Vernon Small
TORPOR. Stasis. Treading water. It’s the story of New Zealand politics at the moment and it ought to be keeping Labour’s strategists awake at night.
How on earth do they inject some excitement, let alone disruption, into the political discourse?
British Labour has the phenomenon – fresh or unelectable, depending on your politics – of Jeremy Corbyn. In Australia, Labor has helped destabilise the prime minister and then seen him rolled – though on the wave of support for Malcolm Turnbull, it is a pyrrhic pleasure for Bill Shorten.
Canada has just ousted its nineyear Conservative government and voted in a majority Liberal administration, and in the United States there is the twin phenomenons of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.
Alone among the five ‘‘anglo’’ players New Zealand’s political eyelids seem to be shut.
After a year of Andrew Little’s leadership, National’s popularity is barely dented. Little is making marginal or no headway in the polls and there is just nothing that has really sparked the body politic into life since the Northland byelection.
In fact, if anything has materially changed this year it is the steady consolidation of NZ First’s polling since Winston Peters’ victory in the seat and his firming hold on the king-maker role. Labour’s annual conference in Palmerston North early next month should give it the opportunity for some soulsearching, but can we expect any change? Anything to shake the voters out of their lassitude? Ah not so much.
The promised reshuffle of the party’s shadow line-up is being held off until closer to Christmas, partly to give Little the limelight at the conference but also because of ‘‘circumstances’’. Phil Goff is likely to confirm the non-secret of the year – his tilt at the Auckland mayoralty. A by-election will be held in his Mt Roskill seat in early 2016 and without his personal following, and on party support in the electorate in 2014, it is by no means a shoo-in for Labour.
Then there is the deputy leadership issue. Annette King was to stand down and a replacement chosen this year – with Jacinda Ardern long seen as the frontrunner. It all made sense. She is a fresh face, she is from Auckland and she is widely respected there. Ardern should be a vote magnet for a party that desperately needs one.
But that all changed with Little’s announcement that King will stay on. First, there was a measure of jealousy against Ardern, in tandem with a sense she may distract attention from Little. Then there was the view that King, as ‘‘mother of the party’’, was key to unity and discipline.
Retaining her may also make it easier to offer a coalition partner (Peters springs to mind) the deputy prime minister slot. And, last but not least, King had dug in. She is a formidable political operator whose networks run deep in the caucus. So she was going to be hard to budge.
But if the party seriously wants to project change, youth and excitement, it may be making a big mistake.
HAVING said all that, Little does have some achievements under his belt from his year at the helm.
He has disabled the leadership merry-go-round, at least until 2017. Internal stability is the order of the day.
Even over the Trans-Pacific Partnership, amid rumours of internal caucus divisions, no MP publicly went feral.
Little did manage to settle the party’s position over the free trade deal, after leaving a vacuum while he was on leave, albeit with some collateral damage to party credibility.
In the end its position is (sort of) clear. Labour will not pull out – a tacit recognition the trade deal offers a net benefit to New Zealand.
On all but the possibility of implementing a ban on foreign buyers of residential property, Labour’s bottom lines can be reconciled with the deal.
Moreover, the policy of a ban on foreign buyers can easily be finessed. If Labour in government pushes for a concession other countries may agree. It is not a biggie to most of the TPP signatories. And if Labour did legislate a ban, an attack on it through the TPP system by a foreign buyer is unlikely. As was noted when similar provisions went through in the Korea FTA, a small-time residential house buyer just wouldn’t have the will or resources to confront the government.
In any case, a stamp duty on foreign buyers would probably be permissible to tilt the playing field in favour of Kiwi buyers without an outright ban. Cat-skinning can take many forms.
What Labour has compromised, with its mixed messaging, is the ability to ‘‘wedge’’ National over that single issue of foreign buyers. It should have been possible to paint itself as pro-free trade (a given) while lambasting National for not carving out or preserving the option of a future tightening on foreign buyers. Instead, its own vacillating became the story.
There have been other successes too. Kelvin Davis’s trip to Christmas Island to advocate for Kiwi detainees is the latest, though even then it’s unclear whether it was one-way political traffic.
Highlighting the failure or weakness of John Key’s advocacy and Australian cruelty was fair enough. But standing up for detainees who prefer to stay in Australia, and who have a criminal record? Maybe not so great.
Give Davis his due though, he has lifted his profile and sent the message of an active MP and a party that is prepared to stand up for those in strife.
But that is small beer in the big scheme of things for the party.
Little still has a job of work, starting with the annual conference, to present a coherent narrative that challenges Key’s ‘‘compassionate conservatism’’.
The promised reshuffle of the party’s shadow line-up is being held off.