The Greens laid down a challenge to potential coalition partners to come to the table with faster and stronger climate action if they want its support. Photo: RNZ / Giles Dexter
Analysis - National and Labour are going to need coalition partners to form a government after the election and the minor parties could be heading for an era of unprecedented influence.
The Greens and ACT are both holding up well, and neither will be easy to deal with in post-election negotiations.
In his State of the Planet speech this week Greens' co-leader James Shaw laid out his party's position, as reported by RNZ: "To any political party that wants the Green Party's support to form a government after the election, let us put it as simply was we can: The Green Party will not accept anything less than the strongest possible climate action. The stakes are too high, the consequences of failure too great."
He might as well have said "the Labour Party" instead of "any political party" because the Greens aren't going to go anywhere else.
Shaw has to be strong to maintain support within his own party, and he'll be looking to shave off some Labour votes as well by appealing to those with a green tinge who wouldn't have been happy about Prime Minister Chris Hipkins throwing climate-friendly policies on his bonfire.
On the other side, ACT's David Seymour has been taking a hard line with National.
ACT leader David Seymour has laid down a bottom line of redefining the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi. Photo: RNZ / Angus Dreaver
He has also laid down a bottom line - redefining the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi and holding a referendum on it.
The Listener's political writer, Danyl McLauchlan, said this week relations between the two were not warm and Seymour routinely attacked his potential coalition partner for being "spineless".
McLauchlan said some of ACT's policies were "rather radical" and the most troubling for National was that ACT wanted to introduce legislation that reinterpreted the Treaty of Waitangi, then hold a referendum which, if passed, would enshrine ACT's "unorthodox reading" of the nation's founding document into law.
"National has pre-emptively baulked at the idea - they would rather not spend their first three years in government orchestrating a bitter and divisive fight over Treaty principles," he said.
As McLauchlan sees it, both Luxon and Prime Minister Chris Hipkins "sit squarely within the centrist tradition" but that's going to change when the next government is formed.
"Labour and National have both moved to the centre to better drive each other off the road. But they're speeding towards post-electoral coalitions that could be more radical than any we've seen in decades," he said.
National's leader Christopher Luxon came out of Covid isolation on Tuesday and was greeted with a poll showing his popularity had fallen to a new low in the latest Talbot Mills survey of voter opinion.
It showed Luxon's preferred prime minister rating had fallen four points in a month to 23 percent. His previous worst performance was 24 percent in September and October last year.
Hipkins had gained four points to reach 39 percent.
In the party vote, Labour led the field with 37 percent, up four points from last month, while National dropped two points to 34 percent.
The Greens were on 8 per cent and ACT on 12 percent.
Talbot Mills does Labour's internal polling as well as corporate polls for clients. This one was a corporate poll, published by the Herald.
National Party leader Christopher Luxon announced this party's education policy this week, Photo: RNZ / Nate McKinnon
Luxon's big deal this week was education, and his party has come out with some real policy.
He announced a National-led government would set a target of 80 percent of students at or above the expected curriculum level for their age by 2030, with New Zealand in the top 10 international rankings for maths, reading and science by 2033, RNZ reported.
It would introduce its Teaching the Basics Brilliantly plan, which involves children spending an hour a day on reading, writing and maths.
It would also shift the curriculum from two-to-three year bands of teaching requirements to year-specific learning.
National's plan would define what needed to be taught in any given year.
"For example, in England and Australia you learn addition and subtraction in year 1," Luxon said.
"In New Zealand it can be anywhere between years 1 to 5.
"If you're learning algebra, it's year 5 in England and Australia but in New Zealand it's anywhere from year 6 to 10."
Under National's plan there would be two tests each year to assess progress.
The policy is for primary and intermediate schools. Senior school policy will come out later in the year.
The government and the primary teachers union, NZEI, criticised National's policy, RNZ reported .
Education Minister Jan Tinetti - a former school principal - said it would be another major disruption to learning on top of the pandemic.
"They haven't said how much their changes will cost, or how they will resource them, or what their commitments to teachers and their pay is," she said.
"I'm really concerned about it because the sector doesn't seem to have been involved in the development of this."
Union president Mark Potter asked where the new ideas were. "No principal anywhere has said 'let's not do reading, writing and maths'," he said.
"What we are seeing is the idea of setting standards and testing children to that, and what that creates is a high-stakes education and learning environment which is not good for children."
National's announcement came a day after the Herald began a series on New Zealand's education system titled Making the Grade.
It began with a grim statement on the current situation.
"New Zealand school students are falling behind on most national and international benchmarks, causing concern for the country's future," it said.
"By the end of primary school, many are behind their expected level - more than half in maths, two thirds in reading and 80 per cent in science.
"One international test estimates one in five 15-year-olds cannot read well enough to take part in society, while another shows we have a higher proportion of non-achievers in maths and science than Australia, the United States and England."
The Herald's series is packed with alarming statistics and research into the curriculum and teaching methods.
Parliament was in recess this week and when it resumes on Tuesday Tinetti is very likely to have those statistics thrown at her during question time.
File photo. Ginny Anderston was appointed Police Minister, replacing Stuart Nash. Photo: RNZ / Angus Dreaver
The prime minister's week began with his announcement that he had appointed Ginny Andersen as the new Minister of Police, replacing Stuart Nash who resigned last week over his much-publicised conversation with the police commissioner.
Andersen's appointment was unexpected, and most of the questions at his post-cabinet press conference were: Why her?
Media speculation had centred on the likelihood of the portfolio being given to a "safe pair of hands" minister - Andrew Little had been mentioned - who could handle National's attacks during the election campaign.
Hipkins said Andersen had worked for the police for 10 years, she would be a good fit and he had absolute confidence she could handle what's going to be a hot portfolio in the coming months.
National's police spokesman, Mark Mitchell, said the appointment was a signal from Labour that the government had given up on law and order.
"They've appointed a minister with less than two months' experience at the bottom of the cabinet rankings at a time when the country is experiencing the worst crime levels it has evert seen," he said.
Andersen became a cabinet minister in Hipkins' January reshuffle, with a clutch of relatively minor portfolios. She has kept most of them.
Andersen worked for the police as a civilian, ending up as policy manager at National Headquarters.
After her appointment had been announced, Andersen said she would be working every day to make sure New Zealanders felt safer.
"I know it's a big job and I know first hand that policing is a tough job out there," the Hutt South MP told media.
"I take the job incredibly seriously. I'm proud to have worked within police in the past and I'll take those skills that I've learned and apply them every day."
Luxon didn't criticise the appointment, but said the government needed to tackle crime "really hard".
"From our point of view we want the government to look at our plan. We're going to back police, we're going to tackle gangs, and we're going to create some serious youth offender categories as well," he said.
*Peter Wilson is a life member of Parliament's press gallery, 22 years as NZPA political editor and seven as parliamentary bureau chief for NZ Newswire.
