The offices of the Ombudsman and the Controller and Auditor-General are two important independent statutory agencies charged with protecting aspects of the public interest against excessive or unnecessarily coercive actions by the government and its departments. 

The Ombudsman’s office has the power to investigate approximately 4,000 public sector agencies across New Zealand. It does not have executive authority, but Ombudsman’s recommendations are normally taken very seriously by the government and rarely ignored.  

The Controller and Auditor-General’s role is two-fold – responsibility for the annual financial audit of about 3,500 public bodies, including schools and other public bodies, and ensuring that government funding is both spent for the purposes for which it was appropriated, and in the best possible way. Like the Ombudsman, the Controller and Auditor-General is an officer of Parliament, meaning they report directly to Parliament, rather than the government of the day. 

This week, both offices released separate highly critical reports on unrelated aspects of the government’s response to the pandemic. 

The Ombudsman’s report on the way the controversial MIQ system operated was extremely scathing. He said, “I acknowledge that another type of system, which provided for consideration of individual circumstances would have been more complex, time-consuming, and costly to implement … But I do not consider these challenges provided sufficient rationale for MBIE not to advise and recommend to decision-makers options for such a system – the impact on people was too severe. A fundamental human right was being limited and people’s lives were being significantly impacted.” 

Following an investigation into the initial all-of-government response to the pandemic in 2020, the Controller and Auditor-General concluded that “no system or plan could have fully prepared New Zealand for Covid19’s impact” but that “there were shortcomings in our national security, emergency management, and health systems that could have affected the effectiveness and efficiency of the response.” The report concluded that the need for action to resolve these issues was urgent and should not await the findings of the Royal Commission due to report in 2024. 

These are substantial reports which deserve a response from the government. But, so far, there has been no response at all from the government to the Auditor-General’s report. 

MBIE’s response to the Ombudsman’s inquiry was grudging at best. While it “welcomed” the report, it quickly defended the MIQ system because it enabled “almost 230,000 travellers to safely return home and cared for over 5,000 community cases. It was responsible for stopping more than 4,600 cases of COVID-19 at the border.” Later in its statement it did offer a passing acknowledgement that “the allocation system was not perfect and that some people were unable to secure a place in MIQ whilst in extremely challenging circumstances”. 

However, MBIE simply ignored the Ombudsman’s conclusion that its actions had “failed New Zealanders” and his recommendation that it should apologise to those who had been adversely and unfairly affected. In media interviews and in Parliament earlier this week the Prime Minister also ignored the apology calls, and reiterated instead that while not perfect, MIQ had played a valuable role in securing the country’s borders from Covid19. 

Two important issues arise from these responses, or more correctly, non-responses. First, the cavalier and dismissive way both reports have been treated goes against the convention of how recommendations from these two independent Officers of Parliament are usually treated. Successive governments have placed much weight on Ombudsman’s and Auditor-General findings, even if they have been politically inconvenient, and have worked to address the points of concern. However, the implicitly defiant tone of the response from both the Prime Minister and MBIE to the Ombudsman’s report suggest that may now be changing, and the government may be feeling less inclined to heed what the Ombudsman has to say. 

Second, the public will be the loser from any move to downgrade the weight attached to reports from the Ombudsman and the Controller and Auditor-General. While, like governments, the Ombudsman, and the Controller and Auditor-General will not always get it right, they are an important independent public safeguard against a government’s coercive powers being used excessively and public funds being spent inappropriately. Therefore, any attempts to downgrade their significance, or the worth of their findings, should be strongly resisted. 

As it stands, New Zealanders do not have too many protections against the excesses of government. Our Bill of Rights is not entrenched, and its provisions can be easily bypassed by a simple majority in Parliament. The Courts can issue declaratory judgements about government actions, but they have no authority to “strike down” legislation passed by Parliament. The offices of the Ombudsman and the Controller and Auditor-General are therefore at the forefront of the safeguards available to individual citizens seeking redress, and traditionally been strong performers in that regard. That system has worked to date because successive governments have been responsive to their findings. For the sake of our democracy, that needs to continue, which is why the government’s off-hand reactions this week to their latest reports are that much more worrying. One hopes it is just a case of pre-Christmas oversight but fears otherwise. 

With Parliament having wound up for the year, it is now time to look ahead to the coming summer break. So, my best wishes to everyone for a happy and peaceful Christmas and New Year.    

 

 

When Parliament rises for the year at the end of next week, MPs' attention will shift over the summer break to the election next year, and what it might mean for them personally. Some will decide the time is ripe for them to move on, as did Green MP Jan Logie this week, and announce their retirements early in the year.  

The Prime Minister's focus will shift to the future composition of her Cabinet, with a significant reshuffle already promised for around late January. She will be looking to a team that both maximises the talent in her Caucus and presents a reinvigorated and positive face to voters for what the polls show will be an extremely difficult election contest for Labour. 

Refreshing Cabinets is a challenging task for any Prime Minister. Leaving aside the question of talent, the exercise is always fraught, given the ambitions and personalities involved. Over the years various Prime Ministers have attempted to refresh their Cabinets for election year, but few have done so successfully. 

