Kate Hawkesby: Do Kiwis trust a govt happy to throw out their unpopular policies in an election year?

So the worst kept secret in politics yesterday was finally confirmed - the merger is a gone burger. Merging TVNZ and RNZ was never a good idea - right from the get go. Everyone thought it was crazy and so the Government now finally agree. Either that, or they just can’t handle the criticism and unpopularity of it.  Because I can’t help thinking if you believe in a policy and invest in it, throw money at it - not just any money either - don’t forget $9,000 a day on consultants, then you believe in it.  But as a sop to the failed project what are they doing? Handing out more money. More for RNZ and more for NZ on Air. The media slush fund for state broadcasting goes on and that’s before we get to the $23 million already spent on the merger, which now just gets flushed down the loo.  But the sting in the tail of yesterday’s policy walk backs was a little treat come April for businesses - the upping of the minimum wage.  And it's not just any increase either but a whopping $1.50 increase. So, businesses who have been struggling during Covid, struggling during border closures, struggling with ram raids and retail theft, struggling to get staff at all are now faced with a bigger wages bill.  Hipkins acknowledged that a number of small businesses ‘had concerns’ about this – no kidding.  Here’s the rub, Hipkins met with the Auckland Business chamber – one of the first things he did in his new role as PM - to allegedly show the Government’s new interest in listening to business, acknowledging they’d not done it enough previously and even new Chief Executive Simon Bridges fell for it and said he had hope.  Well, those hopes got dashed at about 3 o’clock yesterday afternoon.  This Government is anti-business, it doesn’t listen to them, it doesn’t care about them. In one breath while telling us it cares about the cost-of-living crisis and people who are struggling, it also hands that problem back to business and makes it their problem.  So what will we get here? Well, the inflationary impact to the wages portion of GDP remains to be seen. The impact to unemployment remains to be seen. What we can guarantee is those costs will be passed on to us though.  A café owner messaged me yesterday and said the price of your coffee and cake just went up.  So the key question - does all this win them votes? Because that’s the aim here. And do you trust them?  Do you trust a government who’s all of a sudden happy to toss out their unpopular policies in an election year? Despite what they’ve spent on them and with no regard for all the money wasted.  Do you have faith that if they win, they won’t just bring these policies back? We know that’s the case with the social insurance. We don’t know about Three Waters because they’re buying time on that front – but we know they’ve spent a fortune on it, hired people, leased offices, gone down a deep rabbit hole on legislation.  So, do Kiwis buy all this? I guess we have to wait for next poll to find out.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.