Mike's Minute: This is why Labour will lose the election

Labour will not have move on orders and Labour will undo the social housing changes, which don’t actually start anyway until next year.

These are their latest policies and it's these ideas and policies that will lead to their election loss.

John McLean: Hipkin's policy silence doesn't matter

Why the Labour Leader’s failure to disclose policy is irrelevant

Much has been made of Chris Hipkins not disclosing Labour Party policy positions in the lead-up to the November 2026 general election.

Hipkins’ ostensible reason for not (yet?) announcing policy is that he wanted to wait until after the Government delivered its budget on 28 May. He hints that he may begin to announce Labour policies in June.

John MacDonald: Politicians have no idea what's important to us

Sometimes it feels like an easy thing to say that politicians have no idea what really matters to us. What’s important to us - the people who put them in their positions of power.

Today, it may be the easiest it’s ever been to say that sort of thing.

Let’s start with Labour leader Chris Hipkins. Who, I think, said one of the most arrogant things I’ve heard any politician say.

Graham Adams: Hipkins Revives Failed 2023 Election Tactics

When Chris Hipkins succeeded Jacinda Ardern as Prime Minister in January 2023, he adopted what was essentially a “smaller target” strategy.

He announced a policy bonfire to sideline some of the Labour government’s most contentious proposals — including the RNZ-TVNZ merger, hate-speech laws and the biofuels mandate. Instead, he claimed he would concentrate on “bread-and-butter” issues.

John MacDonald: Don't send 12-year-olds to court - send their parents

Another day and another rushed law and order policy announcement from Labour.

Yesterday’s one was the third this week, and pretty much focused on ram raids and what to do with 12 and 13-year-old kids who get involved in them.

As the week’s gone on, I’ve thought Labour’s policy announcements have been pretty lame and yesterday’s was no exception.

KSK: Politicians Often Commit to Promises That Are Really Wishes

The Green Party Manifesto with its unrealistic ‘policies’ includes the word “aspiration” and also covers recent policy announcements around reducing income inequality, along with the introduction of rent controls – which Labour has already ruled out – and clearing the social housing waitlist with a commitment to build 35,000 public homes.

But now Chris Hipkins has rained on their parade by ruling out a wealth tax or a capital gains tax after the election and it is not only the Greens who find this a less-than-desirable outcome.

“National leader Christopher Luxon is calling it ‘cynical politics’, while Greens co-leader James Shaw said only the Green Party is standing for progressive change.”

Damien Grant: The odds for Labour's third term have lengthened dramatically

It was December 2019. I was at the Autobahn café in Papakura. You know the one; at the BP stop on the southern motorway as you flee the Supercity.

Before me was a few hours drive to Matamata and I was taking a moment to myself, enjoying a coffee and scrolling my phone without the energy to go beyond the headline.

Stuff, that wonderful site that allows me to write these columns, had a story about the latest opinion polls. The election was still a year away but if religion is the opium of the common folk, polls are catnip to those ensnared by an interest in politics.

I clicked the link and there it was. The long-awaited glimmer in ACTs endless winter. For the first time in a decade, polls were giving ACT a second MP.