When he became Prime Minister in early 1972 Jack Marshall took the axe to the long-serving Holyoake Cabinet he inherited, bringing in four new Ministers to replace those who had indicated they would be retiring at that year's election. But that did not stop his government losing to Norman Kirk's Labour Party in a landslide a few months later. 

At the start of 1990, one of Labour’s more dismal years, Prime Minister Geoffrey Palmer moved aside six retiring Ministers and brought in some of Labour's better backbench performers to replace them. Some of the former Ministers remained openly disgruntled about their demotion throughout the next few months until Labour's landslide defeat.  

Following the collapse of the National/New Zealand First coalition government in 1998 Prime Minister Jenny Shipley sought to reshape and refresh her new minority government through one of the boldest pre-election reshuffles of recent times. But despite giving her government a new face, it was ultimately to no avail. Helen Clark and Labour still won the next election by a handy margin. 

Prime Minister John Key took a more cautious approach. While he regularly reshuffled his Cabinet at the start of election year, he never demoted more than one or two Ministers. This both minimised the scope for disgruntlement, and always left the door slightly ajar for the ambitious. 

The common point arising from all these different approaches of the last fifty years or so is that pre-election Cabinet reshuffles have virtually no impact on a government's political fortunes. The record strongly suggests that any Prime Minister who believes a government's flagging political fortunes can be revived by an election year reshuffle is dreaming. 

But that is not to say there is no point in reshuffling the current Cabinet. Some Ministers are clearly overworked, others underutilised, some may have intimated privately to the Prime Minister that they will not be seeking re-election, while others have shown themselves simply not up to the task. For these reasons, a reshuffle makes good sense, but the Prime Minister's task will not be easy. 

While the Labour Caucus normally selects Ministers and the Prime Minister allocates portfolios, there is more scope for a Labour Prime Minister to act unilaterally when it comes to reshuffles. But even so, Jacinda Ardern will not have an entirely free hand, the regard in which she is held by the Caucus notwithstanding. 

For example, there has been much speculation about the futures of Ministers Nanaia Mahuta and Willie Jackson. Mahuta’s credibility has been severely damaged by the Three Waters saga, but her value arises from being Labour’s bridge to Tainui and the Kingitanga. Jackson’s comments on the TVNZ/RNZ merger have been consistently belligerent and aggressive, earning a rebuke from the Prime Minister. 

However, beyond that, and most importantly, both are senior members of Labour’s highly influential Māori Caucus – the so-called First Fifteen – which makes it almost impossible for the Prime Minister to act against them. That adds to her challenges regarding the reshuffle – it will not look like much of a change of guard if a same/old situation remains, for whatever reason. 

Given history’s lesson that election year reshuffles have little actual impact on the political fortunes of the government of the day, the Prime Minister cannot expect her forthcoming reshuffle to deal her an election-winning hand. The best she can hope for is that her reshuffle irons out some of the current workload and performance imbalances and provides some promotion opportunities for some of her newer MPs. At the same time, she will need to be attuned to the feelings of those backbenchers passed over in the reshuffle now having to accept the reality their opportunities to go further have passed by. 

All these factors add to the challenges confronting Jacinda Ardern as she ponders the future shape of her Cabinet. But no matter how the reshuffle is finalised, then presented to the public, it will still be essentially the same government as before. 

And it will still be that government and its performance that voters will judge at election time, no matter who is in the Cabinet at that point.

 

 

 

 

Last week, as Parliament sat under Extended Hours to pass the Committee of the Whole stage of the controversial Water Services Entities Bill, the Greens moved an amendment requiring that the support of a minimum of 60% of a future Parliament would be required for any proposal to privatise water entities or assets to succeed. With the support of Labour, the amendment was passed. 

No-one seemed too excited at the time, with Leader of the House Hipkins admitting later that he had not even read the amendment fully before committing Labour’s support to it. As no political party is currently proposing or has previously proposed the privatisation of water assets, the Greens’ amendment seemed arcane and not worth worrying about. 

Things changed over the next couple of days, however, with the country’s constitutional lawyers and academics quickly shouting “constitutional outrage” in the loudest terms. The outrage was directed not so much at the issue of water privatisation but at the fact that the long-standing principle, arising from the supremacy of Parliament, that in general one Parliament cannot bind its successor was being breached. 

There are exceptions – principally around changes to electoral and constitutional law – where provisions are “entrenched” and unable to be changed by a future Parliament without a 75% majority in favour. Water privatisation was not seen to fit into these categories and the argument went that by extending the “entrenchment’ notion this way, even at the lower threshold of 60%, Parliament was beginning to walk down a dangerous path. 

By the end of the weekend, even the Prime Minister was describing the entrenchment aspect as “quirky” and was promising the Cabinet would have another look at it. That was generally interpreted as an indication the government would seek to overturn the amendment when Parliament next met. 

