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David Cunliffe's pre-election holiday got ruined tonight. The latest Roy Morgan poll is out, and it's grim reading both for the Labour Party and its leader. Here's the news Mr Cunliffe won't want to hear:
Today’s New Zealand Roy Morgan Poll shows a strong rise in support for National (51%, up 3%) and a substantial lead over a potential Labour/Greens alliance (38.5%, down 1.5%) just more than two months before the New Zealand Election on September 20.
Support for Key’s Coalition partners has changed little overall with the Maori Party 1% (down 0.5%), Act NZ (0.5%, down 0.5%) and United Future 0.5% (up 0.5%).
Support for the Labour Party is 23.5% (down 4.5% - the lowest since November 22-24, 2011 – just before the 2011 New Zealand Election), the Greens are 15% (up 3% – the highest since August 26-September 8, 2013), New Zealand First is 6% (up 0.5%) and the Internet-Mana Party alliance is at 1.5% (down 1%). Support for the Conservative Party of NZ is 1% (unchanged) and support for Independent/ Others is 0% (down 0.5%).
If a National Election were held now the latest New Zealand Roy Morgan Poll shows that the result would be an easy victory for the National Party and a third term for Prime Minister John Key.
Polling was conducted during the period 30 June to 13 July, so this poll covers the Labour Party conference, Trevor Mallard's Moa de-extinction plan, and Labour's education announcements. Set against that background, a loss of 4.5 percentage points (a drop of around 16% in the space of two weeks) is significant. The phone is off the hook when the Labour Party goes calling. And far from this being a rogue poll, check out the recent trends:
National are the winners here, but so are the Greens. We've joked over the last few years that the Greens may end up being the leading opposition party, but now they are only 8.5 percentage points behind Labour, and it's no longer a joking matter; it could happen.
There's one final indignity for Labour; read on:The latest NZ Roy Morgan Government Confidence Rating is up slightly to 142.5pts (up 1pt) with 65.5% (up 0.5%) of New Zealanders saying New Zealand is ‘heading in the right direction’ compared to 23% (down 0.5%) that say New Zealand is ‘heading in the wrong direction’. The New Zealand Government Confidence Rating is substantially higher than in Australia – Australian Government Confidence this week fell to 90pts (down 5.5pts).
Oppositions generally don't win elections; governments get voted out. When almost two thirds of those polled are optimistic, and less than a quarter say New Zealand is ‘heading in the wrong direction’, there seems to be little mood for change. We suspect that things will be very, very subdued in Labour Party circles tonight and tomorrow. Now that the election is less than three months away, the leadership can be changed without going to the party and the unions. But is there someone who is prepared to take one for the team, and put their personal ambitions to one side to stem the bleeding?This really is a dreadful result for Labour, and especially for David Cunliffe. Bill English's 2002 record of 20.9% is truly under threat now.
David Cunliffe was especially chipper as he announced Labour's 2000 new teachers policy on Sunday. But by yesterday morning he had admitted to Newstalk ZB that they wouldn't actually all be "new" teachers in the first instance, as immigrants and teachers brought out of retirement would be used to plug the gaps until the "new" teachers emerged from training ready to start teaching in 2018.
Add to the mix Steven Joyce having challenged Labour's numeracy yesterday, and the public will again be suspicious of a new Labour policy. It's not the first time, and it won't be the last, and one has to wonder why Labour let its secondee from Treasury go.
Stuff has run a poll over the new teachers/smaller class sizes policy. And it's unlikely to have David Cunliffe grinning Cheshire cat-like as he was on Sunday; check this out:
This will be very disappointing for Labour. The class sizes policy was the centrepiece of its congress at the weekend. Less than a third of respondents believe that the Labour policy will have anything more than a minimal impact on student achievement. Given the policy has also been welcomed by the Greens, far fewer people think the policy will have a major or moderate impact than an average of polls has supporting the Left bloc. And on the other hand, the 67.4% who believe the policy will have a minimal impact or no impact at all is far larger than National and its allies are polling at present. That suggests that even Left-leaning voters have doubts about Mr Cunliffe's game-changing policy.
When he can't even take his core support with him, how can David Cunliffe expect to win the support of floating voters?
David Cunliffe's desire for a positive run-up to the General Election hasn't begun very well. Associate Finance Minister Steven Joyce has been checking the numbers on Labour's education policies from the weekend, and he's positive; positive that Labour has got its sums wrong. He's put out this presser on the Beehive website:
Many questions unanswered about cost of Labour’s promises
Two and a half months out from this year’s election and already Labour cannot answer basic questions about the details and fiscal costs of its expensive early promises, Associate Finance Minister Steven Joyce says.
“David Cunliffe, David Parker and Chris Hipkins had a ‘hey Clint’ moment on TV last night, when all three of them failed to answer a simple question about the total cost of their grab-bag of education announcements,” Mr Joyce says.
“Labour has rejected having a Treasury analyst in its office, and it really is showing.”
Talking to media yesterday after announcing it would spend $403 million over four years to employ more teachers, neither David Cunliffe, nor David Parker nor Chris Hipkins could do the simple maths on how much their other promises would cost.
“That’s because their numbers don’t add up and their claims are misleading,” Mr Joyce says.
“For a start, the Government currently funds secondary schools for an average 20 students per classroom, well below Labour’s ‘new’ target of 23 students per classroom.
“When it comes to their costings, Labour’s figures include only the cost of the extra teachers’ salaries. They need to come clean on what the total costs would be including ACC, training, support superannuation, and all the other overheads involved in supporting more teachers.”
Oh dear; Labour releases a flagship policy at its flagship election year congress, but fails on numeracy. Is it any wonder they want to do away with National Standards?Steven Joyce continues:Mr Joyce says this is not the first time in recent days that Labour has undercooked its costings and exaggerated its promises to New Zealanders.
