With National now eight points behind Labour, this wasn’t the send-off to 2025 the government was hoping for, writes Catherine McGregor in today’s extract from The Bulletin.
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A poll surge, with caveats
The final major political poll of the year has delivered Labour an early Christmas present – but one wrapped in warning tape. The latest Post/Freshwater Strategy poll with Infrastructure New Zealand (paywalled) puts Labour on 38%, up 11 points since the 2023 election and eight points clear of National on 30%. On those numbers, Labour would be the largest party by some distance, translating to about 48 seats, compared with National’s 43, with NZ First, the Greens and Act all clustered around the low double digits.
But Tim Hurdle of Freshwater Strategy urges caution. While Labour’s support has rebounded, he says it appears less like a surge of enthusiasm than a holding pattern by voters dissatisfied with the status quo. People are “trying to find something better than the status quo”, he says, adding: “I don’t think [Labour] can be confident they’ll hold those numbers.” The poll also shows Luxon narrowing the gap with Chris Hipkins on preferred prime minister, gaining three points since October to trail the Labour leader 45% to 39%. Luxon is “a hard worker and he’s relentless”, says Hurdle, who argues the prime minister is doing a good job of positioning himself to be the face of an economic recovery, if and when it arrives in 2026.
National’s problem from here
The new poll underlines the challenge for National as it heads into the new year on the back foot. Writing in The Post (paywalled), Henry Cooke says the polling closeness of the left and right blocs will give National some comfort, but also presents a deeper strategic problem. Under MMP, the largest party has almost always led the government, and National has never done so without topping the party vote.
Cooke asks the question worrying many in the party: “How exactly will the public react if the polling looks like the only route to government for National is through a far stronger Act and NZ First party?” While the bloc maths might technically work, Cooke suggests soft centre voters could be uneasy about a National-led government dependent on more powerful coalition partners, particularly after a term in which those tensions have been highly visible. National’s recent tilt back towards the centre may be an attempt to solve that problem – but it also underscores how far the party still has to climb from 30%.
Seymour unloads on Swarbrick
If National is recalibrating, David Seymour is staying true to form. In an end-of-year interview with the Herald’s Thomas Coughlan (paywalled), the Act leader zeroed in on Greens co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick, labelling her a “demagogue”, accusing her of using her talents for “quite dark motivations”, and claiming she “usually screams at me when we get off-air from Herald Now”, the online show on which the two regularly appear together. Swarbrick strongly denies the claim.
Seymour went further still, comparing his own legislative persistence to William Wilberforce’s campaign to abolish the slave trade in Great Britain, and suggesting, to no one’s great surprise, that Wilberforce – like Kate Sheppard, Nelson Mandela and Jesus himself – would “almost certainly” be an Act voter.
Luxon bows out with zingers in the House
The parliamentary year ended, as it often does, with the adjournment debate descending into theatrical insults, reports RNZ’s Russell Palmer. In a speech littered with one-liners – which Hipkins accused Luxon of writing with AI – the PM likened Labour to a “picked-over box of favourites”, with the best gone and the remainder like Cherry Ripes: “deeply red” on the inside and “best left where they are”. The Greens and Te Pāti Māori, meanwhile, were compared to a Picnic bar – “a bit rough and totally nuts”. He ribbed his own coalition partners too, joking that while Seymour believed Jesus would have voted Act, “I talk to the guy every night and I’ve never heard him talk about Act”.
And finally, from a media release issued by Chris Bishop, the parliamentary ledger for 2025: 55 bills introduced; 105 first readings; 89 third readings; 1,516 papers presented to the House; 79 question times; and – as of Wednesday morning – 58,938 written parliamentary questions asked of ministers. No wonder they’re looking forward to a break.
