It’s not even election year – and already the race to the bottom has begun.

Source: 1 NEWS

More cops on the streets, bigger prisons, fewer immigrants.

Just some of the lowest-common denominator policies on offer from National and Labour in the last fortnight.

Welcome to the 1996 reboot – with both parties desperately wiggling their derrière in Winston Peters’ direction.

NZ First exploits a strange nostalgia for a past that never really was. It’s a politics that looks backwards and inwards.

There is a science to this: It’s called the “reminiscence bump”. Very simply, we store more memories in our early adulthood and as we age, because we have greater recall of that time, our brains tell us things were better.

Donald Trump does it, Nigel Farage did it, and Winston Peters is the original master. It’s exploiting a weakness in middle-aged and older voters.

But it does work. And so, in a futile bid to secure his support next year, National and Labour are scuttling down the same path.

Even the Greens are shamefully banging the immigration drum, with a new policy to cap numbers.

Across the globe, societies are struggling to adapt to demographic, economic and technological change not seen since the industrial revolution.

With change comes fear, but instead of providing leadership to deal with these challenges, political parties are choosing to exploit and exacerbate that.

Labour and the Greens don’t really believe we're in the grip of immigration and crime waves. NZ First probably doesn’t either.

More bobbies on the beat is a quick-fix way to make people feel safer. Andrew Little promised to hire 1000 extra cops last week, chipping away at National’s tough law and order stance.

Police Minister Judith Collins is also promising more officers.

She’s filling up prisons, because it’s much easier and shows more immediate results than rehabilitating and re-integrating prisoners.

Immigration isn’t at a crisis point. The inflow of workers is actually a positive – and nothing a little bit of spending on infrastructure won’t fix.

Labour could be arguing that not spending on infrastructure when interest rates are rock-bottom and economic growth is strong is improvident. Instead, it chooses a rhetoric that demonises migrants.