Heather du Plessis-Allan: Labour's 32 percent approval rating should be a shock to no one

That poll out last night should be a shock to no one. 

That’s what happens if you ignore voters and just keep pushing through stuff we don’t want, like Three Waters or farmer’s climate tax.

They deserve to be on 32 percent. I’d put that as the high-water mark frankly.

And yesterday’s announcement is not going to help. It’s supposed to help; it’s supposed to make us like them a whole lot more again.

But I don’t think it’s going to work.

And I think this is part of the reason Labour is polling so low. 

Because they keep making the same mistake over and over again, which is that they think throwing money around solves the problem. They can buy our votes, but then they don’t think about what happens next.

Which is that it inevitably causes a problem downstream which makes a greater number of people grumpy. 

It works like this: they’ve spent $190 million on giving parents more money to help them pay for early childhood education. Which is great, but it only helps the parents of 10,000 kids.

There are 194,000 enrolled in licensed early childhood providers, so they’ve helped the parents of only 5 percent of the kids.

Which means 95% of kids don’t get helped, so those parents might have good reason to feel a bit grouchy because why don’t they get help?  Their cost of living has gone up too just the like the parents who did get help.

Then there’s what happens next. It’s predicted early childhood centres are just going to put prices up now.  They’re just hanging in there, they’ve held off because they know parents can’t afford to pay any more.

But they know that those parents doing it the hardest can afford a bit more, so the prices go up.

Which means 95 percent who didn’t get any help are now paying more too.

Which means more grumpiness. 

Throwing cash like this fixes things for about 5 minutes then the pain returns.

It’s not a solution, but thinking it is a solution is why Labour is on 32 percent. 

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