There has been a  curiously lethargic reaction to the Land and Water Forum's report regarding steps to improve water quality levels over the next few years. Environmental organisations have decried the report as timid, while the Minister for the Environment has said the report shows the Forum has reached the end of its life. Yet neither has criticised directly its recommendations. Whether that means they will be implemented in whole or in part remains to be seen.

Since its establishment by the Government nearly ten years ago, the Forum, which contains a wide representation of business, environmental and recreational groups (but no longer major conservation groups like Fish and Game) has made a series of recommendations on freshwater management. But there has never been wholesale acceptance of its work. The previous Government adopted a pick and choose approach to its earlier reports, which caused much frustration within the Forum and led to the withdrawal of some organisations, yet the present Government seems likely to take a similar approach to this latest report.

However, there is no doubt that the issues the Forum is dealing with impinge directly upon the future ownership and management of our national freshwater resources. Therefore, it would have been reasonable to expect Governments, past and present, to have taken more notice of what it has had to say. This latest and potentially last report addresses water degradation issues and a future plan for dealing with these. It makes the telling point that water management standards are currently variable between regional councils, with no clear national enforcement, and proposes instead a national approach.

Perhaps more controversial is the view of the Forum about iwi rights in freshwater management. It rightly points out that resolving these will be critical to future freshwater management. The previous Government travelled warily around their edge during the tortuous resource management changes of the last few years, trying to balance off the concerns of the Maori Party against any perception of exclusivity. The Forum draws the obvious conclusion that the longer these rights and claims remain unresolved, the more difficult it is becoming to achieve consistent management standards and an improvement in overall freshwater quality. And that effects all New Zealanders.

While the Land and Water Forum may have come to the end of the road, the issues still cry out for resolution. The debate around the impact of dairy intensification on water degradation is strengthening, and public impatience for the Government taking decisive action to improve water quality is increasing. In the absence of any other likely successful strategies, the Government should adopt the Forum's recommendation of a new national approach, and get on with it.

A clear early statement to that effect would not only remove the existing uncertainty, but would also clear the way for the issue of iwi rights to be similarly addressed. But, if past experience is any guideline, this is likely to be the point where things founder.

Frankly, that will no longer be good enough. All the while, as uncertainty holds sway, water quality will continue to decline and New Zealand's credible ability to market itself as clean and green will similarly continue to erode. Rather than deride the Land and Water Forum for its perceived shortcomings, the Government and environmental groups need to come together to implement its recommendations, put things on a national basis, and then devise an effective future management system, which acknowledges the legitimate rights of iwi, and the interests of other New Zealanders.

The babies born today deserve no less.            

I am almost feeling sorry for the Greens. The self-proclaimed party of principle has struggled with the reality of Government, ever since it joined the unholy alliance with Labour and New Zealand First last October. They are the awkward members at the family dinner-party - the guest Labour really wanted to be in the box seat, but the one New Zealand First wanted left at home altogether. So the ungainly compromise was reached, where the Greens can join the feast, but have to eat in the kitchen, and not the dining room where Labour and New Zealand First recline.

And, if that is not bad enough, they have to go along with whatever is agreed in the dining room, before they get any food at all. They have had to do an about-face on their hitherto principled opposition to party-hopping legislation. Allegedly, according to the rumour mill, this was because of a threat from New Zealand First to release more damaging material about the background circumstances of Meteria Turei's benefit abuse hara kiri last year. Whatever, the claims to be the party of principle have been left looking more than a little tatty.

On the positive side, though, the Greens appear to have made progress on their aim of moving the economy to a carbon neutral status, although their proposals are at only discussion paper stage at present, and could yet be derailed by New Zealand First, or even Labour, if the going gets tough from here on.

Moreover, the Greens' position has been made more difficult by the electoral mathematics. Labour cannot govern now or in the future without the support of both New Zealand First and the Greens. If the Greens were to walk away now, the Government would fall, and they would be punished at the ensuing election. On the other hand, there is no guarantee that one or other, or even both, New Zealand First and the Greens will make it back at the next election, so the Government could fall anyway.

