In a column some months ago I drew attention to the way the role of the Director-General of Health has changed during the pandemic. I expressed concern that the position has been allowed to expand well beyond the traditional role of the chief executive of the Ministry of Health. I suggested that the Director-General of Health is now the most powerful public servant ever in New Zealand. He frequently attends Cabinet meetings – something no other public servant has ever done under any circumstances – and makes increasingly political statements on behalf of the government about the management of the pandemic. 

I argued then that all this transcended the established constitutional position between Ministers and public servants. While explainable, although certainly not justifiable, in the context of the pandemic, it was an undesirable practice that needed to be curtailed in the interests of good government. It was, I said, time to rein in the rapidly expanded role of the Director-General of Health, back to something more akin to its traditional position, and to return accountability to the responsible Ministers. 

Many current and former senior public servants, as well as former Ministers, contacted me privately following that column to support the concerns I had expressed. While there have been occasional suggestions since then that the government has not always done as the Director-General has wanted since the Delta outbreak, the external perception remains that nothing much has really changed. Major health policy announcements that should be the prerogative of Ministers and the government are still being made by the Director-General, who acts less as an impartial administrator and policy adviser than an active policy maker. 

The recent controversy over the acquisition of RAT testing kits is a case in point. While the precise details of what happened are still being debated, it is clear that, following an intervention from the Director-General, the order of supply of these items has been reprioritised away from the businesses which ordered stocks some time ago and in favour of the government which seems to have only recently woken up to the need for such items. Subsequent doublespeak by the Director-General has failed to clarify the situation. 

In a similar vein, recent comments by the Speaker of Parliament attacking a British/New Zealand journalist for a recent column he wrote critical of the government’s Covid19 response also overstepped the mark. Although the journalist’s comments were highly debateable and of questionable accuracy in some respects, the intervention of the Speaker in response to them was inappropriate. In the New Zealand Parliament, the Speaker’s role is that of impartial arbiter and upholder of the rights of the minority, not active participant in day-to-day political debate, a concept the current Speaker never quite seems to have got his head around, let alone accepted. If he wishes to engage in active political debate, as is his right, he should stand down as Speaker and return to the government back benches where he will have much more freedom to speak out as he sees fit. But, having accepted the role of Speaker, he must also accept the constraints, including impartiality and the need to be seen to be above day-today politics, that go with it. 

There will be those who will argue that the pandemic means that we are living in extraordinary times, where the old rules are not as relevant as they used to be, which justifies circumstances like the changed role of the Director-General of Health or the increasing partiality of the Speaker. It is a sort of ends justifies the means approach, where the duty to defeat Covid19 is so overwhelming that everything else must run second to that. It is dangerous ground to start treading upon. 

We are already seeing situations as diverse as the continued delay in opening of Wellington’s Transmission Gully motorway, or the rapid rise in house prices being blamed on Covid19. While they are legitimate matters of political debate, the links to Covid19 are at best tangential, and smack more of providing a convenient excuse than anything else. In due course, voters will judge the veracity and adequacy of the Covid19 excuse. 

What is not acceptable, however, and is arguably more sinister, is using the excuse of the pandemic to make quasi-constitutional changes by stealth. Changing the traditional relationship between Ministers and public servants the way the role of the Director-General has been since the advent of Covid19 is a profound change to the traditional pillar of public servants providing considered, impartial advice to Ministers. 

If the government always intended to upend that fundamental principle of our system, then it should have been open about it and engaged in proper debate, rather than just implementing it by stealth. If that was not its intention, it should have been far more careful from the outset to constrain the Director-General’s role to prevent what has happened over the last two years. (Of course, it is possible the government was far more calculating and deliberately allowed the Director-General’s role to expand the way it has, to make it easier to sheet home the blame if everything later turned to custard, but that may be too cynical a view.) 

The politicisation of the role of Parliament’s Speaker is a similar situation. While there has been debate over the years about how impartial various Speakers have been when it comes to rulings in the House, it is hard to recall a situation in recent times where the Speaker has ever become as involved in current political debate as is the case now. Much of the authority and integrity surrounding the Speaker’s position arises from the traditional impartiality of the role being above day-to-day party politics and debate. 

Making the Speaker’s role far more political the way current Speaker has done is not a matter of individual prerogative. Rather it is a profound change to a vital element of our Westminster system of government. Any changes should only be made after full consideration and debate by the whole of Parliament and the implementation of any necessary legislative changes. 

