Definitely not a sideshow, but could it be a sidecar election?

It's an election year and consistent polling numbers from Act and the Greens creates a potentially interesting dynamic, while next week could provide a roaring start to the political year

In today’s edition: speculation that the legislation for agricultural emission pricing may not get through before the election; EV growth breaks records; how we may have accidentally flattened the Christmas Covid curve; but first, what the main parties will be focused on this year and the potential for a sidecar election

Easy, breezy election year (Images: Jason Stretch, Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images, Greg Bowker/Getty Images, Tina Tiller)

When will the election be?

Let’s start today’s edition, which looks at the early portion of the political year and associated commentary, with this fine piece of succinct data analysis from Toby Manhire. Headlined “Act Party goes hundies on summer releases”, it reveals just how many press releases each party sent over the break. The Act Party absolutely went hundies. With that covered, let’s get on with it. It’s an election year and Manhire has made his annual earnest attempt to establish when the election will be held. That prediction is available in both written and auditory form this year.

January 25 will be a big day for the government

While the first sitting of parliament isn’t until Valentine’s Day (not as incongruous as you might think), traditionally the political year starts with the Rātana celebrations (January  24 - 25). The first cabinet meeting is on January 25. That could be a very big day. We may get the announcement of the election date, a cabinet reshuffle, an indication of what policies will be “deprioritised” and we will get the Q4 inflation data. Stuff’s Thomas Manch details what we might be able to expect from the cabinet reshuffle and which policies will stay or go. I agree with him on all three of the picks he’s made for the ministerial portfolio shuffle.

What the two main parties need to focus on this year

Much of the political writing at this time of year is about what the parties must do to win the election. Stuff’s Luke Malpass looks at the key questions for National, writing that the party starts the new year in good shape but several questions around policy, positioning and Christopher Luxon’s campaigning chops remain. At the end of last year, Politik’s Richard Harman wrote (paywalled) that based on polling, Labour needs to convince at least another 10% of its total 2020 voters to stay loyal for 2022. “That is what will define next year’s politics”. Enter Henry Cooke, who writes the

Museum Street

newsletter. He’s used the New Zealand Election Study (NZES) to look at who Labour’s lost voters, or the swing voters, are. Great read, good graphs, big fan.

A sidecar election?

Stuff’s Bridie Witton reports that Act party leader David Seymour is prepared to sacrifice a ministerial position in government to pursue his party’s policy interests. The Green party is on a mission to increase its influence, but is still highly sceptical about working with National. At the end of last year Te Pāti Māori said they didn’t see themselves being part of a Labour or National government. And then of course there is New Zealand First (NZF), last polling at 3% in the 1 News-Kantar poll. Winston Peters has ruled out working with Labour. Simon Bridges ruled out working with New Zealand First in January 2019 at the National party retreat. National will meet soon in the Hawkes Bay and Luxon will be asked whether he too will rule out working with NZF.   

To end, a column from Max Rashbrooke who asks whether the electorate is in the mood for radical change and a departure from what Chris Hipkins described as “radical incrementalism” and what Bill English described as “incremental radicalism”. Rashbrooke posits that with Act and the Greens consistently polling at around 10%, “we face what you might call a sidecar election” where “one or the other could win unprecedentedly large concessions from their centrist big sibling”.

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Will the He Waka Eke Noa legislation get through before the election?

Farmer’s Weekly reports that speculation is growing about whether the government will have enough time to pass the legislative framework required to price agricultural emissions before the government's legislative programme wraps up ahead of the election. Just before everyone headed off on holiday, the government outlined several changes to the proposed emissions pricing system that it said would give greater certainty to farmers and better recognise on-farm sequestration. DairyNZ chair Jim van der Poel described the changes as the government demonstrating it “has moved closer to the primary sector position and is willing to engage”. I’m not sure this one was on a lot of people’s dance cards for legislation that may not get through before the election but Federated Farmers president Andrew Hoggard says “the organisation’s own analysis and well-placed sources” have told him the government may run out of time. 

Record numbers of EVs sold in December

As the Herald’s Thomas Coughlan reports, New Zealand broke two records for electric vehicles in the month of December. In December 2022, just over 20% of all new vehicles were fully battery-electric and over a quarter of new passenger cars (excluding vans and utes), were fully battery electric. It caps off a year of increasing demand for clean cars. It also presents the government with a challenge. The clean car discount, which has incentivised this uptake, is paid for by levies on the price of a polluting car. The amount of money collected in fees and levies is about half the amount paid out in clean car discounts.

Covid cases keep falling

Covid case numbers continue to fall with 19,215 cases reported in New Zealand in the last week. More than a third were reinfections. Stuff’s Keith Lynch has a good explainer on why we may have accidentally flattened the Covid Christmas curve. Lynch writes that its safe to say that Covid did not hit a record high in this current wave. The maximum number of reported daily cases in December was 8,400. As always, it comes with the caveat that reported cases are not an accurate representation of actual infections, but even if we take that into account, we still didn’t hit the high case numbers of the March omicron wave.

Click and collect

• Multiple sources are tipping former Auckland mayoral candidate Efeso Collins as a likely Green party candidate

• Spare a thought for nervous high school students today - NCEA results will be out 

• Potholes look set for another year of making headlines

• A survey by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in the UK finds Gen Z are very into classical music

• I should not have laughed as hard as I did at this headline as I am in a knee brace after slipping on a wet pool tile (a living ACC ad) but data from the Accident Compensation Corporation shows that the best bet for a safe Christmas and New Year's Eve is to stay sitting or lying down. Although a new study reveals that sitting is also bad for you and you should get up a do a little walk.

Editor's note: Apologies to the Herald’s Jamie Morton, a journalist whose work I admire, but whose surname I left the “t” out of yesterday when citing his work. It made me, and not him, the moron of the day. Early candidate for clanger of the year.

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