An elaborate game of pass the parcel is underway in Wellington about who is responsible for the failure to have the new Transmission Gully Motorway, originally intended for completion in April 2020, and then five projected dates after that, finally open for this year’s Christmas holiday traffic. 

The reason given is because the various resource consents and safety assurance tests have not yet been fully completed and are unlikely to be before the onset of the summer holidays (when presumably all the bureaucrats responsible go off on holiday). These tests are important and should not be compromised but it is beyond belief, given that this project has been under construction for over seven years and the current eighteen-month delay on last year’s projected completion date, that the consenting authorities were not better geared up to act in time for the roadway to be opened this month. 

Waka Kotahi, the transport agency responsible for the highway, is openly apologetic for the failure to meet the latest deadline and is clearly frustrated at the ongoing delays. But the Greater Wellington Regional Council, the major consenting authority, lazily denies any responsibility for the delay, placing all the blame on the road building company. 

It clearly never occurred to the GWRC that there was huge expectation that the highway would be open for these summer holidays, and that it might therefore have been prudent for it to think ahead and organise itself so that the consents issues could be resolved speedily and in time for Christmas. The GWRC chair acknowledges the project is already nearly two years behind schedule, which, extraordinarily, in his mind seems to excuse the latest delays. 

In fact, it would not have been unreasonable to have expected a half-way efficient Council to have been doing all it could in the interim to ensure the consent applications were lodged as early as possible so they could be approved in good time to allow the road to open this year. 

For its part, the roadbuilder, already potentially subject to a $7.5 million non-completion penalty payment rising by $250,000 for every day the road remains unopened is saying nothing. Local Mayors are relishing playing the “I told you so” game over the time the consenting process stakes, but do not seem to have shared any of their self-proclaimed wisdom with Waka Kotahi or the government before the problem became apparent. 

Central government, normally so keen to have its fingers in the pie, has been noticeably silent on the delay and the impact it will have on Wellington over the coming summer. Neither the Labour MPs representing the areas through which Transmission Gully runs, nor the Minister of Transport have expressed any concern or sympathy for the thousands of motorists who will be delayed in lengthy queues heading into and out of Wellington this summer. Nor have they made any suggestions about how the process could be facilitated to open the motorway earlier than the Easter 2022 date Waka Kotahi is now projecting. 

Transport Minister Wood has been singularly uninterested in Transmission Gully since taking office last year. His only statements on Transmission Gully have been to criticise the public-private partnership established by the previous government for the highway’s construction. 

In contrast, he has been far more vocal and positive on the Auckland light rail project which just happens to run close to his Mount Roskill electorate. He has been very keen to ensure progress on that project which the Prime Minister previously promised would be up and running by now, only to face the humiliation of its being vetoed by New Zealand First. 

Wood went so far as to announce this week that the government would now decide the way forward for the project before the end of the year. He was remarkably candid, admitting that the only thing holding up an announcement at this stage was that the government was still considering the mechanics of that announcement, in other words, how to spin the story to Labour’s maximum advantage. 

It is a great pity Wood has not shown even a modicum of the interest he has in Auckland light rail on Transmission Gully. But then, Transmission Gully was a project initiated by the previous government, so matters little to this government. Nor does he have to travel over the affected area at all regularly, so it really is a case of out of sight, out of mind. But he needs to remember being Minister of Transport is a role that covers the whole country, not just the Auckland region. Certainly, a similar lack of interest on his part in Auckland light rail would never have been tolerated. 

Meanwhile, Wellington motorists will continue their indefinite crawl past the nearly ready Transmission Gully highway, increasingly aware that neither the Minister, nor their local Labour MPs care a jot for their frustration. 

The one positive note in all this is the project is so close to completion it will not be abandoned. It will open at some point in the not-too-distant future, and then the currently silent local Labour MPs will no doubt be hailing its success. 

Anyway, that is it for this year. In the spirit of Christmas, my best wishes to everyone for the coming Festive Season, in the company of family and friends; for safe travels and relaxing times (and in the case of Wellingtonians not too many lengthy delays crawling past Transmission Gully!) Merry Christmas!

