Smile, wave, maybe talk about policy

Sunday Star Times Aug 27 2017

When you cast your vote here in New Zealand, you can vote for whatever reason you like. Go New Zealand.

It doesn't have to make any sense at all. If you want to vote for Bill English because he just feels like your spirit animal, you can.

If you want to give it to Winston Peters because he makes you feel young again, that's your right.

If you love your Holden more than life itself and you want miles and miles of tarseal, logic says you should vote National. But if you think the Greens will give you 10 motorways for $10 billion even though they never said so and never will, no one can stop you voting for them.

Even if you do have a reason for voting the way you do, it doesn't have to make sense. It can be a lot easier to watch the weekend political TV shows if you keep that in mind. 

Michelle Boag was on one of those shows talking about Labour's proposed water tax, possibly as a commentator, possibly as a weapon of maths destruction. You wouldn't believe how much a litre of craft beer would cost, she told us, and it was certainly hard to. 

Each apple would cost $2.80 more, she claimed. On those numbers, Matt McCarten told her, it would take a million litres to grow a cabbage. If you have experience growing vegetables, you may see the problem here.

Half a lifetime I've spent, writing speeches for politicians, commentating on politics. Half a lifetime, thinking a good logical rational argument is your best friend.  Wrong. 

A good argument is not nothing, but it's also not enough.

This has to be the most difficult of propositions for Gareth Morgan to accept.

His party's policies on taxing assets are excellent. I truly believe the  biggest failing of both this government and the last one is that they didn't even try to use a capital gains tax to avert a housing affordability disaster.

Morgan and his Opportunities Party call it the biggest tax break, and the root cause of rising house prices. They say exempting the family home means the tax loophole remains, and exemptions are the enemy of any tax system.

They also say that taxing the family home may be politically unpopular, "but exempting it will kneecap any serious attempt to reduce inequality and improve the allocation of investment in our country".

They are not wrong about any of this, and Gareth Morgan is not wrong to complain that Labour is potentially kicking the can down the road by proposing to put experts on the issue once they've been elected. But I won't be holding my breath waiting for his excellent arguments to attract voters in large numbers.

What makes people vote? They're entitled to vote any damn way they want, for any damn reason, but if you want to win office, you need to work out how to get enough of the votes into your column.

For a certain kind of voter the election is all-consuming. For some it's tribal and instinctive and reflex.  For some, it's an invitation to weigh all the policies and come to a decision.

And for some, it's one of those moments when you go with the crowd. If the polls say a party is going to win, you join in. It makes a kind of sense: "What are most people doing? I'll do it too. That way the greatest number of us will be happy". It's a considerate thing to do when you're choosing where you all go for a drink on Friday night, I guess, so why not in an election?

So many kinds of voters, so many messages to convey. 

A seriously good politician knows how to offer something appealing to many different constituencies. Bill Clinton, for example, was a wonk for those who wanted it, and a saxophone player for those who just wanted a likeable party guy. You saw it in John Key, you see it in Jacinda Ardern. A business leader this week said she looked like a PM in waiting.

I can give you 10 good, rational arguments to vote for her demonstrable leadership qualities and her party's policies, but if you like her smile, that's fine, too, and maybe in the end it amounts to the same thing.