“Last week their press release clearly said they were going to end voluntary school donations – yet they put up only half the money needed to cover existing donations and none of the school activity fees parents pay.
“And on Saturday they claimed they would provide every student between years five and 13 with a digital device worth $600 by providing a $100 subsidy and having parents pay $3.50 a week for 18 months. This will be news to Labour, but this adds up to only $373 per device.
“And just to top it all off, David Cunliffe yesterday confirmed he would look at buying back shares in mixed ownership model companies – even though he’s committed to spend all the money raised by the share offer programme and then some.
“After nearly six years in opposition, Labour has learned nothing about responsible economic and fiscal management. They really do need to start showing New Zealanders the money,” Mr Joyce says. “Labour 2014 is already starting to look a lot like the 2011 version, only trickier.”
It's pretty obvious now why Labour let its secondee from Treasury go. There's no way that dodgy numbers like these would have seen the light of day had they been subjected to proper, independent scrutiny.
There are 2539 schools in New Zealand as at July 2013, according to the Education Counts website. So 2000 new teachers equates to an average of just 0.78 teachers per school across the country. Mr Cunliffe has already conceded they won't all be "new" teachers. He told Newstalk ZB this morning that immigrants and retired teachers would be used to fill the gaps until the flood of new graduates hit the market by 2018.Labour's numbers in 2011 were exposed as highly dodgy, and they were punished at the polls. It doesn't look as though the party has learned anything in its second three year term in the wilderness of opposition.Rather than apologising for being a man, David Cunliffe should be apologising to the New Zealand public for once again trying to dupe them with dodgy numbers. He may want to fight an election campaign on policy, and free from personal attacks, but he has a responsibility to front up with credible numbers, not Helen Clark's infamous back of a table napkin calculations.
This weekend was supposed to be all about the Labour Party releasing some bold, union-driven education policy. Instead it has been all about moa, Mr Cunliffe being sorry for being a man, and other senior Labour MP's expressing their solidarity with David Cunliffe for being sorry for being a man.
And then came the ultimate indignity. Labour has been sledged by Associate Education Minister Nikki Kaye in this presser for recycling policies; check this out:
Labour playing catch up on 21st century schools
Associate Education Minister Nikki Kaye says Labour has clearly not done its homework in the education area and is promoting "new ideas" that have already been put in place by National.
“Most of what Labour has announced today is already being delivered by the Government through its 21st century schools programme. We have a massive build plan underway to modernise school facilities, upgrade school broadband networks and partner with communities to provide digital hubs through those networks. Our Ultrafast broadband and rural broadband initiatives are delivering fibre broadband with uncapped data to nearly every school in New Zealand.
"Labour's announcements today prove they have no idea what is already going on."
Nikki Kaye goes on to berate Labour over initiatives it has proposed, many of which are already happening:
Labour want to put money into professional learning development for ICT over the next few years. National has already invested $35 million in Professional Learning and Development, specifically targeted at learning with digital technologies.
Labour want to build an unspecified number of new schools and classrooms by 2030. Under the National government, hundreds of millions of dollars has been spent building new classrooms and upgrading older schools with the help of the Future Investment Fund, which Labour opposes. National has opened 12 new schools in the past three years in areas of growth.
And Labour wants to enable students to access the internet at home. Last year, National announced a change in policy to enable schools to extend their school internet to the surrounding area so students and families can access the internet from home.
Ms Kaye said the device subsidy programme also did not appear to have been thought through.
“There is an amazing lack of detail. Are they really going to make the subsidy available to every one of the 580,000 children in years 4 to 13? How do they plan to deal with rapid changes in technology? Is the plan limited to one device throughout the period of the student's time in school? If not, how many devices? How are they planning to deal with the interest costs? All these questions must be answered.
Nikki Kaye's questions are absolutely valid questions, and they are ones Labour must provide immediate answers to. Otherwise this looks just like policy made on the hoof, and we have already seen a number of examples this year of poorly conceived Labour Party policy not standing up to scrutiny. However attractive the policy may seem on the surface, the devil will be in the detail. And as has been seen over and over this year, Labour is not a detail party.
There's a final, school-related sledge from Nikki Kaye:“Labour has simply not done their homework. It really does make you wonder what they have been doing over the past six years.
“Our Future Focussed Learning report, sets out the direction the National government is going.
“Labour really needs to research what's happening and catch up,” Ms Kaye says.
One of the most interesting aspects of the laptops and iPads policy was a comment in the Herald story on the announcement yesterday; check this out:It is based on the Manaiakalani Trust programme in Tamaki, which works with 12 lower decile schools to provide students with a netbook and 24/7 access to the internet.
Interestingly, the Manaiakalani Trust is essentially a public-private partnership, which receives considerable support from corporates. And even more interestingly, look who one of those corporates is:Now we don't have any problem whatsoever with SKYCITY Auckland Community Trust supporting the Manaiakalani Trust to improve educational outcomes for vulnerable New Zealand children. In fact we think it's commendable, and socially responsible. But given the amount of hot air expended by Labour MP's towards SkyCity in the past, not to mention the angst caused to Labour leader David Shearer last year when it was revealed that he and a number of Labour MP's accepted corporate hospitality from SkyCity at Eden Park.
This policy release from Labour gets a resounding "not achieved". It has some good points, but in trying to be all things for all people, Labour has missed the mark by some distance.
Dave Goosselink from 3News tweets:
And on the day that Labour releases its much-heralded education policy, someone didn't do a good job of proof-reading. This is taken from the policy document Labour released online earlier this morning:
You couldn't make stuff like this up. Labour - proving the need for National Standards in Literacy since, like forever!
