During the first Covid19 lockdown the government cleverly and skilfully used the tactic of inclusion to build support for its initiatives and marginalise its critics. Hence the frequent references to all being in this together as part of the “team of five million.”

In their anxiety and fear of the looming pandemic people quickly brought into this approach and the government reaped strong compliance and substantial political approval for its actions. Consequently, it was easily able to isolate its critics, from anti-vaxxers to the anarchistic rabble that occupied Parliament grounds, as not being part of the “team”, and therefore not worthy of further consideration. By and large, the public agreed.

However, over the following couple of years, aspects of this approach started to grate more and more. First, was the controversy that erupted over the way the MIQ system was operated, with increasing numbers of families affected by its arbitrary and uneven procedures and the seeming indifference of officials to their concerns. Then came the vaccine mandates and the suggestion that the small minority of New Zealanders who misguidedly chose not to be vaccinated, as was their right, should be discriminated against regarding employment and access to government services.

This type of overreach was generally seen as a step too far. It culminated in then Covid19 Minister Hipkins’ short-lived suggestion, that Aucklanders seeking to leave the city for Christmas 2021 should have to apply for permits and be given allocated times to do so. That idea led to New Zealanders starting to push back more actively on the government’s interventions and saw it begin steadily removing restrictions during the first half of 2022.

But while the physical restrictions were steadily removed, a more sinister, intangible aspect remained and now looks as though it might have become a permanent feature. The “you’re either with us, or agin us” sense that the “team of five million” mantra inculcated has permeated wider society. Despite being a country with one of the diverse Parliaments in the world, we have become a far less tolerant society since the pandemic.

Where previously, different views might have been shrugged off as just ill-informed or eccentric, there is now a growing feeling that such views are simply wrong, and therefore dangerous, and should not be promoted, or even held at all.

A good example occurred earlier this week. Maureen Pugh, the list MP National needs like a hole in the head, foolishly said she had seen no evidence of human activities contributing to climate change. Her timing was appalling, not only coming right on the back of the devastation and misery caused by Cyclone Gabrielle, but also upstaging her leader’s response to the Prime Minister’s statement at the start of Parliament for the year.

Unsurprisingly, she backed down within a few hours, relying on the old politician’s excuse of having not been reported accurately. There the matter should have ended with Pugh left to swallow her embarrassment and absorb the wrath of her colleagues who felt completely sideswiped by her unexpected remarks. People could have drawn their own conclusions about the worth of her views, and how seriously to take them.

But, in the new age of intolerance we are now beset by, the argument quickly ceased to be about Pugh’s ill-informed views, and far more about whether as a MP, she even had a right to express views that were clearly out of line with the mainstream of national opinion on an important issue like climate change. It was the old “you’re either with us, or agin us” mentality of the pandemic response all over again.

Now, I have no truck with Pugh’s views. I think she is plain wrong, and I recall that she has also expressed anti-vax sentiments previously. But they are her views, and she has a right to express them, regardless of her status as an MP, or what the rest of us might think.

That is what free speech in an open democracy is all about. Public debate, not community censorship, is the best antidote to views that appear quirky or extreme to the majority, and we should never shy away from that. The last thing we need is the mediocrity and uniformity of a “carbon copy” approach to the expression of public opinion. As Voltaire so famously said, “I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” We need to rekindle that principle.

Making judgements about what should be believed and what should not, should never be based on the type of artificial absolute that applied during the extreme circumstances of the pandemic. Doing so poses a more dangerous threat to free speech than the expression of certain views themselves. We do not need to be told what views are acceptable in public discourse and which ones are not – that was exactly the problem the government ran up against in its early efforts to define what constituted hate speech.

Rather, we need to focus afresh on promoting informed debate based on thorough information. The best response to Pugh’s outburst came from her colleague Nicola Willis who said she would be giving Pugh all the relevant reputable data and expected her to be doing a lot of reading. It is the sort of response that would have been the norm before the new absolutism engendered by the pandemic took hold, but which is now becoming threatened. Previously, we would have trusted people to reach their own conclusions.

The irony is that over the years New Zealand has been more diligent than most in calling out threats to the freedom of expression and the rights of minorities in other countries. We have even gone to wars in the past on that clarion call.

We should uphold the principle once more at home.