Of course, it is convenient to say that the response to Covid19 needs to be flexible and pragmatic. That is true. However, the changes occurring by stealth to our system of government, that are taking place under that guise, go way beyond what is necessary or desirable. In the interests of preserving our Parliamentary democracy they need to be resisted.

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

Last week, Greens co-leader and government Minister Marama Davidson spoke out against the government over the pace of its climate change response. Her remarks took some commentators by surprise, both because of their bluntness, but also because as a government Minister she had spoken out like that at all. But the real surprise was that after a quarter of a century of proportional representation and multi-party governing arrangements there were still those expecting Ministers, especially those from government support parties, to always toe the line in a way far more reminiscent of single party government under First Past the Post. 

Ministers from smaller parties seeking to use issues that are of special concern to them to brand their parties differently from the major party of government have been a constant feature of MMP-type governments, whether they have been made up of formal coalitions, confidence and supply agreements, or the type of loose arrangement that exist between Labour and the Greens in the current Parliament. New Zealand First Ministers speaking out against certain aspects of government that they did not like was commonplace during the more formal Coalition Government between 2017 and 2020, although curiously (and in keeping with the inherent paranoia of that party) New Zealand First was far from pleased when Labour Ministers spoke out against New Zealand First! 

“Agree to disagree” provisions have been part of every governing arrangement under MMP, and have been used frequently. As a Minister from a government support party for more years than anyone else, I frequently spoke out and voted against government policies that were not consistent with my own party’s policies, from Labour’s deal with New Zealand First over the foreshore and seabed in 2004, through to National’s efforts to gut the Resource Management Act between 2014 and 2017, and other issues besides. It was an accepted part of the process that government support parties were always free to decide their own positions on matters, like these examples, that were not covered by the formal confidence and supply arrangements. Moreover, no-one in the government of the day nor the media batted much of an eyelid whenever it happened. 

So, there should have been no surprise that Marama Davidson chose to speak out the way she did, especially given that climate change is of the most critical issues for the Greens. In doing so, however, she has highlighted one of the ongoing problems all smaller parties in governing arrangements have had to face over the years: how to get attention for their particular issues and the role they are playing in resolving them. The experience to date has generally been that major parties of government take the credit for policies that turn out well and are popular, while the smaller party is blamed for unpopular policies or those that have turned out not quite the way they were expected to. 

It is not a problem unique to New Zealand. I recall a discussion with Sir Nick Clegg, Britain’s former Liberal Democrat Deputy Prime Minister during the 2010-2015 Conservative/Liberal Democrat Coalition under David Cameron. He made the point to me that the Conservatives never let the Liberal Democrats get the credit for the things they did that went well, but were more than happy for them to take the blame for the things that went wrong. 

That is where climate change policy is difficult for the Greens. While it was good that James Shaw – as Climate Change Minister – went off to the recent COP26 talks, he did not get there until after all the major political figures had left, somewhat lessening his impact and opportunities. Moreover, given the enormity of the climate change issue, it is always going to be one where the emphasis will be on what goes on between national leaders, rather than worthy Ministers down the chain. And the Prime Minister famously declared some years ago before she took office that climate change was her generation’s “nuclear-free moment”, even though she seems to have forgotten the intensity of that commitment now. 

So, when and if New Zealand makes big decisions on climate change, it will be the Prime Minister who makes the grand headline announcement, with James Shaw left to announce subsequently all the boring details of what it means. Labour, not the Greens, will then take the credit if the announcement is popular, but the Greens will be blamed for being too rigid and uncompromising if it is not. It is the typical no-win situation, one which all those who have been in smaller parties in government can relate to. 

Marama Davidson’s statement was therefore a classic positioning one – setting out the Green’s position long before final government decisions are made, and giving them plenty of room to manoeuvre if things do not turn out as expected. Otherwise, they face the galling prospect, not unknown to small government support parties, of going into the next election campaign watching Labour as the major party of government taking all the credit for what is one of the Greens’ key policy planks. (In a similar vein, I look back on the recently passed fluoridation legislation which National hailed as its own because the legislation was introduced while it was in government. In fact, I introduced that legislation in 2016, having spent months persuading a sceptical National Party that change was necessary.) 

