On the campaign trail

The NZ Herald has features on John Key and Helen Clark, as they are out on the campaign trail. First Armstrong following Key:

Some people just shake Key’s hand as he passes and express the hope that he wins and walk off. Votes in the bank. Those that do stop and chat almost on cue talk about it being”time for a change”. They don’t explain why.

This prevailing sentiment for “change” is extremely difficult for Labour to combat as it is based on feelings rather than cold hard logic.

A faltering economy will reinforce that sentiment. But National must be increasingly in two minds about the political advantages of a sharp downturn. One shopper sums things up. “I don’t envy you if you win,” he tells Key, as the entourage heads off to Napier’s seafront for his “ladies’ lunch”.

Indeed, National Governments always seem to come into office when the economy is heading downhill. Happened in 1975 and 1990. Key, if Prime Minister, will have a formidable challenge to grow the economy, slow the exodus, lift wages, cut taxes and maybe hardest of all actually implement a workable Emissions Trading Scheme.

The 29-year-old has voted Labour all her life, but she is not happy with the ruling party’s current direction. With four children and a husband who works full-time, she struggles to understand why Michael Cullen has not already cut taxes.

The irony is that the fiscal situation was far more conducive to cutting taxes from 2004 to 2007 than it is now. I doubt there is one other Finance Minister in the OECD who would not have cut taxes when there was a surplus of over $5,000 per household.

Meanwhile Paula Oliver is out with Helen Clark:

Clark handles the questions with a multi-pronged response. It is a style that isn’t reserved just for these students, but one she is using on her travels all around the country.

First she shows some empathy by acknowledging that the prices of some staple foods have risen faster than inflation, and petrol has zoomed up even more rapidly. “The family notices it in the car, and feeding teenagers who are always in the fridge,” she says with a wry grin to the students.

Then she breaks into what sounds like an Economics 101 lesson as she tries to project an image of someone who understands what is happening and is capable of leading the country through tighter times.

“The key thing for us is running the economy carefully,” Clark says, explaining that inflation remains a risk and the Government would prefer to see it slip back within the Reserve Bank’s target band of 1-3 per cent.

Then she reminds the students that Labour has only just days before done something to help with one aspect of the financial pinch – it delayed the introduction of transport into the climate change emissions trading scheme and thereby put off a further hike in petrol prices.

“We decided because people are already using less (petrol) as prices are high we shouldn’t push it up further,” Clark says.

Even though Clark is now 17% behind Key as Preferred PM, it is a useful reminder that she is a good campaigner, and while the fight may have gone out with some of her colleagues, it has not with her.