 

 One of the lessons the government learned early in the Covid19 response was the importance of controlling the narrative. The flow of information was quickly centralised and controlled. The daily 1:00 pm media conference became institutionalised. Information, scientific, medical, or otherwise, that did not come through this channel was both scorned and dismissed.

The then Prime Minister even went so far as to say, “we will continue to be your single source of truth … unless you hear it from us it is not the truth”. George Orwell’s “1984” could not have parodied centralised control of information better than the reality New Zealanders faced in 2020-21. Yet, because of the urgency of the situation, and the widespread fear of the pandemic and its potential effects, the government’s strategy worked, and New Zealanders by and large complied.

While those extraordinary days seem far off now, and while New Zealanders are perhaps more cynical and wary about the blanket exercise of government power than they were then, elements of the Hipkins’ government’s response to Cyclone Gabrielle look like direct lifts from the Covid19 response playbook.

Following the bumbling response of Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown to the year’s first cyclone, Cyclone Hale, in January, the government has been looking for a way it can get more directly involved in managing the response to disasters of this scale. Normally, the power to declare a state of emergency rests with the affected local authority. But when Cyclone Gabrielle struck the government moved quickly to declare a national state of emergency. In part this was due to the sheer scale of the event and the damage it was causing, and in part to government frustration that it had been largely shut out of any role in the response to Cyclone Hale until it was too late.

This is not at all unreasonable and follows the pattern set by the Covid19 outbreak and the Christchurch earthquakes, the only two previous occasions when a national state of emergency has been declared.

However, one of the more unsavoury aspects of the Covid19 response, and the determination to centrally manage the dissemination of information to the public, was the suspension of Parliament for several weeks, despite the availability of communication systems that would have enabled it to continue meeting on a virtual basis. The intention then was to shut down any avenue for critical scrutiny of the government’s actions, lest the exercise of that accountability expose cracks in both the veracity and substance of the “single source of truth”.

It was a state of control of public discourse unmatched since the emergency regulations promulgated during the 1951 Waterfront lockout, which made it illegal at that time to publish material critical of the government’s actions, or supportive of the locked-out watersiders.

Parliament was due to resume this week, but in an eerie reminder of what happened in 2020, the government quickly deferred that until next week, curiously with the support of the National Party this time. It means, as in 2020, for the critical period of the initial response to the crisis, the government will escape the scrutiny of Parliament for its actions. And, as in 2020, without Parliament sitting, the Opposition has been deprived of its best forum to hold the government to account for what is happening.

By the time Parliament does resume next week, the immediacy of the current crisis will have passed. In the meantime, though, the government, through monotonous, regular media conferences and interviews, will have been able to establish the legitimacy of its narrative as the one true version of events. And any divergence from that line from any of the local authorities, emergency agencies, or the thousands of directly affected citizens will be able to be dismissed as mischievous and inaccurate.

But the right of Parliament to meet is a fundamental part of being a parliamentary democracy, dating back to the days of King Charles I, nearly 400 years ago. The New Zealand Parliament has previously met in dark days – throughout World War II, for example, and Britain’s House of Commons even continued meeting while it was being bombed during the Blitz in 1940. Governments then would never have dreamt of suspending Parliament in a crisis, however inconvenient full scrutiny and accountability might have been at the time.

It was wrong for the government to suspend Parliament in 2020, and it was wrong for it to do so again this week, especially when, as it turned out, most MPs, including the Prime Minister, were in Wellington. There was no threat to public health or safety, as could have been argued in 2020, and therefore no compelling argument why Parliament could not have met.

This smacks of the government seeking to control the flow of public information and limit its own exposure to criticism and accountability, just as it did in 2020. Unfortunately, that detracts from other positive aspects of the response to Cyclone Gabrielle, notably the unflinching, brave, and selfless work of the fire, emergency and urban search and rescue services.

However, it is not acceptable that in two of the three national states of emergency declared in our history, both times under Labour-led governments, Parliament has been so quickly pushed to one side as the response has unfolded. There needs to be urgent agreement between all the political parties that in future states of national emergency Parliament will not be suspended for the sake of the government’s convenience.

Hipkins was a senior Minister during the 2020 Covid19 response. He was frequently alongside the former Prime Minster at the “podium of truth” and directly knows the power of controlling the flow of information and the political dividend it can pay. He well remembers that in 2020 the government was teetering on the brink of defeat until Covid19 came along, and that skilful management of the response produced a landslide election win. Aspects of his response to Cyclone Gabrielle suggest he has his eye on producing a similar effect for this year’s election.               