For many years, the Greens seemed destined to be the one small party that would never make it to government. They had been spurned by Labour in 2002 and 2005, and ruled out working with National in 2017, citing a preference instead for Labour. Even then Labour turned to New Zealand First ahead of the Greens who were left as a confidence and supply partner outside the Labour/New Zealand First Coalition. The years 2017-2020 were consequently tough ones, with New Zealand First determined to shut the Greens out wherever it could. When New Zealand First was thrown out of Parliament in 2020, the Greens could not quite reach the moment in the sun they had been hoping for, because Labour won the first outright majority under MMP, leaving the Greens sidelined once more. 

But as the 2023 election looms, and Labour’s support is starting to slide, the Greens sense their moment to finally emerge as the natural coalition partner for Labour they have always considered themselves to be, may at last be upon them. The last thing they want in the meantime, as has been the case in the past, is to be made to look ineffectual or irrelevant by Labour. 

In that context, Marama Davidson’s statement was no surprise but more a clear foretaste of what is to come as the Greens try to manoeuvre themselves into the box coalition seat ahead of the next election.

 

 

New Zealanders generally are very protective of their personal privacy. They do not like officialdom to know any more about them than is absolutely necessary and have traditionally been sceptical of attempts by governments trying to gather more personal information. 

Musings by successive governments from time to time since the 1980s about the practicality and inevitability of some form of individualised standard number or national identity card for everyone have been consistently and soundly rejected by public opinion. Yet, at the same time, there has been an almost seamless uptake of an individualised IRD Number; a National Health Number; specific numbers for Ministry of Social Development and Accident Compensation services. Now, through the Smart Start programme introduced a few years ago it is possible to track a person’s full interactions with all range of government services, literally from the cradle to the grave. 

Although our national wariness of a universal individual number to replace each of these specific numbers remains this is not because we are resistant to the potential advantages in terms of service delivery, but more because we are still fundamentally wary of the information being collected being misused by authorities. And, for good reason – there are still too many instances where personal information collected by government agencies for one specific purpose is being shared inappropriately or misused for some other purpose. The recent case involving Accident Compensation staff is the latest example. 

An important principle underpinning our privacy law has been that information collected by the state can only be used for the purposes for which it was collected, no matter its potential relevance to other agencies. Over the years, successive Privacy Commissioners have been extremely vigilant in defence of this principle, even when governments have attempted to push out the boundaries for well-intentioned reasons. While this has caused annoyance and frustration from time to time and occasional dark mutterings about the need to curb the Privacy Commissioner’s enthusiasm, the principle is a sound one, which has so far stood the test of time. 

It may be about to be tested in a way and on a scale not envisioned at the time when the original Privacy Act was being developed in the early 1990s, through the government’s just introduced vaccine pass. 

The introduction of a vaccine pass has been an inevitability for some time, as a precondition for New Zealand being able to resume a measure of normality as it adjusts to living with Covid19, and for New Zealanders to be able to travel once more. Most other countries have been moving in a similar direction for some time now, meaning New Zealand would have truly become the hermit kingdom had it not done likewise. 

But while inevitable and necessary – at least in the short term while the virus remains rampant – the introduction of the vaccine pass is not without significant issues that need to be carefully considered, to prevent its misuse. 

The Covid19 Minister has described the pass as “official proof of vaccination and a ticket to enjoy the extra freedoms that will come with the COVID-19 Protection Framework”. That is unobjectionable in so far as it goes, but the devil is always in the detail. The more pressing question relates to how the pass will be used, and any threats to personal privacy within that. 

According to the Minister, the pass “will mean people will be able to do the things they love, like going to concerts and music festivals, nights out at bars and restaurants, and going to the gym and sports events”. However, it will not be required for essential services like supermarkets, petrol stations, or pharmacists, although the wider retail sector will have some flexibility about whether to require customers to use the vaccine pass. 

Two main potential problems lie within this approach. The first relates to consistency and enforcement. Given the flexibility implied for the retail sector, it is certain there will be cases of some retailers adopting tougher requirements than others, and much public aggravation as a consequence. Rather than this ambivalent approach to the retail sector, the government would have been better off to either exclude the retail sector altogether or make the presentation of the vaccine pass a mandatory pre-condition of entry to all stores. As there are currently some retailers, including some of the so-called essential services, that are acting as though we are still in Alert Level 4 and imposing tougher restrictions than they need to, there is a real risk of the requirements around the vaccine pass being extremely variable and inconsistent, if left to individual retailers to decide for themselves. That is a recipe for public confusion and frustration, which the government would be unwise to ignore. 

