The Opposition has lost its voice

Sunday, 30 June 2024

Andrea Vance is national affairs editor.

OPINION: Politics is currently all noise and no signal.

From National, the sound of the barrel being scraped is deafening. But there is nothing louder than the silence emanating from Labour’s benches.

The Opposition has lost its voice.

You may dimly recall scrutiny week. Given holding government to account is one of the main functions of Parliament, it was nice they gave over a whole week to it.

For the Cabinet, it was less a grilling, more a defrosting of already well-canvassed problems, such as its approach to funding cancer drugs.

Ministers walked away from over-heated select committee rooms relatively unscathed by the questions from their drowsy, toothless Labour rivals.

The Greens, too, pulled punches, although they are more preoccupied with avoiding, rather than asking uncomfortable questions. Such as: where is that Darleen Tana report? Or why did Golriz Ghahraman’s mental health crisis only manifest in designer boutiques, not a K-Mart?

It took a grounded ferry, plane and pylon to land any hits on a government still struggling from blunder to gaffe.

Labour, we are told, is on a mea culpa tour. “What we think doesn’t matter a lot at the moment,” Chris Hipkins said recently.

His is a party more interested in listening than talking, seeking forgiveness from the voters that abandoned it in droves last year.

The thing about staged public penance is that everyone does it these days, from Elon Musk to the cast of Below Deck. These are rarely accepted as sincere.

Every defeat comes with a period of introspection. But eight months after the election, it’s time Labour stopped licking its wounds and got back to work.

Yes, it is testament to Hipkins’ leadership (or merely a lack of ambition) that his MPs’ teeth are not bared at him.

The caucus has at least learned one lesson from the last spell in the wilderness: internal warfare is rarely a path back to power.

But it’s not necessarily the right lesson.

The voters need to see that Labour can deliver, and they can start with actually doing the most important job they have: scrutinising the executive. Turn those knives on ministers.

It's not even challenging. Christopher Luxon is hardly coasting on a wave of popularity, with Hipkins outscoring him in the 1News Verian approval rankings.

A string of divisive policies, from the fast-track approval bill to landlord tax cuts, have disquieted voters on all sides of the political landscape.

Yet, despite more than enough fodder for attack, Labour has failed for months to land a killer blow.

The MPs with undeniable talent (Barbara Edmonds, Ayesha Verrall, Kieran McAnulty) seem to have been neutered.

Carmel Sepuloni has washed up on celebrity Treasure Island, and Willie Jackson is getting more airtime than anyone, rarely in the best interests of his party.

There are two possible explanations.

Labour, languishing in its Wellington echo-chamber where public service cuts are hyperbolising antipathy towards National, is waiting for economic gloom to unseat the Government.

In which case, the party should read up on the last real winter of discontent, during Helen Clark’s first year of government. A drumbeat of negative headlines gave way to victory when Labour crushed a weak and complacent National.

Economic recovery is set to pick up in a year, just enough time for Luxon to claim credit ahead of the 2026 election.

It may be that Hipkins and co have resigned themselves to this cyclical fate, and are content to spend a term or two drifting along in an unspecified direction, topping up their property investments with that tax-payer funded housing perk.

This makes for a long, slow political death. One would almost prefer the noise and fury of a leadership coup, at least demonstrating some drive to do better or hunger for power.

But perhaps that’s the problem. The deafening silence is more interesting than anything Labour has to say.

What do you think? Email sundayletters@stuff.co.nz.