Trading places
As Labour MMP’s-off its governing partners, National goes to its aid.
What goes around comes around – and seldom with more vicious circularity than under MMP. Remember how last month many voters were aghast that a party that had polled as highly as National could be shut out of government by three considerably less-popular parties? And a legion of smarty-britches reared up and said, “You just don’t understand how MMP works. Get with the programme, fossils!”?
Well, many of those same smarty-britches will now be smarting at “how MMP works” because the system’s slidey abacus just clicked a different arrangement into place: Labour plus
National equals enough votes to secure the Trans-Pacific Partnership in its latest incarnation. New Zealand First and the Greens may be in the Government, but for these purposes, the lead governing party can shut them out, just as National got shut out. It’s MMP, fossils. Learn to love it.
This is our system in its most fluid state of functionality. Parliament’s power blocs need not be set in concrete, so that on this occasion we have a grand coalition in favour of a free-trade deal, even if two out of three governing parties consider it the devil’s masterwork.
However, sometimes in politics a
comfortable majority can feel awfully like a bed of nails. In doing this deal, having given the strong impression before the election it would not, Labour has guaranteed itself a party revolt and a flounce of supporters off to the Greens.
For reasons from the sound to the frankly ludicrous, the 12-country trade deal – now, minus the United States, 11 – has become the locus for “Down with Capitalism!” Opposing it is an article of faith for a doughty chunk of voters here, and even its environmental, worker-protection, legal and other upgrades to the conduct of global trade are as air-gun pellets to the anti-TPP hide.
It’s now, unpronounceably, called the CPTPP, after Canada – teeming with the TPP-allergic – insisted on adding “Comprehensive and Progressive” to the title, hoping that might make it more marketable.
Aware that wouldn’t be enough for our free-trade deniers, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern abruptly revisited her offer to take some Manus Island and Nauru detainees from Australia, and prodded the Philippines’ leader Rodrigo Duterte about his state homicides – crude political code for “Look over here, human rights!”
WE SHALL NOT BE MOVED
Predictably, Australia remained as deaf as ever to our distaste for its handling of illegal immigrants, and Ardern might as well have discussed fishing lures with Duterte for all the good she did there.
But she was sending a message to CPTPP refuseniks at home: at least this PM is prepared to confront other leaders about uncomfortable issues,
Ardern might as well have discussed fishing lures with Duterte for all the good she did.
even at the expense of souring relations. Australia immediately “briefed against” the New Zealand Government, alleging it had stopped four boatloads of illegals from reaching us.
This was a swift and rare piece of hostility from our closest friend, and maybe another corollary of our current MMP configuration we need to get used to. Both governments have now shown they won’t hesitate to set aside Anzac unity if they need a quick bit of raw meat to appease a grouchy domestic beast.
In the grand sweep of history, Ardern has done no more than restore Labour to the longstanding pro-free-trade stance from which it pioneered not just milestone deals like our free-trade agreement with China, but the CPTPP itself more than a decade ago. But times have changed. Unions here were supportive of the China
deal, notwithstanding that country’s appalling human-rights transgressions, confident of jobs and better wages from greater export access. Now, understandably soured by years of stagnant wage growth, they have come to see free-trade deals as enriching corporates at the expense of workers.
Ardern may as well save her breath as try to explain the consequences of New Zealand’s being left out of such a regional pact. Even alignment with President Donald Trump’s seemingly doomed drive towards protectionism doesn’t deter antiCPTPP sentiment.
WHITHER WINSTON?
What she may be able to count on is some realpolitik. Labour and Green supporters have waited nine years without, until this year, the faintest glimmer of hope of getting their preferred flavour of Government back. Technically, the Greens and NZ First could die in this particular ditch. But are they really going to let a deal that now sounds like an obscure Star Wars character, which will undeniably lead to more export earnings and jobs here, and whose most reviled (by all countries) investor-v-state disputes clauses will be reviewed in three years, destabilise their Government even before its first Christmas?
Ardern can point to policy changes already in education, health, housing, benefit entitlement, conservation, monetary policy, parental leave, policing and climate change – and a National Opposition ready to move back into the Beehive at a moment’s notice and reverse it all.
Are the anti-free-trade diehards in the three governing parties confident that a majority of New Zealanders is with them? What’s incontrovertible is that a majority of MPs are not. It’s MMP, fossils – or as Labour’s Michael Cullen characterised it, “We won, you lost, eat that!”
Fascinatingly, one fossil who shows signs of, if not actively getting with the programme, at least bestowing the charity of his silence, is Winston Peters. He has forbidden his MPs from saying a word for or against the CPTPP, which has set them on a crash-course in bureaucratese so they can avoid having to admit, “We don’t know what we think yet.”
Peters has taken the extra precaution of staying longer abroad to undertake a still-unexplained regional mission, reportedly to North Korea, at the behest of US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. It’s believed to be a “Beware of China’s creeping power!” sort of mission, but at press time, we had no confirmation of whether the international man of mystery had reached Pyongyang, or what his brief was.
It should be remembered he has form. When last he was foreign minister, he restored an NZ-NK bird-watching exchange. Better we swap migratory shorebirds than missiles. If nothing else, Peters may show Kim Jong-un what a Dear Leader really looks like and give him the name of a good Kiwi tailor.
At press time, we had no confirmation of whether the international man of mystery had reached Pyongyang.