Ouch. That flip-flop on KiwiSaver will be hurting Labour.
Cabinet got it wrong and at this point in the election cycle it’s simply not prepared to waste political capital.
It’s a big backdown and demonstrates Labour knows how contested this election is looking right now.
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Labour will see this U-turn as a better alternative than being pummelled by the Opposition while it went through select committee.
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This is a win for National. It’s the perfect opportunity to tell New Zealanders National will do a better job of managing the economy and that Labour was trying to sneak this through.
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This plays well for National. The only thing it would have been hoping is it had a few more days of these headlines before the turnaround.
It’s clear the Prime Minister wasn’t prepared to defend the issue as she walks past media on her way into the Debating Chamber for question time at 2pm.
So at 1.18pm a press release was sent from her Revenue Minister David Parker announcing the back down. National were preparing to take a good whack at Labour in question time with several questions dedicated to it.
National then had to spend 42 minutes frantically reworking its plan.
Often the Prime Minister is quite defensive on issues like this, but today she seemed more prepared to accept the hit.
This legislation lived for 24 hours in the political world but could leave a dent on the political landscape.
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