Mastering the art of deflection is a critical part of any successful politician’s skill set. Put simply, it is the ability to know when to claim the credit for things that are working or look good, regardless of how or by whom they were initiated, matched by the capacity to shift responsibility elsewhere when things are not going quite so well. 

All governments and politicians do it, so it is neither novel nor unusual, but this government is better at it than most. And, unlike many of its predecessors who have tended to dismiss the significance of policies or programmes that are not working, it has developed the additional skills of empathy and identification. So, it “understands” the problem and is “concerned” that “something should be done about it”, even if it appears not to have any idea what that “something” might be. 

It is a very clever tactic – some may even describe it as cynical. It shifts the focus from the issue at hand, to the government’s concern about it. What the public sees is not the policy failure, but that the government agrees something needs to be done. It is on their side, and in the current environment that seems to be all that matters. 

The present state of the Covid19 response is a good example. The failings of the cumbersome managed isolation and quarantine facilities are nothing to do with the government that set them up, but everything to do with the fact that the people within them are not complying. Likewise, the New Zealanders stranded overseas and unable to get home to either farewell dying loved ones or be with family at Christmas are not in that situation because of unyielding rules, but simply because they did not organise themselves in time to be able to get an isolation berth before booking their return to New Zealand. In any case, because we are all in this together, it is the “team of five million”, not the government, setting the expectations, because the “team” wants to keep people safe. People challenging that in any way are seen as unreasonable. 

While other countries are contemplating the availability of vaccines and how quickly life will be able to get back to something approaching what it used to be, we are being told that even once a vaccine is widely available in new Zealand, it will still be at least 12 to 18 months after that before we can consider lifting border and other restrictions. Again, the excuse proffered is because that is what people would expect. The fact that other countries have said they will let people who have been vaccinated come into their countries without quarantine cuts no ice here, apparently because that is not what the “team” wants. 

It is all good and clever rhetoric which shifts the burden of responsibility to the citizenry, while at the same time allowing the government to appear concerned about the impact on daily lives that the impositions it alone has imposed is having. The implied empathy of that helps to keep the government on side with the people. And, so far, it has to be admitted, it has worked remarkably successfully.

The same deflection tactic is now at play in the housing debate, although this may prove more problematic to sustain for very long. Housing is quickly turning into the government’s Achilles heel. 

The blunt and underlying truth is that for various reasons insufficient new houses have been built under successive governments. This government burned its toes sharply when it thought its ill thought out Kiwibuild scheme was the answer. Since its failure, the government has retreated into its housing shell, apparently bereft of other ideas. Now, it is casting around looking for other levers, from the Reserve Bank to local government, to put pressure on. 

All the while, it laments the current situation; understands the difficulties it is imposing; and, agrees something drastic needs to be done, overlooking, as it does so, that the primary responsibility and opportunity for meaningful action rests with the government. It will be able to get way with this type of approach for a little while yet, but it may prove to be a harder tactic to sustain with housing than it has been with Covid19. 

Covid19 has so far been much more intangible even though it has been pervasive. In that instance, there is no rule-book to refer to, nor shared experience of what it could happen next to take guidance from. It is therefore much easier to adopt the type of approach taken so far. 

But housing is different – its impact is more visible and measurable, and the solutions more obvious. While the government can probably still extract a little more yet from its empathy and concern cards on housing, it cannot go on doing so indefinitely without the growing public expectation for more and cheaper houses hardening into uncompromising reality.  

Already, housing is shaping up as the issue that could blow away the government’s inflated Parliamentary majority like a house of cards if it is not properly addressed before the next election.

 

The current housing debate has a pathetic sense of déjà vu about it. Before the 2017 election Labour successfully hyped the then housing situation into a crisis and implied it had all the answers if elected to government. 

But now, one term of Labour-led government later, the situation is worse than ever. Housing prices have sky-rocketed, nowhere near enough houses are being built, and waiting lists for public housing have soared. And the responsibility for this deteriorating situation apparently lies with everyone else. 

Labour still keeps blaming the previous government; National blames Labour and the Reserve Bank; the Reserve Bank blames trading banks for too liberal lending policies; trading banks blame the Reserve Bank for changing the rules; local authorities and developers blame the Resource Management Act; and, according to the Real Estate Institute,  the fault lies with the demand caused by first-home buyers. Yet as this pass-the-parcel blame game continues, not one extra house is being built because of all the shouting. 

The government that alleged it had all the answers before it came to power now seems all at sea, with little idea what to do next. It has long since abandoned its previous flagship Kiwibuild policy as a disaster but has done nothing to replace it. Instead, the Prime Minister now promises to “take advice” which looks increasingly plaintive, and hardly inspires confidence. 

Yet there are some points of agreement amongst this disjointed cacophony of noise. Everyone seems to agree that there are not enough houses being built, and that the cost of housing is far too high. It is what to do about it that no-one seems able to agree upon. 