But things are never that simple. After Cabinet, the Prime Minister announced that the matter was being referred to Parliament’s Business Committee to see whether agreement on the amendment’s future could be reached. Now the Business Committee, which meets weekly and comprises all parties, determines the order of business in the House for the coming week. It does not deal with, let alone, resolve policy issues. Yet, here was the Business Committee, which operates on near-unanimity amongst its members, being asked – quite improperly – to decide a policy issue on behalf of the government. I was a member of the Business Committee for more than twenty years and never saw it used in this way. 

The government’s game-plan was immediately clear. It knew National and ACT disagreed with the Greens’ amendment, so there was no prospect of agreement, let alone anything approaching near-unanimity. That would give Labour an excuse to withdraw its support, framing the argument that they had no option because of National and ACT. At the same time, they tried to paint the picture that by opposing the amendment National and ACT were effectively not ruling out water privatisation in the future. 

According to Labour’s framing, this laid the fault for what had happened firmly at National’s and ACT’s doors. Under this narrative, it was nothing to do with the Greens who promoted it, nobly trying to save water assets from rapacious National and ACT. Nor was it anything to do Labour that blindly and unthinkingly supported the Greens’ amendment. The strategy is as devious as it is deceitful. And its resolution will consequently be more drawn out, meaning the situation will linger longer in the public mind. 

It would have much easier – and quicker – had the Prime Minister simply admitted on Monday morning that the government had made a mistake in supporting the Greens’ amendment, so would be recommitting it when Parliament next met and voting against it. That would have been the end of the matter. The issue would have been over, almost before it started, and Labour would have got some credit for quickly realising the problem and moving swiftly to rectify it.  

But by trying to drag things out so that they could try and pin the blame for their original ineptitude on National, rather than admit their own error, all Labour did was prove correct Elton John’s lyrics, “sorry seems to be the hardest word”, especially for politicians. In so doing they have prolonged a controversial issue, not shut it down, and raised even more questions about how on earth they got themselves into this situation in the first place. Were they outsmarted by the Greens, or was Hipkins asleep at the wheel? The longer questions like this linger, the messier it looks for Labour, not the sort of message to be sending as election year approaches. 

Of course, the current government are not the first government to find the prospect of saying sorry causes them to choke. Politicians of all hues and times have been similarly afflicted over the years. All range of verbal gymnastics have been employed to get politicians off the hook of having to say sorry. And, in a funny sort of way, people always expect that to be the case. 

The one exception to this in recent times was Sir John Key, who was adapt at saying sorry, and quickly moving on to the next issue, leaving people wondering what the first problem was all about. But his critics said this just showed him as glib and not taking issues sufficiently seriously. 

One thing is for sure, though, Key never got himself into the tangle Labour’s obfuscation over the last week has left them in today.  

 

 

It is difficult to escape the conclusion that the government was delighted with this week’s ruling from the Supreme Court that excluding sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds from the right to vote was inconsistent with the Bill of Rights Act. Not because of the weight of the legal argument, nor the morality of the cause, but simply because the ruling provided the government with a huge distraction from all the other problems confronting it at present. 

Under Section 7 of the Bill of Rights Act, whenever a declaration is made that an action is inconsistent with the Act, the Minister responsible is required to report to Parliament within six months of the declaration what actions the government is proposing to take. In this case, the government has until the end of May next year to advise Parliament of its response to the Court’s ruling. 

But rather than waiting six months to make its response known, the government waited barely six hours, so gleeful was it at the distraction the Court had provided. The Prime Minister did not even wait for the Labour Caucus to meet, before announcing the government’s response. Legislation to lower the voting age to 16 will be drafted immediately, she promised, and introduced to Parliament as soon as possible. 

That immediately ensured all the right headlines and focus for the next couple of days at least, during which time the Reserve Bank is expected to lift interest rates by the biggest amount yet, further hitting already struggling household budgets. The cynicism of the decision is highlighted by the fact that for the voting age for Parliamentary elections to be lowered, a minimum 75% of Parliament (90 MPs) must vote in favour. When she made her announcement the Prime Minister said she did not know whether all Labour MPs, let alone MPs from other parties supported the move, which she hoped would be determined by a conscience vote. Her promised legislation was therefore nothing but smoke and mirrors. 

Subsequently, National and ACT MPs said they would oppose the Bill, meaning it will not get the 75% support level it needs to pass, which is the ideal outcome for the Prime Minister. In contrast to the cannabis referendum a couple of years where she scrupulously avoided taking a public position for fear of influencing the outcome, the Prime Minister showed no such scruples this time, and was quick to express her personal support for lowering the voting age to 16. 

The current outcome could not be better for her – thanks to National and ACT, nothing will change, but the Prime Minister will be able to keep empathising with young, upcoming voters about how much she “personally” supports their cause, even though, like so much else, she cannot deliver it. More importantly, by doing so, she potentially locks in their support for when they are eligible to vote. So, the government’s response is far more about securing its political advantage, than addressing the principle raised by the Supreme Court of whether it is right to exclude 16–17-year-olds from being able to vote. 

But political opportunism over principle runs just as strongly in the National/ACT position too. Both parties fear that new young voters may be less likely to support them, so why risk widening the franchise to their detriment? At the same time, what little polling has been done amongst existing voters shows just under 80% opposition to any further lowering of the voting age, so why risk antagonising them, especially older and more conservative voters, more likely to support the centre-right bloc? Arguments about whether 16-year-olds are mature enough to make an informed vote are smokescreens for this basic position. 

