Barry Soper: Newstalk ZB senior political correspondent on National coming under 30 percent support in new poll

A new poll has National stuck in the high 20s, with Labour seven points ahead. 

National's on 29 percent in the Talbot Mills poll, with Labour on 36. Both parties haven't moved since last month's poll. 

NZ First is down one to 14 percent, and ACT down one on seven percent. 

Newstalk ZB senior political correspondent Barry Soper explained what these results mean for the coalition's odds. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Barry Soper is with us Hibari.

Speaker 2 (00:01):
Good afternoon, Heather.

Speaker 1 (00:02):
All right, what do you make of the Talbot Mills poll.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Well, it's interesting, isn't it. It was this poll that
everybody was waiting with baited breath last month on to
look at Chris Luxon's future as a result of it.
And of course he passed the vote of confidence in
himself and won it and came out And I don't
think you'll see any murmurings as a result of this.

(00:26):
And I think what New Zealanders have to get used
to is the MMP environment where the two main parties
are National and Labor. One may come in on election
day ahead of the other any which way, but it
really depends, as all m MP parliaments do, depends on
the minor parties. That's with the exception of course of

(00:50):
the COVID election that brought the Labor Party on its own,
which is very rare under the MMP system. If you
look back to nineteen ninety six, the first year of MMP, well,
in fact, not the first year because it's Whinston. Peter's
got seventeen seats in the first year. But just go

(01:12):
back to what happened in twenty and seventeen, which is
when Labor Jasin Dardun came into power. The Nets came
home on the election day with thirty four percent of
the vote, Labour twenty eight percent. Now you would have thought,
and everybody assumed that New Zealand First would go out
and give the election to the National Party because most

(01:35):
of the public decided that they wanted to continue with
a party that was started with John Key and left
over to Bill English to do the job. But he
didn't do that, so he turned it around and that
was the first example since nineteen ninety six that we've
seen of MMP actually working, even though a lot of
people didn't like it. So we're talking now, you know,

(01:57):
at the Talbot Mills poll at the moment a National
twenty nine. Ironically, it's almost the same differences between the
two parties, only in reverse of twenty seventeen if you
held an election today. But of course, the person who
would decide who was going to be the prime minister
what again, be Winston?

Speaker 1 (02:17):
Can I just pick you up on something though, it's
not you say New Zealanders need to get used to
the big parties being smaller. It's not us that's the problem.
It's the National Party MPs.

Speaker 2 (02:28):
Well because the Polsters.

Speaker 1 (02:29):
No, it's the National Party MPs who are not getting
used to it.

Speaker 2 (02:33):
No, I totally.

Speaker 1 (02:34):
They are the ones who have to get you. And
it's hard for them, Barry, because it means they have
fewer of them in caucus, that's right, fewer of them
that a lot of them are going to lose their jobs.
And when they sit around that cabinet table, right, it's
not going to be eighteen National MPs and two others
or sixteen and four others or whatever. It's going to
be ten of them and ten others.

Speaker 2 (02:54):
Most of them are more dissatisfied of those that are
not saying around the cabinet table. And that's the problem.

Speaker 1 (02:59):
But it is as of loss of power for the
major party to get used to the other one's causing
the trouble and wanting to.

Speaker 2 (03:04):
Roll precisely, you know, that's what they have to get
used to. That they are not going to have the
power unbridled as Labor had it. That's very unlikely to
happen again. So they're not going to have the power
that they once had under the old fist Past the posts.

Speaker 1 (03:18):
Yeah, now listen the move on orders. Have they been
introduced to Parliament today?

Speaker 2 (03:21):
Well, yeah, the bill's been introduced, which is no real
big deal because we knew it was coming. But of
course it's been an outburst from the Greens and Chloe
Swarbrick who says she's been inviting the Prime Minister to
go walking around Auckland streets with it for the past
couple of years and to see the homeless. When you
don't have to have the Prime Minister do that because

(03:42):
I walk her down Craynger Happy Road most weekends with
my little child.

Speaker 1 (03:47):
What does she think is going to happen? You're gonna
walk around school. I love these homeless. They should stay
exactly here like most of us who walk around want
them gone.

Speaker 2 (03:55):
I'll tell you what I have noticed though here though.
The last time I was there, which was on some
day walking down the street, there were a lot of
police on the street aar up talking to the people
that are lying on the streets. Some of them were
hurling abuse at me. Not long before the police came.

Speaker 1 (04:11):
You get abused a lot better.

Speaker 2 (04:13):
There was a guy the other day standing across I
was pushing my baby in the prem and this guy
was he was obviously drugged out on something and he
is screaming the most profane obscenities at me. So I've
done something wrong to him. There must have been the
way I looked at him, and I thought, block your ears, baby,
I don't you to hear this, And off he went

(04:35):
down to some side street, no doubt, gott to fix
on drugs again and came back and abused somebody else.
I mean, it's not pleasant.

Speaker 1 (04:42):
No, thank you, Baron, appreciate. I love how this always
turns into a discussion about you.

Speaker 2 (04:47):
Got to talk about your personally as we do in politics.

Speaker 1 (04:52):
It's fair. You are a rate payer. You pay a
lot to I'm not even taking the piss. You pay
a lot to maintain these streets. You should have the
right to walk down these streets without having people abuse
you to the extent that is going on. Clean them up,
Clean it up. Thank you very much. Barris so for
senior political correspondent.

Speaker 2 (05:08):
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