There are many players with a legitimate vested interest in the housing issue – central and local government; the banking and financial sectors; the construction industry; social service agencies; property investors and residential home buyers; renters and the homeless. All have a perspective to offer and a contribution to make in resolving the issue. But, at present, no-one is really listening to what anyone else is saying. Everyone seems far too interested in pushing their own barrow, which is why nothing coherent is happening. 

The escalating sense of drift is becoming intolerable. The government must move beyond just wanting to take more advice and show some leadership on the issue. 

A good starting point would be to stop looking at housing issues in a vacuum, and treating them like symptoms to be addressed, one by one, but rather as an inter-connected coalition of issues that need to be focused on collectively. This is not just the government’s problem, but one that involves all the groups involved in housing – and they all need to be part of both developing the solution and its eventual implementation. 

So, it surely makes sense to bring them all together in a National Housing Summit to develop a single, comprehensive, integrated national housing strategy, to which they would all be required to commit to and take ownership of. That strategy should include specific performance targets, with each sector from central government outward accepting responsibility for meeting them. Each sector could then be held to account for the delivery of its agreed targets. Such a process would be transparent enabling the public to see clearly where and why the blockages might be, and the solutions required to overcome those. 

As the Covid19 crisis unfolded the government was able to make considerable play of the fact that we were all in this together, and that effective solutions required the support and participation of everyone. It was extremely successful in that approach, and the country responded to the frequent exhortations to the “team of five million”. Well, now it is time to apply the same leadership to the housing crisis. 

But for the moment, everyone involved in housing seems to be doing their own thing, which not only means nothing is actually happening, but is also a considerable and pointless waste of resources and expertise. It has often been said that nature abhors a vacuum, yet the indecision and uncertainty currently affecting housing policy means that is precisely what we have now. It cannot go on. 

No-one credibly expects any government to have all the answers. They cannot – but they do have the unique capacity to bring together those with the relevant expertise to develop and implement the best solutions. Right now, that is what we should be holding the government to task for, if we are serious about addressing the housing crisis. 

If the government really wants to do more than just continue to “take advice” on the issue, convening urgently a National Housing Summit of all the relevant interests to develop a plan for the future would be a very good place to start.

Judith Collins' reshuffle of the remnant of National's MPs makes it clear there will no fairy-tale comeback for Simon Bridges. There had been speculation that he could be given the finance role to try to restore National's lost credibility in an area where it had long been dominant. Parallels were being drawn with another former leader, Sir Bill English, whom Sir John Key had made finance spokesperson when he became leader. English went on to be a very successful long term Finance Minister and was the last National Prime Minister. 

But there has been no such resurrection in Bridges' case. Along with Todd Muller, another of National's leaders during 2020, he has been dropped down National's depleted Caucus rankings. This is a clear sign of Judith Collins' annoyance at their leadership wrangles which had such a negative impact on National's fortunes in 2020. 

There have been reports that Bridges was actually offered the finance role, albeit in its now subordinated role to the new position of shadow Treasurer, but declined it because of that reduced scope. Either way, Bridges has not been offered a path to redemption by Collins, the way Key did to English. 

It is now widely acknowledged that National's and Bridges' credibility began falling once Covid19 struck. Back in March, public fear and anxiety about what the pandemic might do to New Zealand immediately pushed people into the government's reassuring arms, and the rest is history. 

The problem was that the more Bridges as leader tried to hold the government to account, the more he just angered a frightened public, that quite liked being embraced as the team of five million. This was despite the fact that many of his criticisms proved subsequently to be correct. To many New Zealanders he, and by association National, became so reviled that National's campaign was effectively destroyed by mid-year, while Labour just stood by quietly, metaphorically hugging the nation and sweeping up their votes in the process. 

The short term and unfortunate interlude with Todd Muller as leader simply reconfirmed National's disarray to the public and that it could no longer compete effectively with Labour. Consequently, the election campaign was far less the contest of ideas it normally is, and far more just the mechanism for confirming Labour's crushing dominance. 

National is now but a remnant of what it used to be. Not only are its numbers of MPs down substantially, but its funding and staffing numbers have also fallen heavily as well. Moreover, its rejuvenated ally on the right, ACT, is on the rise. For these reasons alone it will struggle to be an effective Opposition.

Collins’ reshuffle thus had two basic objectives. First, to establish a structure for organising National’s talents to greatest effect, and second, consistent with her comments ever since she has been leader, to show that disloyalty will not be tolerated. At first glance, her reshuffle appears to meet both objectives. 

Nevertheless, the government’s numerical dominance in the House means that Labour will not be quaking at any of National’s new appointments, intriguing as some of them are, but Collins is too experienced a politician not to know that was ever going to be the case. National’s first task is to begin to look organised, with everyone singing from broadly the same song sheet. 

Then, its challenge becomes one of relevance. Given the ongoing incidence of the pandemic and the public’s continuing love affair with the Prime Minister and her government, the blunt truth is that National is simply going to struggle to be even heard, let alone get its message across, at least for the foreseeable future. A sharp, focused, well-organised and co-ordinated team of shadow Ministers might make some positive impact, but without the proverbial little bit of luck in the form of a few major stumbles from the government, it is not going to be enough. Yet National has to start somewhere, and the Caucus reshuffle was probably the best place to begin. 