There is another aspect to this debate that might end up being the path followed. While lowering the voting age for Parliamentary elections requires the support of at least 75% of MPs, a change to the voting age for local body elections, requires only a simple majority in Parliament. So, it could well be that Parliament, by virtue of Labour’s current majority, changes the voting age to 16 for the 2025 and subsequent local body elections, while keeping the age for general elections at 18. 

That would be a messy situation but would allow for a post-2025 review of how effective that change might have been. If a lowered voting age for local body elections proves to be successful in terms of increasing turnout and engagement, then consideration could be given to reducing the age for general elections. The most likely date for that to happen would be the 2029 general election, by which time most of the current crop of politicians will have moved on. 

But that is all too far in the future for the government to be concerned about at present. All it knows, is that right now the Supreme Court has presented it with a wonderful diversionary opportunity of which it must take full advantage. Given there is little else flowing its way at present, it is hardly surprising it will milk the issue for all it can over the next little while, secure in the knowledge that nothing is actually going to change.

 

 

For the last thirty years the Resource Management Act (RMA) has been contentious. Introduced by Labour under Sir Geoffrey Palmer in 1989, the legislation was still making its way through Parliament when the House rose for the 1990 general election. 

The incoming National Government sent the Bill back to a select committee for fresh consideration, before finally passing an amended version in late 1991. Already, at that point, an issue that was to bedevil the RMA for the rest if its life had emerged. Although National, along with just about everyone else, expressed support for the ambitions of the RMA to promote sustainable development and bring together more coherent resource management processes, getting durable agreement on what that meant in practice was much more difficult. 

That was hardly surprising, given that the RMA consolidated more than fifty existing planning statutes into a single piece of legislation, consequently overriding much of the already established case law on planning and development. Unfortunately, at the time of its passage in 1991, little attention was paid to ensuring regional councils, who were to be the principal agencies involved in administering the new law, were properly resourced. In fact, in a separate piece of local government legislation passed around the same time, the National Government significantly gutted the powers of regional councils, meaning the RMA was launched in a vacuum. 

A key feature of the RMA was the ability of central government to issue national policy statements on various areas of concern to guide regional councils in their application of the law. However, few national policy statements have been issued over the last thirty years, further compounding the ability of regional councils to implement the RMA as intended. In too many cases, they have been left guessing the intent of the law. 

The upshot was an extremely cautious approach by regional government, borne out of the 1991 curb in its powers, and the initial lack of case law, to the administration of the RMA. This manifested itself in bureaucratic and drawn-out consent processes, to make sure all the right boxes were ticked, to protect councils from legal or other backlash. Inevitably that meant higher costs than ever contemplated to consent applicants, to pay for these lengthy processes. 

Consequently, pressure quickly began to build to “tidy up”, “streamline” or “just get rid off altogether” the RMA. But here is where the initial inherent conflict between the RMA’s core ambition of promoting sustainable development and making the legislation work as intended, clashed head-on again and again. Successive governments were wary of radical changes to the RMA, lest they be accused of weakening the key principles underpinning the RMA. Such changes as were made were structural and procedural, rather than fundamental. 

The last National-led government attempted the most sustained approach of recent times to reforming the RMA, but it failed to achieve that because of the strong suspicion that its intention was really to gut the RMA altogether, to satisfy the interest of developers, rather than make it work more effectively. On that basis, it was unable to get the political support it needed to progress change. Had its Minister at the time adopted a less doctrinaire and more pragmatic approach, significant progress could have been made to tidying up many of the RMA’s problem areas and introducing the provision of adequate housing into its objectives. But its unwillingness to make reasonable compromises to preserve the principles on which the RMA was founded, meant that, unfortunately, the opportunity was lost. 

The present government’s three stage approach to reforming resource management law announced this week is the boldest change since the introduction of the original Resource Management Bill over thirty years ago. But it faces many of the same problems. These arise from the sheer bulk and complexity of the reform process. 

Expert comment that the changes now being proposed will likely take a decade to bed down and begin to work as intended highlight the problem. The government introduced the first of three reform bills to Parliament this week, with the remaining two to follow over the next couple of years. But between now and the end of 2032, there will be four general elections, making it very difficult to predict with any certainty whether these Bills will ever see the light of day, let alone proceed in the manner currently envisaged. The opposition from National and ACT and the muted support from the Greens suggest the passage of the Bill introduced this week could be rocky. 

It is true that the Minister for the Environment has worked long and hard to bring this package together, and he deserves credit for that. However, as he shown in his other portfolio of Revenue where his laudable pet project to establish a legislated set of tax principles to guide future tax legislation has stalled, he is not nearly as good at building political consensus for major changes, as he is on the detail. Yet for the resource management reform programme he has outlined to get off the ground, let alone be completed and survive the next decade and beyond, far greater political consensus than currently exists will be required. Otherwise, the story of the RMA over the last thirty years will be repeated. 