 

 

The focus placed on the first couple of Question Time exchanges between the new leader of the National Party and the Prime Minister will have seemed excessive to many but the most seasoned Parliamentary observers. 

Most people, especially those outside the Wellington beltway, imagine Question Time is exactly what it sounds – a session where the Opposition gets to ask Ministers questions about their portfolios to gain information, and where Ministers respond, leaving Parliament better informed as a result. 

In fact, Question Time is anything but the genteel exchange of information some imagine it to be, and others wish it were. Rarely is anyone seeking genuine information at Question Time. If that were the true intent they would be better off accessing the resources of the General Assembly Library, or even the cumbersome processes of the Official Information Act to get what they were after. 

For Ministers, the art of being successful at Question Time is to give away as little information as possible, unless it presents the Government in a favourable light, while for the Opposition parties the aim is to trip up or otherwise embarrass a Minister. Little of it has anything to do with the accuracy or depth of the information being sought or provided. 

In that regard, Question Time is a ritualistic game, albeit an important one, played out generally at the start of day’s Parliamentary proceedings. Its purpose is about establishing dominance, and which side is on top that day, a little like the opening skirmishes in a rugby test match. And it is not a phenomenon exclusive to the New Zealand Parliament. Although the form of their Question Times differs somewhat from ours, the same dynamics are at play in the House of Commons in London, and the House of Representatives in Canberra, and many other Westminster-style Parliaments around the world. 

The mistake is often made of assessing Ministerial and Opposition performance on what goes on at Question Time. Some Ministers are quick-witted natural performers who thrive on the rough and tumble of Question Time. Likewise, some Opposition MPs are extremely good at asking awkward questions that make even the most experienced Ministers squirm. But none of this is necessarily an indicator of their overall effectiveness. Others may, for example, be far more effective as policy developers, or in select committees, more interested in solid achievement than the theatre of Question Time. 

While the natural tendency for an Opposition is to want to take on and hopefully topple the Government’s best performers, good Oppositions learn over time the futility of that. Far better to ignore the Government’s strong performers by not asking them any questions at all, thereby depriving them of the oxygen to use Question Time to score at the Opposition’s expense. It is often more profitable for an Opposition to use Question Time to expose and put pressure on the Government’s weakest Ministerial links, forcing other Ministers to spend more of their time in Question Time defending their embattled colleagues, rather than promoting their own leadership and policy achievements. 

When last in Opposition National took some years to realise the futility of attacking Helen Clark and Sir Michael Cullen when they were at their most dominant. It was a similar story with the last Labour Opposition which was fixated on attacking Sir John Key for far too long. Both eventually dropped the tactic and simply ignored them thereafter, once they realised they were losing more from the ongoing attacks than they were gaining. Weaker Ministers offered far richer pickings! 

All of which brings us back to the current contest between Christopher Luxon and Jacinda Ardern. While it is clearly too soon to form a definitive view after just a couple of days’ performance so far, it does seem that Ardern will be more vulnerable on questions that are not Covid19-related where she cannot take the same high ground approach she has since the outbreak of the pandemic. Luxon therefore should shift his attack away from the Covid19 sphere and onto policy areas where Ardern is far more vulnerable – like overall Government performance, housing provision, child poverty and climate change, for example. If he cannot score against her on those areas, he may, over time, like those before him, need to think about ignoring her altogether to starve her of the Parliamentary opportunity to score points at his expense. 

Whatever course the future Question Time exchanges between Ardern and Luxon take, we are unlikely to gain any substantive new information on Government or Opposition intentions. After a little while we will get a sense of who is the more dominant in Parliamentary terms, and the impact that is having on the respective morale of their teams. In time that might also translate into a wider public perception of who is winning and who is losing. 

The pressure Question Time imposes on party leaders in Government and in Opposition is much more about constantly performing at a high level, than it is about asking or answering questions. If a party leader is being frequently bested at Question Time, it starts to sap the party’s morale, and, in turn, raise questions about the future of the leadership. MPs on both sides will be watching Ardern’s and Luxon’s coming performances intently in that regard. 