The appointment of Dr Shane Reti as deputy leader, and the promotion of a new finance team in the form of Andrew Bayly and Michael Woodhouse in a move akin to the Australian Treasurer/Finance Minister split that has worked successfully over many years will arouse some positive interest. So too will the promotion of Louise Upston, Chris Bishop, Barbara Kuriger and Nicola Willis. The lower rankings given to Gerry Brownlee and Nick Smith – long serving electorate MPs who lost their seats at the election, but returned via the party list – sends a barely disguised message they are expected to move on during the coming term. 

But the bigger question of the party leadership remains. Judith Collins is likely to remain in the role for the time being, if only because there seems to be no obvious successor. However, this year’s experiences should be a telling reminder that it cannot go into the next election campaign with question marks over leadership. 

This reshuffle is therefore the smallest of first steps in National’s quest to regain the trust and support of New Zealanders.

 

 

 

 

Any complaints about the twists and turns of New Zealand’s MMP electoral system pale into insignificance alongside the Byzantine intricacies of an American Presidential election. 

For many of us, the 2000 Presidential election where the eventual outcome was decided by a narrow 5-4 vote in the United States Supreme Court, and where words like “hanging chads” entered the political lexicon, was the most bizarre on record. However, it has almost certainly been surpassed by the weird happenings of the 2020 election. 

While the United States has often been the country most love to criticise because of its dominant, and sometimes controversial, role in international and economic affairs, it has nonetheless been fundamentally and frequently grudgingly respected for its overall commitment to participatory democracy. Until 2018, for example, there was even a county in Vermont where the local dog catcher was elected by a public vote! 

However, a fair measure of the gloss of America’s democratic veneer has been rubbed off by the antics of the Trump Administration since 2017. From the abuse of many of the traditional relationships between the Executive and Legislative Branches of government, through to the stacking of the Supreme Court with conservative Justices who will shape the direction and role of the Court for decades to come, the Trump Administration has consistently worked to undermine the traditional separation of powers between the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches of government and to subjugate those to the transitory political authority of the White House. 

As such, it has deliberately and blatantly attempted to undermine the whole American system of government. The Founding Fathers envisaged a constitutional structure not dissimilar to that in place in eighteenth century England, with the role of the President (the King) no longer unfettered but constrained by the authority of the Constitution. The Trump Administration’s approach has been to assert the role of the President in a manner equivalent to the eighteenth-century King of England, which the American War of Independence had been a reaction to. 

Even against this backdrop of a deliberate and concerted attempt to realign the American system of government so blatantly in favour of the President, President Trump’s extraordinary conduct in the early hours of the morning after the election surpassed most reasonable expectations. His premature victory claim and demand that all other vote-counting cease, were not altogether a surprise. But his threat to seek the intervention of his hand-picked Supreme Court if he did not get his way shocked many as going far too far, for even loyal colleagues like the Republican Majority Leader in the Senate. Former President Barack Obama had earlier described the possibility of such a response by the President as the actions of a “two-bit dictator”, a surely unprecedented description by any American President of the man who succeeded him in office. 

At this stage, it looks likely that former Vice President Biden will emerge as at least the interim winner of this year’s Presidential election. He will be a more orthodox and traditional President than President Trump with a strong focus on restoring the integrity of the Constitution and America’s place and perception in the world after the Trump Presidency. Many will breathe a huge sigh of relief at that. 

However, it is unlikely to be that simple. Even if all the threatened legal actions by the Trump camp are disposed of and the result that now looks likely stands, there is no guarantee about how President Trump will react in  the remaining two and bit months of his tenure. During that time, an outgoing President retains the full authority of his office, but normally co-operates, sometimes awkwardly and unwillingly, with the President-elect and his transition team. There is usually the staged event of the President and the President-elect and their wives meeting at the White House, and an unspoken commitment to make the change of administration process as smooth as possible. 

It seems highly unlikely after this year’s campaign that any of that will occur in the event of a Biden Administration. Nor is there even any certainty that at 12:00 pm on January 20, 2021, the appointed day and hour on which the next Administration is sworn in, President Trump will actually vacate the Oval Office. The prospect of one President being sworn in at the Capitol while the other remains barricaded in the White House seems extraordinary enough but the fact that many United States commentators have been speculating about what would happen in such a situation shows how unreal the world of Presidential politics has become under President Trump. 

What is clear, though, is that America remains a deeply divided country. The social, cultural and economic divisions so grossly exacerbated by the conduct of the Trump Administration will remain for the foreseeable future. These go far beyond the intricacies of the Presidential election system and are unlikely to be overturned during a four-year term of office. Nevertheless, progress towards resolving these and refocusing the American dream looks far more likely under a Biden Administration than under four more years of Trumpian upheaval and excess. 

The simple hope has to be that after all the election dramas that have dominated this year the President’s focus shifts after January 20 next year to dealing equitably with these more fundamental issues.