Election 2026: How Labour just gave National a win, and a distraction from its leadership woes – Jamie Ensor

Senior National figures huddled in a bunker under siege by leadership speculation, the walls cracking with every question over whether Chris Penk was truly the lone challenger the party is making him out to be, backbenchers beating at the door wanting to know if they should say they are 100% or 150% united as a caucus.

We need to find something else to talk about, one MP exclaims, anything to move the conversation on from ourselves. Fire out a press release, another suggests, say Labour is considering more taxes.

It’s National’s default electoral weapon, one they’ve deployed well in past campaigns to scare voters off the left, or to force their opponents to change tack.

Case in point: amid a blistering attack by National in 2017, Labour effectively delayed any possible changes from its proposed tax working group until after the 2020 election (though it, of course, denied National’s assault forced its hand).

The press release issued by National on Sunday afternoon claimed Labour was mooting two new taxes – a streaming tax and a ute tax – and called on the party’s leader Chris Hipkins to come clean about the consequences.

Considering the timing, just days after the attempted coup and as questions still swirled over some MPs’ alleged involvement, the release did look desperate, as Hipkins put it.

The grounds for National’s claims were initially shaky, especially given Labour has staunchly ruled out introducing any taxes beyond its capital gains tax (there are still questions over what it does with interest deductibility).

The basis for Labour apparently preparing a ute tax – part of the old clean car discount – was a single line in a Herald profile on Michael Wood, which said the former minister spoke about the now-scrapped scheme on the doorstep to potential voters.

While Wood has been on Labour’s policy council, it is a stretch to say him chatting to locals about a defunct scheme he oversaw three years ago during the previous Labour Government is tantamount to reviving it as party policy.

Meanwhile, the streaming tax suggestion came from an RNZ story published in January which stated Labour wanted to introduce a levy on streaming platforms if re-elected.

The article hadn’t been corrected (nor had others with a similar premise by other outlets), giving weight to National’s suspicions. You have to wonder though, why it took until August for National to bring attention to it.

One may also have come away from reading that story asking whether National itself would introduce such a levy. The article mentioned that Media and Communications Minister Paul Goldsmith had said no decisions had been made (though he ruled it out when asked on Tuesday).

National followed its Sunday press release with another on Monday afternoon – well-timed before a press conference with Hipkins – calling again for the Labour leader to say whether the two taxes were party policy.

Hipkins answered, ruling them out, a move that appeared to quickly put the issue to bed.

But the Labour leader had clearly forgotten one of his own MPs had a piece of legislation in the members’ bill ballot box proposing the very streaming tax he had just supposedly ruled out.

When it was brought to the Herald’s attention on Tuesday morning, the members’ bill in the name of Willie Jackson was still online on the Parliament’s website.

It would “create a substantial revenue stream to finance the production of local content”.

About the same time National’s campaign chair Simeon Brown posted about the bill on X, the legislation suddenly disappeared.

Labour claims it sought to have the bill withdrawn the night before – after Hipkins became aware of it – as part of a tidy-up to ensure members’ bills matched the manifesto the party is taking to the election.

A tidy-up that just happened to occur as the National Party was asking questions.

It didn’t help Labour that MPs the Herald spoke to afterwards didn’t know the party had a streaming tax proposal or that their names had been listed as supporting the legislation.

While by itself, the streaming tax schemozzle could be written off as a brief bit of messiness that will make headlines for a day, this isn’t the first time Labour’s tax messaging has come undone.

Jackson’s musings on Ryan Bridge TODAY last week about Opportunity’s land value tax didn’t help.

He said Labour couldn’t “go along with the number they are talking about”, leading to the obvious question of what rate his party could stomach?

His response? “Who knows?”

Not exactly the discipline a senior Labour MP should have when it comes to something as sensitive – and potentially electorally damaging – to his party as tax. He did seem to dismiss it later in the interview, but as Hipkins later said, Jackson could have been clearer.

Each of these issues are cracks in Labour’s credibility and another opening for the National Party to push its argument that a future Labour Government will bring in more taxes than it says it will.

“Cover-up” is the caption on a photo of Hipkins on National’s Instagram page.

Without the streaming tax debacle, the main political story from Parliament yesterday would have been the urgent debate in the House that Labour was granted on the removal of Penk.

That debate saw Hipkins give an all-timer speech, re-asserting himself as one of the House’s best speakers.

He needled National for its self-absorption and clear caucus divisions, while also highlighting how the party’s internal disarray was taking away from it addressing key issues for Kiwis. Instead of being focused on jobs for New Zealanders, its MPs were focused on their own, he argued.

There would have been few National MPs wanting to speak in that debate.

But Brown, who followed Hipkins, was armed with a new potent attack.

“Willie Jackson, who’s just got up off his chair, is really interested in not only a streaming levy, which suddenly has just disappeared off the website, but of course, he also was musing on Friday about the land tax which their mates in the Opportunity Party have,” Brown said.

“The Labour Party has taxes for New Zealanders, and that’s exactly what they’re trying to focus away from, because they know that their taxes are hurting them in the polls and they don’t want to talk about them.”

Brown, who used just two of his 10-minute slot and avoided mentioning Penk’s dismissal until the end, clearly didn’t want to talk about something himself.

Luckily for him, Labour had just given the National Party something else to speak about just when the party needed it most.

Jamie Ensor is the NZ Herald’s chief political reporter, based in the press gallery at Parliament. He was previously a TV reporter and digital producer in the Newshub press gallery office. He was a finalist in 2025 for Political Journalist of the Year at the Voyager Media Awards.