Prime Minister Chris Hipkins is aiming to pull off a change of government within a government. He hopes this will stave off any need for that to happen at this year's election. To succeed, his policy reset had to do more than just take presently unpopular items off the government's agenda. It had also to reassure wavering voters that Hipkins is leading a genuinely different government from that which preceded it. 

To achieve that, Hipkins had to convince voters his reset was a genuine, substantive policy shift, not just shifting some difficult issues off the immediate agenda, and that they will not resurface after the election, albeit under different guises.

 

Hipkins’ biggest problem remains convincing a sceptical public that the same Ministers who have promoted the government’s unpopular policies, can now be trusted to not only withdraw them, but also not to restore them, in the event they win the election. After all, these are the same Ministers who championed and staunchly defended the government’s unpopular policies, many of which were their pet projects, until he became Prime Minister. They are also the Ministers who airily dismissed public criticism of what they were doing as simply ill-informed.

 

The Prime Minister announced the first, and by his own admission, the most significant parts of the reset yesterday. Some unpopular policies have been dropped, but most have merely been deferred to another day.

 

The biggest casualty is the outright scrapping of the proposed RNZ/TVNZ merger. This has been a key feature of Labour’s programme since 2017, consistently and increasingly ferociously promoted by Broadcasting Minister Willie Jackson. Without it, he and the former Prime Minister frequently argued, Radio New Zealand would struggle to survive. To the general public, the policy was never a core issue, with criticism limited largely to media and academic circles. Therefore, dropping it was a low-cost option for the government, with minimal immediate public impact. But it has severely dented Jackson’s credibility. To soften the blow and appease Labour’s influential Maori caucus, Jackson was, incredibly, promoted by Hipkins to the government's front bench in last week's reshuffle.

 

The deferral of the proposed income insurance scheme came as no great surprise. The ambitious and fundamentally worthy plan was first announced in February 2022. But its design and development was taking considerably longer than originally envisaged, and its original 2025 implementation date was looking more and more unlikely. Increasingly strong opposition from  business interests and the National Party has left its future was looking very uncertain, even if the government is re-elected. Deferring it at this stage “until economic conditions improve” was therefore a logical decision.

 

The decision to kick proposed hate speech legislation - even the watered down version announced late last year - off to the Law Commission makes sense, on the face of it. But the government's proposals, including the original highly controversial plans promoted by former Justice Minister Fa'foi in 2021 are already under consideration by the Law Commission, so it is hard to see what is new here. The government simply seems to have at last recognised the deep unpopularity of its plans and found a convenient receptacle in which to park them.

 

Hipkins has always said his prime focus is on the reducing the cost-of-living burden on New Zealand households. He says the reset was about giving the government the space to do so. For the foreseeable future, though, the canning of the RNZ/TVNZ merger, the indefinite postponement of income insurance, and the sideways shift of hate speech law will have no discernible impact on household budgets, although they do remove some awkward items from the government’s political agenda.

 

The cancellation of the biofuels mandate, which required the promotion of biofuels to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and would have led to increased fuel prices for consumers will have a more direct impact on households. Like the extension of the fuel excise tax reduction, it will keep fuel prices lower for longer, but at the expense of the environment. With dramatic, damaging adverse weather events due to climate change becoming more frequent, these moves will be seen by many as inconsistent with the government’s long-term climate change mitigation strategy. In the present circumstances, it will  increase cynicism about the sincerity of Labour’s climate change commitment. Auckland voters, cleaning out their flooded houses and properties at present, may well be scratching their heads about how seriously the government now takes climate change.

 

By far the most controversial issue facing the government at present is Three Waters. Many were hoping the Prime Minister, having dropped Nanaia Mahuta as Local Government Minister, would have dropped Three Waters altogether. While that was never going to happen, Hipkins’ announcements regarding Three Waters’ future were vague and ambivalent. Yes, it needed changes, he said, but things could not go on as they are, so he has asked the new Minister of Local Government to look at ways Three Waters could be modified, and further announcements could be expected later on. That is hardly likely to satisfy Three Waters’ most vehement critics. Nor will it persuade more moderate doubters that the government really understands, or is even interested in, the strength of local feeling there is in preserving local control of water assets.

