To fix itself, National has to ask right questions
National Party delegates will meet this weekend to vote on some of the most substantial changes to the party rules in more than a decade. Despite the relative gravity of the changes, almost everyone in and associated with the party concedes the changes alone won’t alter National’s fortunes.
Part of the reason is that the changes are only relatively significant. The big proposals, including recognition of Te Tiriti o Waitangi as the country’s founding document, term limits for board members, and allowing some board members to be appointed rather than elected are quite minor compared with the reforms ushered in by Steven Joyce after National’s 2002 defeat.
Those reforms upended a party bureaucracy that was archaic, backward-looking and bloated – run by volunteers across a circuit of A&P shows and chambers of commerce. Joyce streamlined, centralised and corporatised the bureaucracy, giving it the singular message and focus necessary to fight MMP campaigns which target (usually) the party vote.
The reforms were successful, and paved the way for the party to come back during the Key years. National still believes Joyce got the mix right, which is partly why none of the latest proposed changes are dramatic: at a party-rules level, no-one believes National is broke and in need of fixing.
That shows the party is realistic about where its problems lie. Fixing the bureaucracy alone isn’t enough to win – that’s really the job of caucus, the leader, and the team immediately around her.
Where National’s problems become a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation is when you start asking who is responsible for the composition of caucus. National’s most persistent problem has been candidate selection. Too many candidates have been of low moral standing, and very few have reflected New Zealand’s diverse communities.
The campaign review didn’t seriously probe this problem, although it’s clear the party will take a more serious approach to vetting candidates in the future under the existing rules. A change to the composition of the board – were president Peter Goodfellow to depart – could also see the bureaucracy refreshed and redirected without requiring a wholesale revision of the current rules.
Part of the problem is a bit of unfinished business from the Joyce-era reforms, which left substantial power over electorate candidate selection in the hands of local members. History suggests local branches tend to favour the same sort of candidate and don’t see it as their particular responsibility to assist the party with its diversity problem.
When polling is high, National tends to attract better candidates, and handing to local branches the ability to select candidates keeps grassroots membership engaged, giving the party an army of donors and door knockers in election year. The party can then use the list to diversify caucus.
Problems arise when polling crashes, reducing the number of list MPs it can bring in, gutting the caucus. Any desire to address this issue appears to have vanished. The campaign review recommended the list ‘‘be better utilised to bring in diverse and high-quality talent, regardless of the election result’’. However, this does not appear to have sparked any rule change that will be discussed at the party conference this weekend.
Part of the reluctance to address this problem appears to come from a membership hesistant to hand more power to the central bureaucracy. Of all the proposals being put to members over the weekend, the ones that appear to have the largest question marks hanging over them relate to allowing some board members to be appointed rather than elected, and a prohibition on regional officeholders serving as party board members.
People within the party argue that both proposals could face a backlash if they’re perceived as a power grab by the party bureaucracy at a time when many members feel it’s the bureaucracy’s fault the election was lost. Regional officeholders are popular with their constituents who will likely continue to want them as a voice on the party board.
The lack of drastic change shows a certain realism. Fixing esoteric things like a party constitution won’t itself solve party problems, and it could make things worse. In opposition, Labour decided it would change its leadership election rules to give unions and members a greater say than the party’s caucus. The disastrous move led to the elevation of two unpopular leaders before a loophole allowed caucus to elect Jacinda Ardern.
National appears to agree that reforming the leadership process could be disastrous, as evinced by the board’s decision to drop even a relatively minor recommendation that leadership election rules be codified and published (the current rules for leadership elections are set by caucus – meaning the rules can change on a whim).
But National has missed a serious opportunity to fix its poor-candidate problem. It’s hard to see how the caucus can whip itself into electable shape when the mechanism which feeds talent to caucus is so broken.
National’s most persistent problem has been candidate selection.