What is a party list?

thrown out the ‘‘if Labour can’t govern themselves, how can they govern the country?’’ line.

It’s a cheap argument that smacks of a genesis at party headquarters.

In short, it’s free ammunition for National. If that weakens Labour’s campaign to the point it offers National a clear run back to the Treasury benches, it’s in no Kiwi’s best interests. A clash between two strong major parties at the polls means whichever one gets in will have had to survive a stern examination of its credentials.

One effective way for Labour to address that, aside from leaders Andrew Little and Jacinda Ardern sitting down with those apparently disaffected and stressing the importance of a unified team approach, would surely be to present voters with a robust, coherent picture of how the party set out to use the makeup of its list to appeal to as wide a range of New Zealanders as possible.

This could focus not just on the obvious election issues, like housing and immigration, but on representational aspects like gender equality and having as large a range of ethnicities as possible in the caucus room, as well as ensuring a strong presence in the regions post-election. Persuasively argued, each could resonate with different sectors of the party’s potential support.

The Labour kerfuffle brings to the fore the ongoing debate on just what a party list is supposed to be. Is it, as often seems to be the case with parties which choose to campaign primarily for the party vote, simply a ranking list? Or is it an instrument for ensuring that, alongside the best and brightest of its electorate candidates, a major party can ensure it gets its best brains into Parliament, to ensure its caucus makeup has both electoral strength and intellectual heft.

Presumably, a party of the size of Labour would lean towards the latter model, though the apparent objections of Jackson seem to be based on a perceived slight over a ranking position he considered too low.

For the sake of the party as a whole, and in the interests of an election fought on the parties’ respective grasps of and plans to address the important issues, rather than petty point-scoring, hopefully the leaders’ thinking on this score has been made eminently clear to Jackson and all his list colleagues.