 

Hipkins has said there will be more policy refinements over coming weeks, but that this tranche represents the most significant ones. Given that, yesterday’s announcements are more a tinkering of existing policies than a bold reset. With the exception of the RNZ/TVNZ merger, most seem to set to resurface if Labour is re-elected in October. Hipkins’ assurances that dropping them gives the government the space it needs to address the cost-of-living pressures New Zealand households are facing currently is all very well. But in the absence of specific policies to do so, that claim is just a convenient excuse.

 

What is now clear is that this reset was really about giving the new Prime Minister an excuse to push some of the government’s more unpopular policies away into the back room until later.

 

Since 2017 the Labour government has consistently been better at selling its plans than achieving them. Nothing much seems to have changed so far under Hipkins. Like so much of the government’s programme, his policy reset promised far more than it delivered.

 

 

 

 

 While Auckland was being devastated by flooding last weekend, a potentially more serious threat to life was playing out off Wellington’s south coast. The interisland ferry Kaitaki had lost power and was drifting in heavy swells towards the coastline. In the event, power was restored and the Kaitaki, escorted by two tugs and other vessels, was able to make it to its berth under its own power, without further incident.

An inquiry into what happened is now underway and the vessel has been withdrawn from service while all its systems are thoroughly checked. Predictably and on cue, Transport Minister Wood, fresh from issuing orders to all and sundry about what should be done in Auckland, blamed the previous government for not investing in new ferries.

Inevitably, the Kaitaki drama drew comparisons with the Wahine disaster of 1968 when the ferry capsized just inside Wellington Harbour, with the loss of more than 50 lives, during one of the most severe storm to batter the city. The Kaitaki is considerably larger than the Wahine (22,365 tonnes and 181 metres in length compared to Wahine’s 8,115 tonnes and 149 metres) and there were more people on board – 880 passengers and crew on the Kaitaki, and 734 passengers and crew on the Wahine.

The 1968 Jamieson Commission of Inquiry into the loss of the Wahine drew attention, amongst other matters, to tug services in Wellington, provided at the time by two old steam tugs operated by the Union Steam Ship Company. It recommended “immediate consideration (be given) to the question of a salvage and deep-water tug for Wellington.”

In the wake of Jamieson’s report, the then Wellington Harbour Board commissioned the construction of two new tugs, with far greater towing power and the capacity to handle the transition from conventional cargo vessels to big container ships that took place in the early 1970s. These tugs, joined later by a third tug, were state-of-the art at the time. The arrival of more and larger ships led to their replacement from 2008 by new tugs with nearly three times more towing power. The assumption was that both sets of tugs were well equipped to deal successfully with a Wahine-type situation.

A 2006 Wellington Harbour Navigational Risk Assessment prepared for the Greater Wellington Regional Council rated a ferry grounding at or near the harbour entrance as the top likely risk. The assessment raised concerns "given the rapidly changing weather conditions at Wellington” about the adequacy of the tug fleet of the time, and influenced the decision to replace the 1970s tug fleet.

However, despite the Jamieson Commission’s report, it is not clear to what extent its recommendation of “a salvage and deep-water tug for Wellington” has been met. In recent days there have been suggestions that the present tugs were not equipped to tow to safety, let along salvage, the Kaitaki as it drifted over the weekend. Given the 2006 Navigational Risk Assessment, this raises important questions for the inquiry now underway to consider.

Wellington Harbour has a shallow draft and narrow width at its entrance at the best of times. With more container vessels and cruise ships, considerably larger than the Kaitaki, using it in all conditions, the adequacy of towing and salvage services becomes an even more pressing question. The 2006 risk assessment did note that while a ferry grounding was the top risk, that was still within the “As Low as Reasonably Practical” level of risk.

The problem with that is that adverse events, like the Kaitaki stranding, are inherently random and unpredictable. But when they occur, the impact can be significant, and the expectation is that emergency and rescue services will be able to cope. The question the inquiry into the Kaitaki’s loss of power will need to consider is whether authorities had the best resources available to meet the circumstances that arose.

Nevertheless, unlike the chaotic response to Auckland’s floods, authorities in Wellington, led by the harbourmaster, Grant Nalder, responded much more decisively and admirably to the Kaitaki situation. The tugs and pilot launch were quickly mobilised, a civilian rescue fleet was put on standby, and emergency services deployed to the south coast. There was no indecision about who should be doing what, nor were there any mixed or confusing messages. Despite the potential gravity of the situation, there was a clear sense of everything possible being done to protect the safety of those on board the ferry.