In many senses, the Greens are in no different a position to every other support party over the years. Having made the decision to support a major party in Government, they are virtually duty bound to see the term through. Yet the consequence might be their defeat in the long term, although if they were revert to being the party if principle and leave sooner, they would assuredly be tossed out of Parliament. Successive support partners over the years have faced the same dilemma, and have been derided by the Greens for being without principle when they have stayed the distance. So there is rich irony in the Greens' present plight.

What has complicated the Greens' position further is that they boxed themselves into a corner. They made it clear they would countenance working with Labour only, and, for reasons which are understandable if politically inflexible, ruled out working with National under any circumstances. So desperate were they to be finally part of Government, after having being shut out at every election since they left the Alliance in the late 1990s, they even failed to do basic due diligence on the Labour/New Zealand First coalition agreement, before signing up, sight unseen. Now they are left to reap the whirlwind.

Moreover, to make matters worse, they are facing internal party wrath over their Conservation Minister's decision to expand a water bottling operation, one more thing they railed so strongly against in Opposition. For the record, the Minister made the correct decision, given the legislation, but, as with so many other things this Government does, conveyed the decision so poorly the party backlash was inevitable.

It has to be acknowledged that individually the Green Ministers are very talented, certainly in comparison to their New Zealand First counterparts, and most of Labour as well, but they are simply not functioning well. Nor are things likely to improve as the going gets tougher over the next two years. The Green Ministers add to the competence of the Government, but that may not be enough to save them, either from themselves or the wider electorate.

Maybe it is time for the Greens to rediscover their Green-ness. Maybe it is time to make it clear that while they will continue to support the government on matters of confidence and supply, so that stability is not threatened, they will approach every other issue on the basis of how it impacts upon their Green agenda. With confidence and supply assured, neither Labour nor New Zealand First, could credibly claim that the Government's stability is threatened, so any retribution against the Greens would be of their making, and not the fault of the Greens.

It is a difficult balancing act. In the last Parliament, both the Maori Party and UnitedFuture played such a role, and were defeated. ACT was a more uncritical supporter of the Government, but equally derived no electoral benefit.  Just as the Greens see being part of this Government as critical to their ability to make policy change - and they are right, they know full well parties can do nothing from Opposition - they have to also see that for their changes to have any meaningful impact, they have to get re-elected in 2020. After the initial flush of at last getting into Government, the more mundane reality of how to stay there should be starting to hit home. So far, there is no real sign it is. 

                

Almost 20 years ago, New Zealand's first MMP Coalition Government collapsed. It was not a dramatic implosion on a major point of principle, but was provoked by a comparatively minor issue - a proposal to sell the Government's shares in Wellington Airport - and came after a series of disagreements between the Coalition partners on various aspects of policy.

There has been speculation this week in the wake of New Zealand First's hanging out to dry of the Justice Minister over the proposed repeal of the "three strikes" law that the same process might be starting all over again. While it is far too soon to draw conclusive parallels, the 1998 experience does set out some road marks to watch out for.

Immediately after the formation of the 1996-98 Coalition, New Zealand First's standing in the opinion polls slumped to the point where one senior National MP at the time famously described them as "dog tucker", and where National MPs became genuinely concerned that their Party and leadership were conceding too much (perhaps "over a whiskey bottle") which was consequently threatening their own future electoral prospects. There is already speculation that the current Coalition Government is being dominated by the whims of New Zealand First, which has similarly crashed in the polls, although that talk seems limited to the media commentariat at this stage. No Labour MPs have yet broken ranks to make that complaint, but a long winter and some tough decisions lie ahead, which may yet provoke that.

During 1996-98, there had been a series of public differences between National and New Zealand First Ministers on a range of issues. So far, this time, the spat over "three strikes" has been the most obvious, but the seemingly general poor communication between Ministers  there has been so much of  suggests the "three strikes" debacle will not be the last we see of this type.

The third prong of the 1996-98 era was a mounting public concern that the tail was wagging the Coalition dog, and that the National Party was not standing up sufficiently strongly to that. There is no real evidence of that feeling emerging at present, although the next few weeks when the New Zealand First leader is Acting Prime Minister could change that.

