Opposition parties resort to Trump- style ‘ truths’
Debate over ‘ parliamentary palace’ provides an abject lesson in the new politics
rustrations and tensions are running high at Parliament, higher than usual. It is an unsettling time for MPs, especially for Opposition parties.
They are competing among themselves for a voice as well as against a powerful government machine, and since the Kaikoura earthquake have almost been drowned out.
The tension is evident in regular parliamentary forums such as select committees and question time.
Labour’s Grant Robertson had a blow- up this week with David Bennett as chairman of the finance and expenditure committee because of the way he allocated questions to MPs.
Even Act’s David Seymour threatened to join forces with Labour to remove Bennett because he wasn’t given enough time to make a point to Reserve Bank governor Graeme Wheeler, who was appearing before the committee.
MPs are being thrown out of the debating chamber — or should I say Ron Mark, the New Zealand First deputy, has been exercising his natural gift for needling the Speaker, a gift he attempts to perfect when leader Winston Peters leaves him in charge, as happened this week.
With less than a year to the election and after eight years in office, National is on a staggering 50 per cent, according to the latest 1 NewsColmar Brunton poll, and Labour is still stuck below 30 per cent.
The poll, a respected one, confirmed that Labour still has a credible chance of leading the next Government with the Greens and New Zealand First.
But with the economy in relatively good shape and fresh forecasts next week due to show huge surpluses on the horizon, the challenges for Opposition parties will only be harder.
It is evident Opposition parties are hoping their own versions of a BrexitTrump contagion will take hold in New Zealand and issues of nationalism and elitism will gain greater currency.
Labour has no qualms about pursuing a nationalistic agenda that it avoided in government.
Leader Andrew Little, for example, promoted a bill this week that would have required government procurement decisions to take account of the New Zealand jobs they would create.
It sounds commendable enough but, as Labour knows, it would breach trade deals that various governments have signed and which give New Zealand companies access to massive markets for their own procurement bids.
When Labour was last in power and governing in the real world, the furthest it went was to fund Sue Bradford’s “buy Kiwi- made” campaign.
It is easy to suggest New Zealand would be great again if it could still make its own trains in Dunedin, or to rail against the 17,000 manufacturing jobs that have been lost in eight years, and ignore the 300,000 other jobs that have been created.
But the successful Trump- Farage campaigns in the US and Britain have established new standards.
It is now seemingly okay to state things that are not true, to promise things you won’t deliver, to say the opposite of what you once said and to condemn anyone who highlights it as an out- of- touch member of the elite political class.
New Zealand First is already well versed in the art of convincing voters they are the victims of the elites — elite anything: trade deals, bankers, foreigners, media, and governments.
In that respect, the so- called “parliamentary palace” is tailormade for New Zealand First, which is the only party to oppose it.
It was also the reason Ron Mark got turfed out of Parliament.
He was questioning why Speaker David Carter had not allowed a snap debate on the project — there is no ministerial responsibility.
It will cost at least $ 100 million to build two new buildings, one for ministers next to the Beehive and one for the MPs now accommodated in the privately owned Bowen House high- rise, across the road from the Beehive.
On the basis of a study tour in Europe, Winston Peters went low, gratuitously condemning the building project as what he imagined would be “a multicultural, iwi- influenced monstrosity”.
Even more gratuitous was the suggestion the Speaker had timed his announcement to be buried under the news that urgent earthquake legislation was to be introduced.
In fact the announcement of the latest “palace” had been timed for the Monday two weeks before, but the earthquake happened the night before so it was delayed by a fortnight.
The truth was the opposite of what he claimed.
New Zealand First’s scrutiny is to be commended in one sense, because any scrutiny others can apply is limited.
The fact that anything to do with Parliament and its administrators, the Parliamentary Service, is outside the confines of the Official Information Act means there is no evidence of how seriously other, cheaper options were considered, such as acquiring the nearby Bowen State Building ( different from Bowen House).
Carter, when announcing the project, said the ownership of parliamentary accommodation was grounds of nationalism and sovereignty.
And Winston Peters, who made his reputation opposing foreigners buying up New Zealand, would be happier with the status quo.
Peters argued that Bowen House should never have ended up in private hands.
At the risk of being labelled a member of the media elite, his criticism is all the more galling because Peters precipitated the sale of Bowen House from public ownership to private ownership.
It used to be owned by a stateowned company, Government Property Services.
But in his first Budget as Treasurer, in 1997, Peters set its destiny in motion.
“For those state enterprises that are not specifically identified as strategic assets, the Government will consider whether to keep them on a case- by- case basis,” he said.
“As a first step along this path, the Government has decided to undertake a study of the sale of its interests in Government Property Services Ltd and Vehicle Testing New Zealand Ltd.
“There is no reason for the Government to own a commercial property company,” Peters said.
It is proof that the most consistently applied principle applied in politics is inconsistency, and that is bound to rise the closer we get to the election.