Mike Hosking: Politicians can't keep making stuff up

Turns out it wasn’t just on the Mike Hosking Breakfast the Prime Minister got caught out saying stuff that you can quite justifiably say wasn’t true.

In defence of the poll that shows his party heading for Opposition, Hipkins told the TV that he hadn’t started campaigning - which simply isn’t true.

We called him out on that; he danced for a while on the head of a pin.

He also suggested on TV yesterday that the poll result was in part because the media hadn’t covered the GST on fruit and veges announcement widely enough and people might have missed it.

Small note to those who surround the Prime Minister and in some way shape or form offer him advice - tell him to stop it.

Of all the announcements the Labour Party-come-government have made these past few weeks while they haven’t been campaigning, the GST call got more coverage than any of them - and I would argue by quite some margin.

Now it might not have been the sort of coverage they wanted i.e. most people and - certainly all the experts in tax that were asked - quite rightly bagged it.

The Opposition got kudos for the leak being right - and Grant Robertson spent quite a lot of time explaining his road to Damascus.

He actually explained that on this show through another series of made up stories around frozen veggies and who buys more of them.

But what the Labour Party /Government can’t even begin to argue is the policy announcement didn’t get coverage.

Now I am not sure what’s going on here.

In my briefish time in dealing with the Prime Minister, he does tend to argue for the sake of arguing and that might be starting to trip him up.

He might be one of those people who says the first thing that comes into his mind and in the general cut and thrust of a day it never really gets picked up.

But in an election campaign words matter, accuracy matters and facts matter.

And given the heightened awareness of policy - whether through announcements or detail - you can’t just make stuff up.

You can’t say poor people buy more frozen veggies when you don’t know that to true.

You can’t say you aren’t campaigning when it’s patently evident it isn’t true and you can’t say your signature policy announcement didn’t get enough coverage when it got more than anything else.

What matters most and what swings votes is credibility.

Whether that is credibility through your record, through your ideology or through your consistency of message and policy.

Making stuff up and hoping no one will notice isn’t credible.

In election campaigns, too many people are watching. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.