Ian says he's listening. I know their policies are ill thought out and poorly costed, but so are New Zealand First's. And if I'm going to have a difficult minor party in a coalition or sitting on the benches, I'd rather have young people there than a bunch of old men who represent self-interest and dog whistle politics. 

How on earth can you have Winston Peters doing a brilliant job as Foreign Affairs Minister and then he turns into a foaming racist in election year? If he was racist to his core, you'd be like, okay, well, he's a rac, but he's not. He's just appealing to racists because he knows that's where he'll get his votes. He knows that there will be a lot of people who vote for New Zealand First because they don't like others. I mean, probably as far as I'm concerned, reason will prevail. I'm doing the whichparty.nz almost weekly, which helps you sort out who to vote for. I'm looking at the ministers in the Coalition Government and comparing them to their counterparts on the left, and the vast majority of government ministers are head and shoulders above the alternative in my mind. But I do not think I have ever felt less inspired, less hopeful about an election, ever.