One factor present in the current situation which was not there in 1996-98, and which makes the Government potentially more vulnerable, is that this Coalition does not have a majority in Parliament. It has to rely on the Greens as a confidence and supply partner to achieve that. There had been hopes that the Greens might be the conscience and moral backbone of the Government, but so far the allure of power for the first time has supplanted that, and they cannot be expected any more to do anything to put that at risk.

All of which brings us back to the dynamic between Labour and New Zealand First, and the Prime Minister and her Deputy in particular, determining the fate of this Coalition. At the moment, the Prime Minister's authority is unquestioned, but generally unexercised so far. If there comes a time when that perception changes and the Prime Minister, either through circumstances or her own inaction, comes to be seen as weak and in the thrall of her Deputy, then the pressure on the Coalition will intensify.

As the 1998 Coalition collapse shows, a combination of circumstances came together to the point where a relatively small issue triggered the demise. Although similar circumstances exist at present, they do not yet show any sign of coming together in such a way to engineer a repeat of 1998. Nevertheless, each of them has the capacity to be the thread that starts the unravelling process. While a dramatic explosion is unlikely, the durability of the Coalition cannot yet be taken for granted. The New Zealand First leader is beginning to display all over again the same traits that saw him sacked from the Cabinet in 1991; sacked as Deputy Prime Minister in 1998; and, suspended as a Minister in 2008, suggesting leopards really cannot change their spots. In which case, the next 12 months have suddenly became much more interesting.                  

For each of us, there is a golden time in our lives, a period we look back on, where everything seemed rosy, where setbacks were few, and which we wish we could recreate tomorrow. It is but a pleasant memory, which rarely can be rekindled, as time and circumstances move inevitably on. Such nostalgia is not a problem. Indeed, it can be quite a positive experience. The only difficulty emerges when we try to recreate it, and fail to appreciate it was a snapshot in time that has gone forever.

For the current Labour-led Government, the golden time appears to be the era of the third Labour Government between 1972 and 1975. This was the era where bold decisions were made that stood out in stark relief to the years of conformity and complacency during the 1950s and 1960s.

China was recognised; the troops were brought home from Vietnam; the Springbok Tour was stopped; the French were taken to the World Court over nuclear testing in the Pacific and nuclear ship visits to New Zealand were suspended. Colour television and the second state-run channel were introduced; beneficiaries received a Christmas bonus; and the Queen Elizabeth Arts Council and the Waitangi Tribunal were established. A bold superannuation scheme we still hanker after was briefly put in place. There was talk of  a new city being built at Rolleston near Christchurch and a national Ohu scheme, based on Israel's kibbutz system, was mooted for young people interested in communal living.

Heady days indeed. but it all came crashing down after the impact of the 1973 Oil Shock. Unemployment  (which at one stage had been literally one person) and shortages of materials began to soar, delaying housing and commercial and industrial development; the Government was forced to borrow massively overseas to meet the soaring oil bill; inflation, which Labour had promised to "knock for six" exploded threefold; and, the Labour Government was swept ignominiously from office after just three years.

Yet, today, nearly 50 years later, it is the idealism, not the failure, that is remembered so wistfully. Ministers in the present Government, many of whom who were some years away from being born then, seem to yearn for a return to those apparently idyllic and simpler times.

There are a couple of lessons from the fate of the third Labour Government that the present administration seems unwilling to confront. The first is that the politics of the grand gesture - in this case, the establishment of the billion dollar Provincial Growth Fund, or the Kiwibuild promise of 100,000 new affordable homes, or the decision to stop oil and gas exploration, come to mind - have to be followed by actions of substance. Otherwise, the bold gesture begins to look like a hollow lie.

The second lesson to learn is the constraint of moving at a pace and direction the public feels comfortable with, and avoiding getting too far ahead of public opinion. One of the reasons why the 1984-1990 Labour Government was able to make its radical changes was because the public generally believed change was overdue. Moreover, the Government was constantly explaining its actions and decisions, giving the dual sense of both assurance that it knew what it was doing, and that the public was being taken into its confidence. Once the public came to doubt both these things after 1987, that Government's demise was as swift and even more dramatic than in 1975.

