The Key to keeping Kiwis happy

Phil Quin writes in the Business Spectator:

Key, who returned from a successful career on Wall St to enter parliament in 2002, seems mostly untroubled by ego or ambition. In this respect, he reminds me of former Victorian Premier Steve Bracks, in that both wear authority lightly and make a virtue out of a rough-hewn rhetorical style. A one-time adviser told me over lunch how Key is quick to tell colleagues and staff that he is “the Prime Minister of New Zealand, not the Prime Minister of the National Party,” a corny talking point that ought to induce groans, but somehow doesn’t coming from Key.

All this makes him the most popular NZ Prime Minister on record, but the outcome of the election is not as certain as his double-digit lead over Labour would suggest.

David Farrar, founder and editor of Kiwiblog, New Zealand’s top conservative-leaning politics website, painted a scenario for me whereby National attracts as much as 46 per cent of the vote – and loses. Under the Mixed-Member Proportional electoral system, Farrar explains that Labour could conceivably cobble together a narrow majority together with the Greens and an unseemly concoction of Winston Peters’ populist New Zealand First perhaps and the Maori Party. This appears unlikely unless Labour, the Greens and NZ First significantly outperform expectations without cannibalising each other’s vote (according to the most recent Colmar-Brunton One News poll, Labour is at 34 per cent, the Greens 6 per cent and NZ First 2 per cent).

 An interesting over-view of where things are at.