Captain takes helm of a wayward ship
If you were readying this Government for sale to its temporary new owner, NZ First leader and Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters, you would describe it as one that ‘‘needs work’’.
Sometime in the next week or two, Jacinda Ardern will step over the threshold at Auckland Hospital to give birth and hand over the reins to Peters as acting prime minister.
He gets a Government that seems too ready to misfire, its political antennae bent out of shape, its moments-of-brilliance book marked by clumsiness and turbulence.
The moments of brilliance include Iain Lees-Galloway pulling former National prime minister Jim Bolger out of the hat to lead his workplace relations review. Labour was so nervous about this stroke of genius leaking out that it redacted the press release sent out under embargo in advance.
Grant Robertson’s first Budget was also genius – predictable, boring, safe as houses.
Then come the clangers – like Housing Minister Phil Twyford doubling down on headlines about Labour’s 100-plus reviews, taskforces, working parties and inquiries by announcing he was setting up a new housing ministry to solve the housing crisis. It takes a political tin ear not to understand how that will be received outside the bureaucracy.
Peters must be laughing into his whisky most nights. Few politicians have a political antennae like the NZ First leader’s. He has a knack for reading the electorate. It’s the reason for his extraordinary longevity.
Labour ministers could do worse than draw heavily on that when his time comes.
Too many of its ministers are still in rookie mode, and have barely found their feet. Others overshoot themselves. Some of them, like Labour deputy Kelvin Davis, are already showing the signs of hubris that usually take three terms in government to acquire.
Meanwhile, the good ministers are so overloaded with duties they can barely raise their heads long enough to take the helicopter view that is desperately needed. It’s a tracy.watkins@stuff.co.nz government that seems to be constantly trying to find its feet.
There is a legend about a crisis meeting during the 2005 election campaign when Helen Clark asked the room full of party apparatchiks and ministers to come up with a policy that would stop Don Brash in his tracks. It’s said that interestfree student loans was born during that session.
Some of Labour’s moments have felt like that. The decision to halt oil and gas exploration did not go to Cabinet first, which was hardly fatal and not even hugely unusual. John Key announced National’s decision to save the Kermadec’s during a trip to the United Nations, catching most of his government, and its allies, on the hop. It was a captain’s call, a political decision. But like Ardern’s oil and gas moment, it was badly handled, causing his Government headaches down the line.
Labour’s oil and gas decision was supposed to be a defining moment of this government. It should have been a good news story, but Labour was instead on the defensive from the get-go. Running the decision through Cabinet would not have changed the outcome, but would at least have ensured Labour got its ducks in a row first.
To be fair, Peters is probably the master of the captain’s call. He is not particularly hostage to process and his MPs over the years would complain that he plays his cards far too close to his chest.
He can be generous and loyal, but trusts very few people and prefers to be a lone wolf. Even those who have known him longest would admit he is an enigma.
He is also cantankerous, belligerent and pugilistic – all the things Ardern is not. And National sees in him its best opportunity yet to derail this Government.
The desire for utu over Peters’ handling of coalition negotiations runs very deep in National. It would not be a surprise if it has dug up dirt to throw at him once he becomes the face of this Government.
But the biggest mistake would be to take Peters under sufferance, or treat his powers as acting prime minister as token at best.
National is paying the price in Opposition of losing Peters’ trust. That could be Labour in three years’ time if things go pear-shaped over these next few months. That’s how much is riding on both sides getting this right.
On the flip side, Labour is placing huge trust in Peters not taking a wrecking ball to its hopes of a second term.
Ardern is still the only thing that stands between this Government and the oblivion that comes with a slide in its poll ratings back to the depths of 21 per cent before she became leader.
Peters is the antithesis of much that Jacinda-mania represented.
Ardern was a vote for change and a quantum leap into the next generation of political leaders. She is also fresh, open and warm and carries no political baggage yet. Peters is the political curmudgeon – suspicious, distrustful, and angry. He is the last gasp of a generation of politicians who shaped the world Ardern promised to change, even if he has made a career out of channelling the anti-establishment vote.
Yet he is probably one of the few who can carry the Government through the period Ardern is away.
He is hugely polarising but – like Ardern – charismatic. Peters is the original celebrity politician. A ripple still goes through the public galleries when they recognise him in Parliament.
The gaze on national politics these days is relentless, and allconsuming. In an increasingly presidential system, the prime minister is under pressure to front constantly. Voters seeing a face they know, whose competence they trust, is what carries Governments through their problems.
Ardern has carried that weight alone for the last nine months. Her stamina in the final weeks of her pregnancy has been extraordinary. But she is clearly going to need some time out when the baby is born. For a new mum, that’s normal. For a political leader, not so much – especially in this modern age of the 24/7 news cycle. It may even be unprecedented.
It is a step into the unknown for everyone. did