During a surreal weekend, the contrast between the handling of significant emergencies in Wellington and Auckland could not have been more pronounced. Something Wayne Brown may wish to ponder, before he next sounds off to his tennis colleagues.

 

Jacinda Ardern and Sir John Key have set a new standard for New Zealand Prime Ministers. Too often Prime Ministers have clung to their position, often through thick and thin, until they have been either been tossed out by the electorate or dumped by their own party. But by resigning during a term, and openly acknowledging they both felt they no longer had "enough in the tank" to carry on, first Key and now Ardern have shown a refreshing honesty. They have set a precedent for their successors to emulate.  

There is no doubt the pressures on Prime Ministers have intensified in recent years, regardless of the circumstances they have faced. The immediacy of the media cycle and the pervasive impact of social media with all its pernicious impacts has thrust Prime Ministers into a constant public spotlight from which it is impossible for them - and often their families - to escape. What limited privacy they enjoyed as public figures beforehand disappears completely the moment Prime Ministers take office.

 

It is a far cry from earlier days, when the pace of political life was more sedate, and the public demands upon politicians less intrusive. (I remember a long-serving Ministerial driver telling me some years ago that when Sid Holland, a Christchurch MP, was Prime Minister in the 1950s, they used to take him to his Raumati beach house most Friday afternoons and leave him there undisturbed for the weekend, until they brought him back to Wellington on Monday mornings in time for the weekly Cabinet meeting.)

 

Some may sneer that Key and now Ardern have simply read the tea leaves and decided to jump before they were pushed. After all, being an undefeated Prime Minister looks better for posterity than being a defeated one. But that would be to denigrate their actions; both have shown a rare courage and acute self-awareness in deciding to step aside, at a time of their choosing, when both were at the peak of their authority. Too many of their predecessors would have chosen to carry on "for the sake of the party", even if their hearts were no longer in it, and they were increasingly past their best. It was not the “done thing” to walk away from office.

 

Ironically, by putting themselves and their personal wellbeing first, Key and Ardern could be accused of a sort of selfishness. But there was also a fair measure of honesty involved in this. Both realised that they were not indispensable to their party, and that staying on "for the sake of the party", like so many of their predecessors, was not the noble gesture of self-sacrifice it seemed, but just an expression of self-delusion.

 

The way in which Key and Ardern chose to leave office draws fresh attention to the way leadership succession is managed in politics. All parties have been extremely weak over the years when it comes to planning leadership succession. This arises from the prevailing culture of viewing political colleagues as potential rivals, and not wanting to draw too much attention to them, lest they usurp the leader already in place. The consequence has been the creation of leadership vacuums which parties struggle to fill. Labour after Clark and before Ardern, and National after Key and before Luxon are telling examples of failed successions.

 

Key attempted to overcome this at the time he stood down by publicly endorsing Sir Bill English as his successor, although it is not clear how much warning English had of Key’s pending resignation. Similarly, Ardern reportedly told Hipkins late last year that she was contemplating standing down. Both were small steps towards a form of leadership succession planning but were still far short of a comprehensive approach.

 

If Key and Ardern have established a new norm of Prime Ministers stepping down when they feel they have had enough and sense it is time to move on, then the question of proper leadership succession planning becomes that much more important. However, that will be easier said than done, for the reasons stated above.

 

Nevertheless, the onus will be on leaders to establish and identify a clear leadership team around them, from which the next Prime Minister or party leader could be drawn. New Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has that opportunity with his forthcoming Cabinet reshuffle, which needs to focus more on promoting future leadership possibilities, than pandering to the sectional interests and factions within the Labour Party.

 

The same goes for National. Right now, it is difficult to see beyond Nicola Willis as a potential replacement for Christopher Luxon when the appropriate time comes. While that may be no bad thing, the party needs to identify a wider corps of potential leaders that the public can begin to assess for the future.

 

Because of how they left office, Key and Ardern have broken the mould for New Zealand Prime Ministers.  They dominated their parties in office and were integral to their governments’ successes. Both were able to walk away, without qualms, at the time they chose. The intriguing question now is whether that legacy will be picked up by their successors.

 

 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.