Analysis: Whatever happened to kindness?
One of the most noticeable distinctions between Chris Hipkins and his predecessor is that the new prime minister isn't even feigning an attempt at a strictly positive election campaign.
It's a lot easier to pledge kindness and positivity when your party is as comfortably-placed in the polls as Jacinda Ardern's Labour was in the build up to the 2020 election. From a strategic perspective, any campaign fought in an arena of kindness was unlikely to favour an opposition leader whose historic political nickname was 'Crusher'.
But the last week in the campaign has crystallised a notably different strategy for Labour in this year's election — the party clearly has no intention of repeating 2020's warm, fuzzy vibes.
At the party Congress in Wellington, Finance Minister Grant Robertson used his address to mock Christopher Luxon as "Captain Cliché" and described a potential National-ACT government as "the most rubbish Marvel comic ever".
It was a pretty mild retort in the context of political attacks, but one can hardly imagine Jacinda Ardern making the same speech.
Perhaps even more telling was Labour's response to Christopher Luxon's position on $5 prescription fees.
Under questioning from Newshub, Luxon accepted that his opposition to Labour's free prescriptions means that in practice, the party's position is that women should pay $5 for contraceptive prescriptions.
Luxon is at least partially to blame for finding himself in this position. He's vulnerable to attacks over women's health policies and he has a problem winning the support of women voters. Even though National's prescription policy covers all manner of healthcare issues, arguably Luxon should have foreseen that opposing the cut to prescription fees would open him up to criticism that he's seeking to restrict women's access to healthcare.
Labour wasted no time in leaping upon his answers, with Megan Woods posting a GIF from The Handmaid's Tale, and the party posting an attack ad in response.
This response might have been a little grandiose given Labour has overseen multiple budgets in which the $5 prescription fee remained in place. But Woods' image popped on social media, and was directly agitated at an area in which National's leader feels especially vulnerable.
It should be noted, National has hardly promised to run a positive campaign either. The party consistently spits out images, memes and slogans which sharply criticise the Government. Four of its 10 most recent Instagram posts have been attack ads.
But the events of this week speak to a campaign which is likelier to be much more negative than that of the 2020 election. Maybe a tighter race ultimately means a nastier one.
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