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Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: The polls revealed how people felt about the pay equity saga

Author
Heather du Plessis-Allan,
Publish Date
Wed, 4 Jun 2025, 6:02pm
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Labour leader Chris Hipkins. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Labour leader Chris Hipkins. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: The polls revealed how people felt about the pay equity saga

Author
Heather du Plessis-Allan,
Publish Date
Wed, 4 Jun 2025, 6:02pm

We've had a case of conflicting polls over the last twenty-four hours, with two completely different Governments predicted.

But if there's one thing you can take from these polls, which they both agree on, it's that the pay equity revamp hasn鈥檛 turned into the circuit breaker that the left clearly thought it was going to be.

The polls are almost identical in the proportion of people who oppose the revamp. The One 九一星空无限 poll had 45 percent, the RNZ poll had 43 percent.

That is not big. It is absolutely a plurality - in both polls, more people oppose it than support it.

I鈥檝e seen polls where 70 percent, 80 percent of people oppose something. Someone pointed out to me the polls that were done after Hekia Parata used Budget 2012 to announce class sizes would change - about 80 percent hated it. So 45 percent is nothing.

It certainly isn鈥檛 the circuit breaker and make-people-hate-the-Government moment that Labour and the Greens and the unions were hoping it would be.

Why? I don鈥檛 know. I thought it was a slam dunk for the opposition to run home but maybe people didn鈥檛 understand it enough to care.

Maybe the Government managed to claw back the narrative when it started properly explaining what it was doing, maybe Labour completely ballsed it up, maybe Andrea Vance distracted everyone by calling female ministers the c-bomb.

Or maybe people are just ideologically entrenched and not wanting to oppose anything the Government does because they voted for the Government - and so on.

I don鈥檛 know. But what is clear is that it鈥檚 not the moment it could鈥檝e been - or was expected to be.

And the Government has not been damaged by this as badly as it could鈥檝e been.

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