The Resource Management Act was fundamentally a good concept, but the failure and unwillingness of our legal, governance and administrative systems over the last thirty years to come to grips with its intentions ultimately sealed its fate. Now, with the prospect of a new resource management regime ahead, hard lessons need to be learnt and applied to prevent the problems that derailed the RMA occurring all over again. 

Building political consensus for the changes being proposed should be at the top of those lessons. The early responses to this week’s announcements suggest such consensus is still a long way off. 

One can therefore be forgiven for feeling a sense of déjà vu.

  

 

 

National’s and ACT’s attacks on the Reserve Bank and its Governor are becoming more frequent and strident. As the cost-of-living crisis bites deeper, and the Reserve Bank tightens the screws on interest rates, pushing up home mortgage rates, it becomes easy to portray the Reserve Bank and its Governor as the problem. 

Add in the fact that Adrian Orr does not fit the traditional mould of a central banker, with his irreverent flamboyance and brusque manner (a Doc Martin of the monetary policy world, if you like) and he and the Reserve Bank can quickly be portrayed as cavalier, financial technocrats playing havoc with, and caring little about, small to medium businesses and households struggling to get by at present. 

With recent announcements of enormous trading bank profits, which have aroused the ire but not any action from the Prime Minister, a wider picture can be painted of the financial sector, aided, and abetted by an unpredictable Reserve Bank acting consistently against the interests of increasingly hard-hit average New Zealanders. 

But no matter how attractive this scenario looks, the mounting focus on the Reserve Bank and the Governor is in fact aiming at the wrong target. 

It is certainly true that the Governor of the Reserve Bank exercises considerable autonomy in the operation of monetary policy and the control of inflation. But he is not a law unto himself. He works within the provisions of the Policy Targets Agreement concluded with the Minister of Finance and the Reserve Bank Act. Therefore, the real target of criticism for the performance of the Bank and its Governor should be the Minister of Finance. 

This is especially so in the current situation where Orr was not only appointed by the current Minister in 2018, but also reappointed for a further five-year term just this week. Moreover, last year, this Minister also amended the Reserve Bank Act under which the Governor operates. 

That Act not only streamlined the Bank’s governance processes but also balanced the Bank’s historic independence with greater accountability and reporting requirements. It also introduced a provision enabling the Minister of Finance to issue a Financial Policy Remit to the Bank, setting out matters its Board must have regard to. When these changes are added to the Policy Targets Agreement the Minister and the Governor concluded in 2018 requiring the Bank to take employment outcomes into consideration in the operation of monetary policy, the Reserve Bank now has far less operational independence than at any previous point since the current framework was established in 1989. 

Labour was concerned in Opposition that the Bank’s previous sole focus on controlling inflation lacked context, hence the decision to broaden the mandate to also include taking employment outcomes into account. They wanted this to reduce the Bank’s single-minded focus on inflation. However, an unintended consequence of that change has been that the breadth of the Reserve Bank’s influence on the economy has been extended. 

In such circumstances, it is hardly a surprise that the Governor’s role has become more pervasive, as he seeks to balance controlling inflation and maintaining employment levels at a time of rising living costs and a threatening global recession. Nor would it be unreasonable to conclude that the apparent greater influence of the Governor on current economic policy is far more a direct consequence of deliberate policy moves by the current Minister of Finance, than any personal whim of the Governor of the Reserve Bank. 

That is why National, and Act are aiming at the wrong target when they attack Adrian Orr. The real object of their criticisms should be Grant Robertson who has not only twice changed the arrangements under which the Governor carries out his statutory functions, but also appointed and reappointed him to the role. 

Although National and ACT voted against the new Reserve Bank Act last year, it is far from clear they will overturn it when they next return to office. Nor is it clear whether they would amend the Policy Targets Agreement back to a purer focus on controlling inflation. The strong suspicion is they will allow these changes to remain. 

In which case attacking the messenger – the Governor and the Bank – is safer than attacking the message. It is also an easy populist excuse, attacking the Governor and his team for doing the job the government has assigned to them, rather than the job itself. A more direct criticism of the Minister of Finance for his interference in the historic autonomy of the Reserve Bank would require National and ACT to spell out where they truly stand on the Bank’s role and independence, and what they would do to protect and enhance it. In these circumstances, harangues against the Governor are a far safer, if more cowardly, option. 

The independence of the Reserve Bank, guaranteed by statute in 1989, has been hailed worldwide as a strong step towards ensuring the stability of our monetary and banking systems from the threat of direct political influence on their day-to-day operations. Much of New Zealand’s improved economic performance in the last thirty years is because of the Reserve Bank Act, supported by the Public Finance Act and the Fiscal Responsibility Act.  Labour’s meddling with the Reserve Bank since 2017, and now National’s direct attacks on the Governor, pose serious threats to that, to their mutual shame.     

 

Jacinda Ardern has already been Prime Minister longer than one of her Labour heroes, Michael Joseph Savage. By year’s end she will have served longer than another of her heroes, David Lange. It is therefore not surprising that there should now be questions arising about her future intentions, and how much longer she will stay in the job. 

