Dom Post on Labour’s own goal

The Dom Post editorial:

The immensity of the task facing new Labour leader David Cunliffe is starkly illustrated by his party’s bungled attempt to embarrass the Government over new minimum house deposit rates.

Mr Cunliffe has talked about putting Labour on a war footing. This week’s events show it is not on a war footing. It is in a deep slumber. …

It is six weeks since the bank announced a minimum deposit level of 20 per cent for most home buyers. You’d think in that time Labour would have been able to come up with a young family who’d been saving for several years and had had the dream of home ownership snatched from their grasp at the last minute. Instead the best the party could manage was a 23-year-old IT consultant who was not even sure he would live in a house, if he bought it. “If it’s good enough I could live in it, otherwise it could be an investment property,” said Kanik Mongia.

No criticism of Mr Mongia. Good on him for saving enough for a 10 per cent deposit on a $400,000 to $500,000 home.

But does Labour really want to portray itself as the party of upwardly mobile young property investors? And is it really prepared to undermine the integrity of monetary policy to give Yuppies a leg up?

It was a staggering own goal. They propose destroying the independence of the Reserve Bank so a 23 year old can get a bank to fund a $500,000 investment property for him. It would be difficult to find a more unsympathetic case to highlight.

Not only did they fail to find someone better, they had their leader railing against property investors in the same story as they are promoting one.

I’m reluctant to blame parliamentary staff for the failings of a party, but in this case the bungle should ring warning bells. I have to assume that Cunliffe wasn’t told that the photo op he was doing involved an aspiring 23 year old property investor. Surely he would have said no if he was told.

So this suggests that his leader’s office didn’t do due diligence on the person. They should have had a conversation with him and found out that he was thinking of using the house as an investment property.

At this early stage you can get away with errors like that, but going into the election you can’t afford to have such fuck ups.

Labour’s failure to find a more suitable “victim” for its campaign indicates that it is either out of touch with the issues or not well connected to the community it purports to represent.

However, the party’s fortunes will not be transformed simply by the leader performing better. The party must also do its bit. On this week’s evidence it has a long way to go.

Normally it is the Government that is happy when there is a recess as it means no question time. I’d say Labour should be very happy there is no Parliament this week, because they’d be getting a massive mocking in it, if there was.