Mike's Minute: Two areas where the Government might have trouble

There are two areas where the Government has, or might have, trouble.  As a result of their first 100 days you get the summation, the round up, how they did and so on.  Forget the policy and whether you like it - what they have going for them is twofold, for at least the first term.  They won the election, so have the numbers, and a lot of what they are enacting is not just the opposite of the last lot for the sake of it, but because a lot of the last lot's record is indisputably a mess.  Think light rail, housing, the deficit etc. So, a new path is not a path about change because of ideology. It’s a path about correction or fixing what is broken.  But a lot of what they campaigned on was the wokeness and the Māorification of the system.  This, apparently, was going to change. Well, has it?  Not at the Reserve Bank. They are advertising for a diversity adviser, someone to put a Te ao Māori lens across matters. Now, as ACT quite rightly pointed out, this does not help bring down inflation, which is exactly what they are supposed to be doing. And if you compare them to many a trading partner, they're not doing it very well.  Now, it is this very sort of activity that was supposed to end. Not just because we didn’t like its flourishing presence under the last Government, but because its wasteful and money we don’t have.  So why is it still happening? ACT say the Reserve Bank is independent, which it is. But the issue is in opposition ACT would point this sort of madness out and get easy headlines for it.  The difference now is they are the Government and can fix it, yet they aren't. They are offering excuses and that starts to weigh on your credibility and popularity after a while.  The second issue is the Prime Minister's so-called radar. The consensus among the commentariat, if that in fact means anything, was Luxon's political radar is off.  Certainly, the weekend's poll, showing a crash in personal support, would lead you to believe that the $52,000 accommodation allowance was a mistake. There has also been no shortage of observations about Luxon looking like he was getting schooled by Peters and Seymour.  Now, here is the trouble. I don’t think it's as bad as they make out, but numbers are numbers. In this case observation can very quickly become reality.  The trouble is the Government remains popular. In fact, support is growing and yet support for the Prime Minister is doing the opposite.  That's not a reason to panic in March, a handful of months into a new term. But time runs quickly in Government and if this doesn’t change it will be a problem before you know it. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.