Speculation is intensifying that she will stand aside before the next election. One commentator has suggested she will be gone by the end of the year – others say her departure will be early next year, before Parliament resumes. All agree on one point, though – that the Prime Minister’s high point was the 2020 election triumph, and that it has been all been downhill from there, so, why would she stick around for an election in 2023 that polls currently suggest she will lose? 

Certainly, there are good reasons supporting the view that the Prime Minister’s time is up. With the economy likely to deteriorate further over the next year, and the range of other problems the government is facing all looking increasingly difficult to resolve before the next election, this would be a good time for the Prime Minister to stand aside, while her reputation is still high, and untarnished by likely election defeat. 

However, there are also strong contrary arguments. While it is certainly true that the Prime Minister is appearing increasingly publicly detached from many of the announcements her government is making – compared to the heyday of the pandemic when she was on every television and radio broadcast – she has given little evidence that he is about to move on. But then, neither did John Key in 2016. 

It could also be argued that the Prime Minister’s retreat from being the sole public focus of the government is because other Ministers – in particular, her long-standing and close colleagues, Robertson and Hipkins – are now sufficiently established personalities in the public mind to be credible voices for the government. Were the Prime Minister to stand aside, the leadership of the government would pass to one or other of those two. 

What is clear is that if the Prime Minister is to stand down, it would need to be before March, at the latest, to allow a successor time to establish themselves and bring together a fresh team of Ministers to fight the election a few months later. 

The reality, though, is that were the Prime Minister to stand down, whenever and for whatever reasons, the government would almost certainly be defeated at the next election. This is more to do with history, than any individual attributes of the Prime Minister. 

New Zealanders like to feel that their Prime Minister is someone whom they effectively chose when they voted for their party at the previous election. In the last eighty years, only one Prime Minister – the great Peter Fraser in 1943 and 1946 – was re-elected after succeeding a Prime Minister during a term of office. Since then, all seven Prime Ministers (from Holyoake in 1957 through to English in 2017) who took over during a term did not survive the next election. Neither Robertson nor Hipkins is currently in the league of most of these former Prime Ministers, so there is no reason to suggest their fate would be any different were they take over before the next election. 

While the historical implications of a Prime Minister standing down are strong, and all point in the same direction, the decision for most Prime Ministers about when to stand down has been an intensely personal one. Factors such as their ongoing personal commitment, continuing enthusiasm for an extraordinarily stressful job, and their personal energy levels weigh far more heavily than do the likely outcome of the next election or the potential lure of overseas appointments. To date, no Prime Minister has given up the role to take on an international appointment. (Helen Clark did become head of the United Nations Development Programme in 2009 – but that was after her defeat at the 2008 election.) 

In any case, international vacancies are few and far between at present. For example, the term of the current United Nations Secretary-General does not expire until 2026 and that of the Commonwealth Secretary-General runs until 2024. In both cases, selection is through an exhaustive election process, and is certainly not by anointment. The notion floated by some that the Prime Minister already has her international parachute arranged is fanciful. 

The Prime Minister has previously indicated she would leave politics if she were defeated. That would make sense – defeated Prime Ministers lurking on the backbenches, as Sir Robert Muldoon and Mike Moore did, are an unwelcome distraction for any government, but Ardern has never appeared that vengeful. 

One way or another, the Prime Minister will soon have to make a call on her future. Will she decide to go in the next few months and leave office as a two-time election winner, but almost certainly consign her successor to defeat at the next election? Or will she stay to fight an election she seems at this stage likely to lose? Either way, she cannot afford to let speculation about her intentions fester and become an albatross around the government’s neck. 

With the election clock ticking ever loudly, the distraction of an unwelcome by-election, and a government facing the toughest election in nearly two decades, the next few weeks look increasingly more intriguing. They seem set to decide the shape of our politics over the next year and beyond

 

 

There was a clear air of self-satisfied smugness within the Labour Party when Dr Gaurav Sharma was expelled from its Caucus. A stroppy young MP had been firmly dealt with and his political career destroyed because he had dared challenge the veracity of the Prime Minister on how Labour dealt with internal staffing issues. Most people probably saw him as a self-centred troublemaker, not suited to the rough and tumble of politics, who by virtue of his Caucus expulsion would be despatched to political oblivion at the next election. And that would be the end of the story. 

At best, Sharma was considered by Labour and the commentariat as no more than a generally minor irritant, who, once starved of media attention, would become a nonentity. However, his calculated resignation to force a by-election in his Hamilton West seat before the end of the year will have changed that perception. The short-term irritant has now become a major problem that cannot be brushed aside and ignored. One way or another, Sharma has derailed Labour's short-term political recovery agenda. 

The last thing Labour wants in the next few months is a by-election in any seat it currently holds, especially one as marginal as Hamilton West. Starting election year smarting from a by-election loss was never part of Labour's plan for winning a third term. Yet, Sharma's resignation leaves them with few options to avoid it. 