Getting on top at Question Time is for both Jacinda Ardern and Christopher Luxon an important pathway to getting on top with the rest of the country. It should be no surprise that the questions asked, and answers provided will always run a far distant second to that quest for dominance.        

 

By most reckonings the ACT Party has had a very successful political year. Not only has its expanded Parliamentary team settled in well to its work, without controversy or scandal, but its leader has gained in community respect, and the party’s support, at least according to the public opinion polls, has increased sharply. 

At last year’s election, the Labour/Green bloc secured 58% of the party vote – more than 25% ahead of the 33.2% that went to the National/ACT bloc. That gap has narrowed since then, to sit now at around a much more realistic 8% (50% to 42%), according to the latest Colmar Brunton poll. More significantly, ACT’s vote share in the same poll has almost doubled from election time to 14% - half that of National, and one-third of the National/ACT bloc’s total. There has been speculation that if ACT’s support continues to grow at this rate, it will soon come close to eclipsing National as the most popular Opposition party. 

However, such speculation was made before the change of leadership in the National Party, and the new leader Christopher Luxon’s avowed aim to “bring home” the 413,000 votes National shed at the last election. Many of those votes, but by no means all, went to ACT, and a significant movement of them back to National could severely halt the progress ACT has been making this year. 

If Luxon’s strategy is successful, ACT could end up in a situation similar to that of the Greens with Labour. The Greens now seem to be a permanent 7%-9% party vote party, enough to potentially be the difference between a Labour-led Government or not. Having ruled out ever working with National, the Greens now have nowhere else to go, so will be taken for granted by Labour accordingly. 

Should Luxon woo home the votes lost to ACT, ACT will return to its previous 6%-8% standing. ACT has wedded itself to only ever working with National and in such a scenario would end up in precisely the same position as the Greens have with Labour. 

Of course, ACT had to welcome Luxon’s selection as leader – and with it the prospect of a stronger National Opposition, the likely impact on its vote notwithstanding. It would have been churlish and not in the interests of future coalition building to do otherwise. Nevertheless, expect ACT to watch closely how the public reacts to the Luxon/Willis “reset” and the risks that might pose to ACT, and to already be working out its response. After all, it will feel with some justification that having made so much progress during 2021 it is not timely to surrender it now, just because of a potentially more voter-friendly National Party. 

ACT will have to chart a different yet complementary course, without scaring away too many of its supporters. During this year, ACT has benefitted from taking strong and clear positions on the Covid19 response in particular, whereas National’s approach has often looked ambivalent, or a pale imitation of Labour’s. Luxon’s self-proclaimed moderation may give ACT scope to continue taking strong and defined positions. However, there is the risk, if Luxon gains traction, of ACT looking too rigid and uncompromising to inspire public confidence that the two parties could work together cohesively in a future coalition government. 

The immediate challenge for both National and ACT though is growing their combined vote share, without cannibalising each other. It would appear from the polls that most of the movement in votes since the election has been away from Labour – down just under 10% on its election result. The current gap of around 8% the polls are reporting between the Labour/Greens and National/ACT blocs needs to narrow to 5% or less for the 2023 election to start to look competitive. 

At present, given the sharp jump the polls are recording in ACT’s support, most of the votes leaving Labour seem to be transferring directly to ACT, much to National’s frustration. They may well be voters who left National for Labour in 2020, but who, while now disillusioned with Labour, still feel disinclined to return to National. Luxon’s pledge to “bring home” those votes will need to be promoted in the context of growing the National/ACT bloc’s total vote share, not just building up National’s vote at ACT’s expense, potentially leaving the bloc still short of the support needed to form a government. His focus needs to be getting traditional National voters back from Labour, not ACT. 

ACT’s dream run in 2021 is going to be difficult to sustain. Like all small parties allied to a major party, its support will wax and wane in proportion to the popularity of its major ally. Given that reality, National and ACT now need to focus less on the horse race between them, and more on lifting their combined vote share to at least 48% - the minimum figure needed to form a government under MMP. 

No matter the individual party standings, or the rivalry between them, a result that achieves anything less than that figure in 2023 will be a failure for both of them – leading to nothing more than three more frustrating years in Opposition.