Audrey Young
Ardern’s most valued minister
It has been a brilliant week for the Government.
Even if you believe the opinion poll this week that put National two points ahead of Labour instead of the one that puts Labour more than 13 points ahead of National, it has been a week in which that lead may have been eroded.
That is because it has been a week in which the Government governed exceptionally well.
Governments governing are not always such a visible occurrence. It is usually an issue when there is a failure.
But with few exceptions, this week has been a success worth noting, not just for the Government but for the Coalition Government.
First, regarding the end of the week and the settlement of the teachers’ industrial dispute, Education Minister Chris Hipkins showed why he is among Jacinda Ardern’s most valued ministers.
Hipkins got the dispute settled and found a way to make the dead rat he had to swallow taste absolutely delicious.
It is true the Government has backed down, capitulated, surrendered, call it what you like, on its avowed position of $1.2 billion and not a cent more.
But it chose political pragmatism and $271 million more over intransigence. With National demanding more for teachers all the way through, the political risks for the Government of a backdown were not that high.
Pay parity, a late issue of contention in the teacher pay claim, helped get the settlement.
Its erosion has been blamed on the last National Government, but that
was because the NZEI chose to reject a pay offer in 2016 that would have maintained pay parity.
The NZEI in this pay round has tested patience and, at times, reason in this dispute. It should be easier next time for whatever government is in power in three years.
Importantly for the Government, Hipkins has done what the NZEI and PPTA unions, have been too myopic to do for themselves and that is to ensure that they bargain collectively next time over pay and conditions in common.
The imperative for union amalgamation is stronger in the teaching sector than almost any other and yet it has been resisted for years.
The NZEI is reluctant to share its valuable real estate and wealth in Willis St with a rival union and the PPTA has always regarded itself, not without justification, as the more superior outfit when it comes to industrial action and negotiation.
If they amalgamated, as most other unions have had to do, they would probably halve their problems and double their strength.
Hipkins, it should also be noted, helped to save Winston Peters’ face by declining to say the Deputy PM had got his days mixed up when he announced the settlement on Thursday. Hipkins instead spun the line that there had been a series of options for settlement.
Yesterday was good for the Government for another reason. While Hipkins was announcing the settlement — which has yet to be ratified by teachers — Peters and his New Zealand First colleague Shane Jones were marking the re-opening of the mothballed railway line from Napier to Wairoa.
It is a significant achievement for their party. Jones also seems to have realised that action in the regions is more powerful than pontification.
That rail launch comes on top of Tuesday’s launch of the latest 10-year, $20b Defence equipment spending plan by Ron Mark, NZ First’s Defence Minister, another achievement that went seamlessly well.
But perhaps the event this week that went best for the Government was the announcement on Monday by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern that New Zealand would be pulling out of Iraq and the training mission it has run with Australia.
The fact there has been so little reaction — besides some ridiculous gloating by the Green Party about taking credit for the decision — suggests the judgment call was the right one at the right time.
It is a gradual draw-down that respects the role of partners at Camp Taji, the Australians and the Americans, and the need for longterm logistical planning by NZDF.
It was well timed and well judged. Hopefully the Cabinet papers, once they are released, will outline the background of a decision that was given as much consideration as the one back by National in 2015 to deploy the trainers.
The issue that looked as though it could continue to embroil the Government this week, the scandal over the Budget leak, did not eventuate. Treasury Secretary Gabriel Makhlouf ’s allies have rallied to suggest he is the victim of an unfair attack by politicians on the public service, which is absolute nonsense.
The clash between National Leader Simon Bridges and Ardern in Parliament on Tuesday left no one with the moral high ground. Both had sat on the truth about the leak for far longer than they should have during Budget week.
That was rammed home during a select committee hearing. Brook Barrington, the chief executive of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, gave the clearest indication yet of the serious concern in Government that the Budget leak had caused, admitting that he had taken all sensitive material off his own computers.
Barrington had been advised by the GCSB that it was not a cyber intrusion but he did not know what it was.
Makhlouf is not off the hook, however. He
is one of the top three civil servants in the country and if he has fallen short, he should be censured. At the very least, he seems to have run a department incapable of keeping secret Budget material safe from an ordinary search.
Despite the effusive praise heaped on him by his employer, State Services Commissioner Peter Hughes, at his farewell, there is still a yawning gap between the advice Makhlouf gave to Finance Minister Grant Robertson and the facts as we know them.
There is also a gap between what Makhlouf was telling media the day before the Budget and what the GCSB had told him the previous night.
The heat may have gone out of that scandal for now, but there could be plenty of life in it yet to trouble both him and the Government.
Hipkins got the dispute settled and found a way to make the dead rat he had to swallow taste absolutely delicious.