Labour could decide to hold the general election much earlier, enabling it to invoke the provision allowing a by-election to be avoided if a seat becomes vacant within six months of an election. That would essentially mean a general election by the end of April next year at the latest. But National’s agreement would be required for that to happen, and that is hardly likely in the circumstances. Also, it is far from clear what strategic advantage, if any, there would be for Labour in hurriedly bringing forward the election date, with the various unresolved problems besetting it at present, and before it can dole out any election sweeteners in next May’s Budget. 

Nor was it ever likely that Sharma would heed Labour’s increasingly desperate-sounding pleas to reconsider his decision and avoid an “unnecessary” and “costly” by-election. It is worth noting Labour did not have anything like the same scruples when it came to the prospect of a by-election in the Rongotai seat had the sitting MP, endorsed by Labour, won the Wellington Mayoralty a couple of weeks ago. 

Labour has no alternative but to get the Hamilton West by-election over and done with as quickly as possible – probably before the end of November. Its hope then must be that the onset of a long, hot summer break dims the memory of Sharma and a poor showing in the by-election he caused. Already, Labour has started talking down its prospects of retaining Hamilton West. Its line is that Sharma only won in 2020 because that was Labour’s high-tide year and that, given its status as a traditional bell-weather seat, Hamilton West was always going to be difficult to retain on a long-term basis. Comments by Ministers Robertson and Hipkins make it clear the lines to explain a likely ignominious defeat are already well-prepared. 

Sharma is unlikely to win the seat as an independent candidate, given both the circumstances of his departure, and the lack of a party machine behind him. He will have residual local support, both from those who have worked alongside him in the electorate and constituents he has been able to help, but that will not be enough to save him. His biggest influence will be as the spoiler, and, given his attacks on the Prime Minister and other former colleagues, which will become more pronounced during the by-election campaign, he will do some serious damage to the government’s credibility. After all, he really has nothing more to lose in this campaign. 

A clear National win in Hamilton West seems the most likely outcome at this stage, but it cannot be taken as a given. Nor can National treat, or be seen to treat, it as such. A lot will come down to candidate selection. Following the Tauranga debacle, National is under huge pressure to get it right this time round and select a candidate with not only the skills to serve the electorate well, but with no unpleasant skeletons lurking in the background. 

The bigger question arising from the pending by-election will be its potential impact on the wider political landscape. Hipkins’ intriguing, candid, and accurate observation that Labour’s 2020 election victory was an extraordinary personal triumph for the Prime Minister, due to the pandemic, that will be hard to repeat in today’s more normal circumstances, raises interesting questions about where Labour might head in the future. A brutal thumping in the by-election will intensify these over the inevitable summer barbecue discussions. 

Sharma may yet have the last laugh. Ironically, by leaving Parliament the way he has, he could well up end having a more profound impact on Labour’s future direction and fortunes, than were he to stay, or as is most unlikely, be returned at the coming by-election. 

It is therefore hardly any wonder that Labour’s self-congratulatory smugness about how well it dealt to Sharma in the early days, is being replaced by anxiety, anger, and desperation about what may happen next.

 

 

September’s Ipsos poll ranked inflation, housing, healthcare, crime, and the economy as the major issues New Zealanders are currently concerned about. It also showed National rates more favourably than Labour on all of them but health.  

Those findings partly explain two extremely contrasting political announcements this week. National announced its “Pothole of the Week” campaign to draw attention to deteriorating roading infrastructure, and Labour unveiled plans for farmers to meet the cost of their agricultural emissions from 2025, the first scheme of its type in the world. 

Some might scoff that this gulf between the announcements speaks volumes for the relative vision of the major parties, but to do so would be missing the point. Both announcements were deliberate, with a clear to eye to the election next year. 

For its part, National is trying to consolidate its position as the party that will get the country back on track after two-terms of Labour-led government. It knows from the polls voters are already seeing it as better equipped on most of the key issues and it is trying to lock-in the back-to-basics approach centre-right candidates used so successfully in the recent local body election campaign. Corny as it may appear, a gimmicky approach around fixing potholes is an effective way of reinforcing that perception, as well as putting many National MPs in constant and direct contact with many local communities. 

Labour can hardly try and “me-too” National on this score without inviting the criticism of why they have allowed roading infrastructure to deteriorate so badly during their time in government. Nor can they afford to sneer too much at National’s new preoccupation without looking arrogant and out-of-touch with basic community concerns. 

A bold announcement about farmers being required to meet the full cost of their emissions therefore makes perfect sense for Labour. The contrast with finding and filling potholes could not be more dramatic, playing to the narrative of Labour’s self-proclaimed wide, international vision, compared to National’s dullness. It is significant that the Prime Minister fronted the “world first” announcement, drawing on her international reputation and status, to subtly remind New Zealanders once more she is now a well-recognised world leader. And, as the farming sector is not normal Labour voting ground, it is a politically low-cost exercise as far as Labour is concerned. 

More broadly, it is a first move in setting up the sort of campaign backdrop Labour will be seeking. Given its steadily falling ratings on most of the key issues of domestic policy, Labour will be wanting to shift the focus back to the Prime Minister’s safer ground of promoting “aspiration” ahead of actual achievement. It knows the Prime Minister is at her best when talking about what could be, rather than confronting the drab reality of what is going on, on the ground. 

