Third term-itis: more deadly than a strong Opposition
It’s a historical inevitability that this Government is running out of puff.
IT’S A TEDIOUS truism in politics that governments don’t win elections. Rather Oppositions lose them.
That stunning bit of conventional wisdom can be viewed another way: that Oppositions win elections when governments run out of steam.
Is John Key’s National Party administration showing signs of slowing down after a hectic six years, going on seven, in which all of its senior cabinet ministers have dealt with far more crises than any government might reasonably expect to handle?
The Canterbury earthquakes and the global financial crisis may be fading in most of our memories unless you live in Christchurch and are still waiting for repairs or having to navigate the city’s ever- changing thoroughfares as the endless repairs grind on.
But they are in the lived experience of this Government as surely as any trauma. Ministers get tired and their constituents start eventually losing patience.
If one of John Key’s favourite expressions – “explaining is losing” – is true, then a third-term government is inevitably in trouble because the longer you’re in power, the more explaining you have to do.
In the first three years, maybe even the first six, it’s generally credible to blame your predecessor for the mess. But after that, it becomes your mess. Take a example: environmental law reform. OK, maybe that’s not a simple example, but it’s a good example of this phenomenon at work.
When Environment Minister Nick Smith first took the reins on that portfolio, National acted swiftly on a mandate to reform the Resource Management Act.
In the first couple of years, it did the easy bits, which were widely supported across Parliament. At the same time, it set up working groups and expert panels to advise on the ominously labelled process known as “RMA 2”.
In the midst of that, Smith lost his portfolios in an unrelated scandal involving an ACC claimant and RMA 2 fell to his cabinet colleague, Amy Adams, whose strengths as a lawyer with an eye for detail were probably always stronger than her instincts as a politician.
She tried and failed to make fundamental changes to the RMA, which would have given more weight to economic development considerations alongside the environment.
She also oversaw the introduction of the first, bold, but essentially flawed attempt to regulate economic activity in the Exclusive Economic Zone. The idea was that the EEZ, the fourth largest territorial waters in the world, was a source of untapped riches for New Zealand. Of course it needed to be an environmentally sustainable regime, but it was hoped that welldeveloped proposals would get a look-in too.
As the only two applicants for seabed mining consents in the EEZ will attest, that hasn’t happened.
Trans-Tasman Resources, which wanted to mine ironsands in the South Taranaki Bight, and Chatham Rock Phosphate, which was after phosphate nodules on the Chatham Rise, spent $110 million between them to get a flat ‘no’ from decision-making committees appointed by the Environmental Protection Authority.
A creature of Smith’s early work, the EPA surprised environmental activists by knocking back both projects while leaving the minerals industry apoplectic at the discovery that no amount of scientific research is ever likely to be enough to get a seabed mining application approved.
That’s not because all the mining that occurs on land is environmentally pure, just that the processes are better understood and the damage done better measured. On the vast, unexplored seabed surrounding New Zealand, it’s a case of ‘you don’t know what you don’t know’.
Now, a further round of RMA reform is under way, but those dreams of balancing economic and environmental imperatives are dead. They were neither politically sustainable nor very easy to implement in practice. Lawyers would have had a field day remaking the law.
While there might still be appetite for such reform, that will be for a National Party-led Government in the future, not this one.
Likewise, the EEZ regime will be “finessed”, but that will be unpopular too and whether it will be enough to overcome the high hurdles any New Zealand government must place on environmental impacts remains to be seen.
More to the point, these are examples in one area of something that third-term governments tend to end up doing: changing stuff they started, rather than ditching stuff they can blame on their opponents.
It may be an unscientific measure, but when that starts happening, it’s always a sign of a government that’s ageing, running out of ideas and likely to benefit from a spot of rejuvenation on the Opposition benches.
Imperfect as that is, that’s the essence of parliamentary democracy. John Key knows it, Andrew Little knows it, and so does the electorate.
No matter how well National polls this year, keep an eye out for signs of a boat that’s sprung a leak that no one can find. That’s what happens to governments of all stripes eventually, and this one is no different. Pattrick Smellie has been obliged for professional reasons to watch governments rise and fall for more than 30 years, so there’s a chance he knows what he’s talking about.