Three’s a crowd
National MPs should just leave the coalition parties to scrap among themselves.
It’s time for the media and the National Party to note which way the wind is blowing and bow out of politics for an early Christmas break. Perhaps they can pop up again and show a little interest around March. By then, the warm breeze accompanying the new multi-party Government should have abated and the first sign of a brisk southerly may be building.
On the Prime Minister’s recent trip around Asia, senior political journalists were reduced to uttering inanities. One grizzled veteran filed a column describing Jacinda Ardern as having a “rock-star lifestyle”. I immediately and quite wrongly assumed he meant she was having orgiastic hotel-wrecking parties and taking psychedelic drugs while doing the wild thing with packs of groupies. No, somewhat enviously the reporter told us she no longer had to handle her own passport or baggage when travelling. Woo-hoo!
Another old-time Press Gallery trouper breathlessly reported the shattering news that Ardern’s food – in this case, potato chips – was being tasted first by foreign security guards. Given my experience of Asia, I think it’s a great idea for travellers to have someone taste their food first. That way, you can check on the taster’s state of health before taking a bite yourself. However, the downside is that campylobacter symptoms take a while to show up, so you could get quite hungry waiting for a result.
A further story carried the disappointing
headline that Ardern had been “overshadowed” by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at a particular summit. Given that he heads a country many times our size, influence and strategic importance, this is not surprising.
So, it’s time for the Gallery to have a cup of tea and a lie-down and leave Ardern and Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters alone to deliver long-awaited economic largesse and world peace. Similarly, the Opposition could try shutting up for a while. Anything National says at the moment sounds like sour grapes, even if it is true or perceptive. If National MPs remove themselves from the playing field for a month or two, the divisions between the various parts of the Government coalition should result in the Greens, New Zealand First and Labour starting to scrap more among themselves.
Already, the left and the centrists are squaring off over the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (or whatever it’s now called). The Greens won’t vote for it and the Government could be confronted with the unusual spectacle of Foreign Minister Peters opposing the deal he has just helped negotiate, leaving Labour to rely on Opposition MPs to get the necessary legislation through the House.
The fun is just beginning. The three parties of government have some disparate policy objectives and from March are likely to be bitterly divided over some of the policies as Labour starts preparing its first Budget.
That is when cross-party relations will get ugly. Perhaps if Labour is nice to National, it can “cut out the middleman” come Budget time.
Anything National says at the moment sounds like sour grapes, even if it is true or perceptive.