We live in strange and unusual times. It’s been a century since we’ve endured a global pandemic like this, more than half a century since we’ve had economic woes like this. So maybe we got an opening election debate for the times - because that was a strange and unusual debate from One News tonight.
We are in an election campaign full of shadow boxing, a virtual campaign in every sense of the word that lacks the blood and bone of direct contact and genuinely competing visions. Everyone is playing the role of what they’re supposed to be, but it’s as if they’ve all forgotten those roles and are reading each other’s scripts.
Winston Peters has been doing it for a couple of weeks now. He’s Deputy Prime Minister but is running round the country damning the performance of the government in which he’s number two, insisting on change from a government he has stalled in those places where it has dared to consider change, demanding the government be held to account just after he’s left the cabinet table.
Tonight the major party leaders seemed to follow a similar inside-out, upside-down take on politics. Ardern, with a 54 percent preferred PM rating and a whopping poll lead, looked defensive and guarded. Like Peters, it was as if she wasn’t in power right now, talking not about the present work of her government but the aspirations and hopes she has for a future day.
Indeed, the Ardern we saw tonight was a flashback to the often policy wonkish, ineffective Opposition politician who long flattered to deceive, not the leader who burst onto the national stage from that first press conference in 2017 and the world stage after the mosque attacks and through the pandemic.
Thus far this election campaign has failed to catch alight, which is hardly surprising when the country is exhausted and fed up. At least in that sense Ardern captured the mood of the nation, because she looked weary, like so many of us. She talked like a bureaucrat and in vague politic-speak, not the inspirational leader she has been in recent years. How many viewers knew what she was talking about when she babbled about the Progressive Home Ownership Fund and pumped hydro?
She offered most passion right at the end, when she insisted “I’m not done on child poverty”. But while it showed where her heart lies, it only underlined how little she has achieved on the issue in her first term.
Judith Collins, in contrast, lives in the public imagination as “Crusher”. It’s only ever been a persona that shows part of her character. but tonight she was grinning like the Cheshire Cat from the very first shot. This was Charmer Collins. Sure, she interrupted and bit back at times, in a way Ardern did not. But go back through the years and this was a relatively mild debate. Collins too tended to generalities amidst her smiles, but at least she bought some energy and a few key phrases - viewers will know tomorrow that she had a small business, likes farmers and technology, wants RMA reform and is offering tax cuts.
Collins had the best and worst of the night; the slip about her trust owning her second properly was alienating for the frustrated middle New Zealand she spent so much of the debate cultivating. When Ardern made one of her few resonating comments - “I don’t need a tax cut” - Collin’s reply of “give it back then” was weak. She also didn’t do herself any favours seeming to only be concerned about those who “never expected to be on the dole heap”, as if it was fine for those already there.
But her personal touches about her husband leaving school early and being a proud daughter of dairy farmers would have resonated. Her answers on the whole were clearer and simpler than Ardern’s, which meant her points stuck more. Still, both were vague, as were many of the questions.
It was a night of rabbit holes, with host and leaders alike haring off down them and losing track of key issues. This is an election dominated by Covid-19, infrastructure and economic rebuilding plans. What we got most on those topics, respectively, were agreement that horticulture needs more workers, a debate over the value of pumped hydro and, my favourite, avocado orchards.
Yes, Collins went the furthest down the many rabbit holes of the evening, when she must have been as shocked as the rest of us to find herself pointedly asking John Campbell, “Do you want more avocado orchards or not?”. There was a debate about water in there somewhere, but everyone had lost the plot by then.
At one point the badly-lit Campbell, amidst his repeated thanking of the leaders for turning up, lost his train of thought and Ardern sympathised, saying it was understandable that he had lost track. It was a moment of truth; we were all a bit lost by then.
Both leaders claimed the other didn’t have a plan, while they did. Ardern’s plan had some detail - the promise of minimum wage increases and more living wages being paid, for example. But it was a thin outline. Collins’ got out more memorable points, but failed to hammer home the specifics. What’s National’s plan? From tonight’s debate I’d say more houses from RMA reform , teaching kids technology and, crucially, more of those well-watered avocado orchards.
Collins, with lower expectations coming up against someone who has been described globally as one of the best political communicators of our times, always had more to gain in tonight’s first debate. The challenger almost always does in the first debate. I wouldn’t say she made the most of that opportunity, but she did show more energy than she has thus far in the campaign and certainly took a step forward.
Ardern took a step back. But she has such a lead, it hardly feels critical. And perhaps the enduring takeaway from tonight was that no-one really has a convincing plan on how to handle these strange and unusual times. We’re all making it up and learning as we go along. And in truth, both parties’ approaches are relatively similar. In that sense, incumbency is your friend and Ardern, even as she will hope to shake off tonight’s performance and improve next time, can comfort herself that few viewers would have seen anything tonight likely to make them change their vote either way.