Jane Clifton
Compromise is becoming a dirty word for the smaller government parties.
Oh, the flashback when Shane Jones, trying to tamp down coalition-wobble talk after the Government’s latest challenging policy announcement, said, “There are three of us in this Government.” He offered this as a statement of strength and unity, but his now-famous body language – gurning and facepalming behind the Prime Minister – said otherwise.
Short of delivering it from under sorrowfully lowered lashes, the Regional Economic Development Minister could hardly have done a better job of channelling Diana, Princess of Wales’ “there are three of us in this marriage”. No one could forget what happened next in the latter story: divorce.
Managing fidelity issues three ways is a cruel and unnatural process in private lives, but in government, every infidelity is played out in public.
The halt to oil and gas exploration is just the latest example of how two’s company but three’s a crowd. It’s a blow to New Zealand First’s campaign to restyle itself as a country party that hundreds of millions of dollars in future exploration activity is now denied the provinces; this after curtailment of state irrigation subsidies.
These aren’t deal-breakers. Jones’s Provincial Growth Fund helps rebalance the ledger in NZ First’s favour for now. And the ties that bind Labour, the Greens and NZ First are sturdy: policy-making power, career advancement, boundless publicity, good pay and perks, a chance to further world peace and feed the poor and – no less important – to stick it to National.
But inevitably, the two smaller parties will feel short-changed and weigh the value of unity against the need to shore up their support with displays of defiance.
SEEING RED
Smoke signals from the recent preBudget conclaves indicate NZ First has lined up some more policy trophies and/or staved off reversals. But this would probably be at the Greens’ expense.
Having confirmed its steadfast adherence to red rather than pink economic and social policies by overwhelmingly electing Marama Davidson as co-leader, the Green
Party is in no mood for compromises. It has already been overridden on a core policy by the other two agreeing to the new transpacific trade deal. They’re going to be as beady-eyed as a patrolling kārearea about the details of the trade deals Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is advancing in Europe.
As for choosing which ditches to die in, both minor partners have dibs on one full of brackish water. The looming water-policy decision is looking very murky. Environment Minister David Parker’s rhetoric suggests the Greens need not even get their wellies out; the Government will be socking it to the farmers to pay for, and comply with, higher cleanliness standards.
That puts NZ First’s weights up – though not half as much as the other water imponderable, iwi claims. NZ First is seriously allergic to Treaty of Waitangi-based policymaking and
As for choosing which ditches to die in, both minor partners have dibs on one full of brackish water.
will find concessions to iwi hard to live with. This issue carries a useful minority populist dividend for NZ First, which after just scraping into Parliament last election is preoccupied with survival.
That puts leader Winston Peters in that dangerous category: politicians shopping for a legacy. There’s no refund if you don’t get the legacy you ordered, as John Key found when he tried to change the flag. David Lange’s great hurrah was to prevent the flat tax, which probably spared New Zealand a torrid and painful experiment but finished him off in politics. Jim Bolger’s signature bequest, a binding referendum on electoral reform, is something he’s
still widely cursed for to this day.
Still, the polls suggest the uneasy Beehive triangulation is working better than many pundits predicted. At first glance, the latest from Colmar Brunton shows voters are over Labour already, with it again falling, this time five percentage points to just below National, at 44% to 43%. But Labour is still more than five points ahead of where it was on election night. More confoundingly for headline writers, the support Labour has shed has gone to the Greens and NZ First. In the recent sweep of poll relativities, National is still idling and new leader Simon Bridges is doing no better than any of the previous Opposition’s failed leaders, despite having an unending banquet of Government controversies to feast on.
MINING THE TEAL VOTE
The latest poll also underlines how tough
National will find it to retake the Beehive without viable mates. It had a chance to kick-start the daydreamed-of blue-green option by picking prominent Green Party defector Vernon Tava as its candidate for the Northcote by-election.
An electorally useful quotient of Nationaltending voters are willing to prioritise green issues by supporting a teal option, within National or as a new party. Even to red-greens, the eventual depoliticisation of such issues as climate change mitigation and pollution is a dream goal. Tava is intelligent and articulate, and his advocacy for the decoupling of red and green politics should be music to the average Nat’s ears. He would have been a vote-growth asset.
Bully for him. The way local selections work is that if voting delegates hear too many times that such-and-such a candidate is a star, a potential leader, a vote-magnet or at all special, they will mulishly select someone else, just to show who’s boss.
Hilariously, this has been secondtime lucky for successful candidate Dan Bidois, who despite having a stellar CV – so many leadership boxes were ticked that he must constantly have to pass tests to prove he isn’t a bot – was rejected in favour of conservative young banker Simeon Brown to contest the blue-riband Pakuranga seat last election. Having risen from school dropout to Fulbright and Harvard scholar, OECD economist and Foodstuffs executive, Bidois is Māori – and, as a former apprentice butcher, could fillet a beast as soon as look at you.
Democracy is probably the winner, as Bidois – already featuring in the “future leader” ticker tape – will probably win what is these days a blue-leaning seat, and Tava will doubtless get another chance to help mine the teal vote in time for the next election.
National’s other friend-getting option is to hope that NZ First is first to flee the crowded Beehive marriage and rise from its brackish ditch willing to rekindle its options on the right.
And they say romance is dead.
If delegates hear too many times that a candidate is a star, they will mulishly select someone else.