It was the Spanish philosopher George Santayana who observed that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. An ironic warning really, given that Santayana's work enjoyed a brief renaissance in the 1970s, with posters of his writings adorning the walls of many student flats, some 20 years after his death. In its nostalgia to recreate the spirit (or what the bumbling lawyer Denis Denuto better described as "the vibe" in the great Australian film, "The Castle") Labour could do well to remember the gentle words of Santayana.   

New Zealand likes to portray itself as a small and nimble trading nation, with its own will when it comes to foreign policy, and doing deals in our nation's self-interest. According to the narrative, we are the plucky nation at the end of the world, determinedly making our way in an increasingly turbulent environment, always "punching above our weight" (as that simply ghastly phrase goes), never afraid to say what we mean, and prepared to stand up for it. It has a whiff of naive innocence and old-fashioned derring-do about it, which, although endearing, is simply not true.

No, our country has an unerring ability to put all our eggs in one basket, and then wonder why things do not turn out quite as expected. When Britain announced in 1959 that it wanted to join the then European Economic Community, we were the country that refused to believe it was happening, despite the nearly 15 years that were to pass before Britain eventually joined Europe in 1973. And when the penny slowly dropped and reality dawned, we spent the latter half of the 1960s and the early 1970s trying to negotiate special annual access deals for our agricultural exports. (The ultimate futility of this approach - the so-called New Zealand "Special Case" - was put into perspective for me once in Ireland when a particularly hostile Agriculture Minister told me that if I could convince  the farmers in his largely rural constituency that they should sacrifice some of their prosperity to protect the interests of farmers 12,000 miles away, then he would back New Zealand's case in Brussels.)

After Britain joined the EEC, we tried to diversify markets and latched upon Iran as a likely trading partner, on a "dairy for oil" basis, only to have that blown out of the water by the 1973 and 1979 Oil Shocks, and the overthrow of our then new best friend, the Shah. Then  we lurched on to "dairy for Ladas" deals with the old Soviet Union, only to have those deals crumble as the Soviet Union disintegrated.

Now, we have discovered China, concluding about ten years ago the first free trade China has made with any country. Bilateral relations between the two countries have become extremely close, to the worrying extent that other traditional partners are now showing concern that our ties to the world's largest nation are making us somewhat of a soft "underbelly".

The problem is that in pursuing a strong economic relationship with China, which is very good for our exporters and economic prosperity, we have inevitably sacrificed some of our soul. For example, China is one of the world's leading death-penalty states, yet allegedly fearless, human rights upholding New Zealand stays "relentlessly" silent on the frequency with which China executes its citizens, for paralysed fear of upsetting her.

And the appalling way we treat Taiwan - one of the strongest democracies in the region, and a stark contrast to China in this regard - is a long-standing national disgrace. It is absolutely proper for China to assert that Taiwan is not an independent country, but a renegade province and inalienable part of China, that they, by peaceful means, wish to recover. But that is an issue between China and Taiwan. Other countries are free to make up their own minds. It is not right for China to bully other nations to see the issue the way it does, and to expect those nations to comply, because China says so. Here is the rank hypocrisy: although Taiwan has formal diplomatic relations with only a small and diminishing group of countries, virtually every country, including plucky, brave independent New Zealand, maintains extensive backdoor quasi diplomatic relations with Taiwan, and in reality treats it as a de facto, separate country from China, but dares not say so.

Yet, in a rare brave move on the trade front, New Zealand did conclude a free trade agreement with Taiwan during the term of the previous government, but it now needs to back that up with some political bravery to give even a shred of substance to the romantic story we like to tell about ourselves.

The Chinese basket may be the biggest yet, but the eggs within it are just as breakable as those we have put in other baskets over the years. Sadly, we seem unwilling to learn any lessons from the last 50 years or so, and so appear pig-headedly destined to repeat all the same mistakes, and suffer the same mishaps, all over again.