It almost inevitably leads to attempts to try to stir up speculation that while the cat is away, the mice back home will embark on manoeuvres.
Sometimes there are grounds for that. Sometimes there are not.
In the past, Hipkins was among those mocking other leaders of the Opposition who were once in his situation, so he would have been braced for it as he headed to the United Kingdom for a fortnight to attend the UK Labour Party conference.
The bad poll is there – a Taxpayers’ Union Curia poll showing Hipkins’ ranking as preferred Prime Minister had plummeted 6.1 points to 12.6% and the numbers who viewed him favourably had shrunk significantly.
However, it seems the mice – any potential rivals for Hipkins’ job – simply can’t be bothered just yet. It is less than a year since the election and as Hipkins quite rightly pointed out, it is a very difficult time for an Opposition to get any attention.
So Kieran McAnulty, Ayesha Verrall, Carmel Sepuloni and an array of other Labour MPs all ruled out having any appetite for the job and pledged their loyalty to Hipkins. Hipkins insisted he had that loyalty.
Nonetheless, it is the first time a poll has shown a significant change in Hipkins’ fortunes since around the election, and hence the first time Hipkins and the MPs have had to run the gauntlet of such questions.
It did not take long for a recent Talbot Mills (Labour’s pollsters) poll to be leaked to counter the Curia poll. That poll showed Hipkins was only down one to 22% as preferred PM and Labour was steady on 32%. Everything was just dandy in Labour-land, even if National-land was even dandier.
However, it had not escaped notice that Hipkins’ drop coincided with the one thing Hipkins has had some attention for lately. That was the public wrestling with what seems to be Labour’s perpetual existential crisis over a capital gains tax (CGT). Yes, once again Labour was asking itself the “to CGT, or not to CGT” question.
So Hipkins’ political rivals decided to try to stir up some mischief about Hipkins going on a taxpayer-funded trip, the poll and the leadership question the mice will eventually start to ask.
Even Police Minister Mark Mitchell took a break from talking about gangs to have a dig. He wondered who had booked Hipkins’ flights and decided McAnulty had “the look of guilt”, before going back to talk about gangs again.
National’s Simeon Brown dedicated his entire speech on Wednesday to the issue, noting Hipkins blamed the poll on the “lower profile” he now had.
“I’ll tell you what. In the last two weeks he’s had more interviews than he’s had all year and his numbers have dropped to the lowest and have been ever since.”
Brown then went on to point out those interviews had all been about tax.
NZ First leader Winston Peters – a poll skeptic when they do not go his way – had his own fun. He asked the PM on Tuesday if he would contact British PM Sir Keir Starmer “about a visitor soon to come to his conference and warn him that sliding polls are contagious?”
In uncanny timing, Starmer had himself just been dented in the polls after moving to scale back a universal winter fuel payment for pensioners. That is more of a lesson for Christopher Luxon than for Hipkins, as he continues with his own programme of cuts in the name of the economy.
The Labour MPs here ignored it all. Hipkins’ rankings are not yet at the sub-10% mark endured by a string of other Opposition leaders over the years. Labour’s party polling had also held up at 27% – up a bit from the July poll.
That is when the whites in the eyes of the Labour caucus start showing and MPs start wondering whether Hipkins needs to do something about that “lower profile” he had talked about.
In that regard, Hipkins probably deserves more criticism for not travelling enough around New Zealand in the past year than for heading off overseas.
There is provision for leaders of the Opposition to travel, both to educate themselves and pitch in on the NZ Inc effort in case they become Prime Minister one day. Luxon had also travelled to the United Kingdom when he was in Opposition (although not for two weeks).
Politicians have to do what they must to try to dampen criticism, especially of the spending of taxpayers’ dollars. So Hipkins is paying for his partner’s ticket himself and will be couch-surfing with a mate in London.