So, Labour’s aim over the next year will be to keep the focus on bold, future-centred policies and ambitions, that allow it to be portrayed as visionary and forward-looking. In so doing, it will be able to dismiss National as uninspiring and pedestrian, preoccupied only with the here and now, with no real sense of purpose for the country’s future. 

On the other hand, National’s approach will seek to paint Labour as living in a deluded dreamland – beltway Wellington, if you like – quite out of touch with the reality of rising costs, housing shortages, unsafe communities, and declining opportunities that is affecting households across the rest of the country. National will argue that the economic and social recovery from the pandemic requires not just a more disciplined approach to government spending that Labour is incapable of, but also a reset of many basic priorities. National will try to position itself as the hard-headed, but soft-hearted, pragmatic alternative the country needs to get back on its feet once more. 

Labour’s challenge is exacerbated by the reality that its support partner, the Greens – already rating better than it on climate change and environmental issues – will always outdo it on the boldness and aspiration fronts. National’s issue with its support partner is the opposite – ACT’s stand on so many issues means it is a little easier for National to appear solid and reliable, if somewhat uninspiring. 

The most worrying thing for Labour is that the Ipsos poll, consistent with other polls, shows approval of its handling of the major issues has been in steady decline throughout 2022, while support for National has been rising. Until that trend changes, visionary announcements of themselves may not be enough to turn things around for Labour especially if National’s back-to-basics campaign takes hold.

 

 

There will be relief in certain political circles at the acquittal of former MP, Jami-Lee Ross of corruption in the political donations case. Not because of any affection or regard for Ross, but more because the stench of corruption in our political system has been removed, at least for the time being. 

However, the convictions of the three businessmen co-charged with Ross shows that the murky issue of donations to political parties is as controversial as ever. The rules regarding donations by businesses and wealthy donors to political parties are clearly in urgent need of tidying up to make them transparent, fair and fit for purpose. 

Some have suggested that the best solution would be to outlaw such donations altogether. They point to successful recent campaign by the likes of Barack Obama, funded mainly on small donations – as low as $5 or $10 in some cases – and argue there is no reason why a similar approach could not work in New Zealand. However, New Zealand does not have the population base of the United States, meaning it would be very difficult for such a mass groundswell approach to work here. 

In any case, in an open society like ours, people and businesses ought to be able to donate freely to the political parties they support, within specified limits and provided all donations are properly recorded and publicly disclosed. The current system of donations having to be lodged with the Electoral Commission which then passes them on to the party concerned is a bureaucratic piece of busy-bodying nonsense which ought to be done away with. It achieves nothing in practice other than making the donations process cumbersome and slow. 

The onus should be on the political parties to declare – within say, seven days – what political donations they have received, their source and value. A similar requirement should be placed on donors to make them fully accountable for their donations and allow the public to make their judgements about political influence accordingly. There should be severe penalties for non-compliance by parties and donors. 

A more simple and transparent approach like this would render the devices and schemes revealed during the recent trial forever redundant. 

To some extent, the debate about the political donations regime is a smokescreen for something far more sinister. There has long been a view, especially on the left side of politics, that there should be no political donations allowable at all, and that political parties should be state funded. 

Such a view is morally reprehensible. It is not the role of governments to fund political parties and the argument that it would be fairer and more transparent to do so is pure bollocks. 

A state funding system would be anything but fair. The left favours it for no reason of principle – because there is credibly none – but more because it would stop wealthy donors being able to support parties on the right. Their arguments that this would lead to a fairer system are more about locking in their own advantage – without touching the financial and other support they receive from the unions – than fairness and transparency. And the bureaucracy required to run such a system would leave the Electoral Commission looking like babes in the woods. 

Aside from the lack of principle in a state funding system, there is the vexed question of the basis on which funds would be allocated. The main view is that funds would be allocated according to a party’s vote share at the previous general election, but that is seriously flawed. For example, Labour received 50% of the vote at the 2020 general election. On that basis, it would receive 50% of the state funding. But Labour’s support has been dropping ever since – now below 30% according to one recent opinion poll, while National’s, the Greens’ ACT’s and Te Pati Māori’s support levels are, according to the polls, all much higher than in 2020. To allocate funding based on previous election performance, when so much has changed in the interim, would be lazy and wrong. 

Moreover, such a system would entrench the position of the parties already in Parliament. New parties or small parties on the up would be unable to get a look-in under such a system. That may well suit the convenience of the established parties, but it is hardly fair or reasonable, nor in the interests of promoting a fully democratic society. And the thought of a team of unelected bureaucrats administering such a system and determining the fate of political parties this way is simply repugnant. 

The recent corruption trial and convictions have been a rude awakening about the failings of the current system of political donations. It requires an urgent, sensible, and fair response. More bureaucracy and restrictions, or the state taking over the whole system are not the answers. 

Political donors large and small need to be made fully accountable for their donations, and the political parties required to disclose immediately, the size, source and form of all donations received in cash or kind. A sunlight approach along these lines will let voters know precisely what is going on and enable them to reach fully informed decisions about those behind the parties seeking their vote.