Dunne's Weekly: The Teflon Would-Be Prime Minister

Chris Hipkins must be the luckiest man in politics today.

Not only has he scored a magazine cover story just before the election about his forthcoming wedding, but his record as a senior Minister and then Prime Minister during the last Labour government has been overlooked by the media, and curiously also the National Party, when it comes to assessing his suitability to become Prime Minister again after this election.

When the issue of the $2.75 million his predecessor, Jacinda Ardern, signed off on behalf of the government for the Mongrel Mob was raised, Hipkins glibly brushed it off, saying now it was a mistake and something he was not particularly interested in at the time.

The only problem with that cursory dismissal is that it was not just Ardern who favoured the gangs. When Hipkins was Prime Minister, his Cabinet considered whether and how the gangs could be used and funded to support the government in its fight against ram raids.

Moreover, Hipkins was a senior Minister for over five years in a variety of key portfolios before he became Prime Minister. He was closely involved in all the major decisions of the Ardern government, so he cannot credibly now shrug them off when they are criticised. As the Covid19 Minister he oversaw the prolonged second Auckland lockdown in late 2021that upended so many peoples’ lives. He was the one who briefly suggested Aucklanders' 2021 summer vacations might have to be staggered and even then, only taken with prior government approval.

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Earlier, as Education Minister he was responsible for largely surrendering control of curriculum reform to the teacher unions, something the present government has been struggling to overturn. Even during the first leaders' debate this year he made it clear that "educators" (Labour's new euphemism for the teacher unions) and not parents would still have the final say on how and what children are taught, were Labour to be in office again.

Yet for the last three years, and throughout the current election campaign, both the National Party and the media have inexplicably ignored Hipkins' previous indifferent record. Neither have held him to account for his actions in government, yet previous actions are usually the best guide to future performance.

As the man who would be Prime Minister again the generally amiable Hipkins has still not learned why voters tossed his government so unceremoniously from office barely three years ago. Since then, he has given no hint that he would do things any differently were he to become Prime Minister again. And neither National nor the media seem interested or willing to challenge him on this point.

The media's actions in not highlighting Hipkins' previous failures are unforgivable and smack of outright bias. But more inexplicable is National's failure to hold Hipkins to account. That looks like simple ineptitude. They appear to think that it is too negative to keep reminding people of Labour’s time in office, but that overlooks the fact that voters often have short memories that need to be frequently refreshed.

Good political management is not just doing the job and telling the story, but also frequently contrasting that positively with what has gone before to establish a favourable impression in voters’ minds. By the Prime Minister’s own admission, National’s focus over the last three years has been on governing, which is good, but without the compare-and-contrast aspect of retail politics, that focus exists in a vacuum.

On every indicator except unemployment the country is doing better than it was three years ago but National has failed to sell that contrast, leaving the impression that things are little better than when Labour was in office. But had National kept the blowtorch on Hipkins and Labour, as well as governing, over the last three years, and kept reminding voters of what things had been like under the previous government, it is a reasonable assumption that the polling gap between the two blocs would now be far greater than it is today.

Hipkins knows this full well which is why he has kept his head down since the last election. He must be pinching himself with incredulity and delight that the combination of National's political ineptitude, and a pliant media, has left him largely unscathed. Consequently, even though his party is falling in the polls, thanks to the vagaries of the MMP system he now stands a real chance of emulating Keith Holyoake’s hitherto unique feat in 1960 of returning to office as Prime Minister after three years in Opposition.

As the election campaign has unfolded, with little of the usual drama, Hipkins has been allowed to look increasingly like the modern Teflon man, something National may well end up rueing to its cost after the election.

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