Fudging the coalition

The coalition agreement gives effect to some important election promises, and adds a few surprises, some welcome and some not.

The agreement fudges the issues where the parties clearly disagree or where the promises were daft.

The $1 billion regional development fund would be a boost for deprived areas, as long as it’s not a political pork-barrel funding scheme.

Planting 100 million trees could help with the government’s ambitious and necessary climate change reform.

The agreement kicks for touch on Winston Peters’ pet scheme to move Auckland’s port to Whangarei. There will be a ‘‘feasibility study’’ which will presumably find it unfeasible.

The gap between NZ First and the Greens over irrigation is papered over with the pledge to honour existing Crown irrigation investment but wind down any others.

Likewise the two have found common ground in promising to help the farmers adjust to climate change imposts.

The promise to boost the minimum wage to $20 an hour by

2021 is very bold, since it is already much closer to the average wage than in many other countries.

Harsher penalties for tax evasion are welcome but the hard issues are lobbed to the tax reform group, with policies to go to the

2020 election. This merely shifts the problem on. The group will presumably back a capital gains tax, since the argument for it is overwhelming. But will the voters agree? Labour’s promised boost to family income is a good first step towards reducing child poverty, and the Greens have got a promise to ‘‘overhaul the welfare system.’’

There will be more money for house insulation, an area where the Greens successfully sold sensible reform to National.

The promise to boost DOC funding is welcome but also contains no specific figures.

One good surprise is the promise to set up a Criminal Cases Review Commission, where expert investigators can review cold cases and bring them back to court where injustices have been done. This is sorely needed and was resisted by National.

Another welcome unheralded announcement is the Greens’ pledge to increase transparency around the Official Information Act. This should include the extension of the OIA to cover MPs, a glaring gap in the act. But will Labour go that far?

The agreement shows at least that the parties are serious and want to form a workable government. The areas where it fudges, however, remain very important, and might simply lead to paralysis or cop-out. -