This raises the issue of enforcement. If individual retailers are to be effectively left to make up their own rules about use of the vaccine pass, where does responsibility for enforcement lie? It is not reasonable to ask the Police to be involved, despite what the government says. That leaves enforcement potentially in the hands of individual retailers and their security guards, which is a further recipe for inconsistency and abuse. In other contexts, the government has consistently said it does not believe in leaving the administration of the law in private hands, so it needs to seriously rethink its approach to the retail sector before going too much further. 

The second major potential problem relates to the way in which the information in the vaccine pass will be used. Ideally, the pass is equivalent to a driver’s licence which is a permit to drive a motor vehicle. Likewise, the vaccine pass is a permit to undertake certain activities or enter certain premises. Its scope needs to be restricted to that function. It should not be used for building up client and customer databases about who has and who has not been vaccinated, for example. The role of the pass must be kept purely functional, a ticket to freedom to paraphrase the Minister, and nothing more than that. 

Any future attempt to adapt the vaccine pass to contain wider information about the holder’s other vaccination or general health status that might be of interest to a service provider must also be resisted as totally inappropriate and beyond the comparatively limited scope of the vaccine pass. There is always a tendency to extend the scope and prolong the life of interventions like the vaccine pass long after they have become unnecessary. In that regard, it is good that the pass will have to be renewed every six months and the hope has to be that it can be phased out for domestic use before too long, although obviously it is likely to be a long-term requirement for international travel as that resumes. 

The vaccine pass is an important part of life returning to a degree of normality, a necessary evil if you like. The rules around its use therefore need to be simple, but circumscribed. That we are prepared to accept it at all shows how far New Zealanders’ attitudes have shifted during the pandemic. But it would be unwise for the government to assume that means our traditional determination to protect our personal privacy has softened and no longer matters.

 

 As political proclamations go, it was neither the boldest nor the most inspiring, but, in the circumstances, probably one of the more realistic of recent times. Judith Collins’ assertion that she would be still leader of the National Party next year is probably true as far as it goes, but it also acknowledges implicitly that she is likely to face a challenge at that time. 

Since she took the leadership in mid-2020 because she was the only candidate still standing after the disastrous Todd Muller interlude, she has effectively been on borrowed time. After all, no-one expected National to come within a bull’s roar of winning Labour’s 2020 Covid19 election. The absolute best Collins could have hoped for was to staunch the gaping wound and limit National’s losses. In the event she could not do so – although to be fair she tried her best (besting the Prime Minister in at least two of the three television debates) but she was not helped by the various scandals that emerged at the time about other National MPs – and ended up as the leader who led National to one of its most ignominious defeats. 

But even if she had succeeded and done better, her survival as leader was unlikely. National has always been more ruthless in dealing with leaders who lose elections than Labour. Walter Nash, Norman Kirk, and Bill Rowling lost more elections for Labour than they ever won, and Mike Moore was given another chance after Labour’s 1990 annihilation – but Jim Bolger is the only National leader since the days of Holyoake to be given a second chance immediately after losing an election. So, the prospect of Judith Collins retaining the National Party leadership on a long-term basis has always seemed fanciful. 

Much has been made of National’s woeful performance in Opposition as a reason for getting rid of Collins, although that is probably overstated. National has certainly bungled many opportunities since the election to score heavily against Labour, but in the end that may not count for all that much. There would have been few Oppositions as weak or inept as Labour between 2008 and 2017, yet it was still able to claim power, albeit in unusual circumstances, after the 2017 election. The old maxim, “Oppositions do not win elections, governments lose them” remains relevant. 

For these reasons, only two questions remain about the National Party leadership – when will the coup occur, and who the next leader will be. The first question is probably harder to answer than the second.

At this point, the first quarter of next year seems the most likely time. Within that, the usual Caucus retreat in early February would be the obvious moment. That would enable the Party to begin the new Parliamentary year with the new leadership in place and give the new leader time to both define their style and build the team around them. It would also allow about 20 months before the 2023 election to put together the policy platform and select the best candidates to put National in the strongest position it could be to contest that election. 

If no move is made in February, the Party cannot afford to let things drift on much beyond Easter next year, for practical reasons. They are less to do with voter appeal than they are with candidate selection and fundraising. Good prospective candidates are unlikely to come forward if there are still doubts about the leadership and National looks set for another drubbing. The same applies to potential donors who will be unwilling to make significant donations to another campaign like that of 2020. 

The question of who the new leader will be is less unclear. Simon Bridges is the obvious choice. He is untainted by having led National to an election defeat – he was deposed several months before the last election – and more importantly, has assiduously reinvented himself as a kinder, gentler figure. In so doing, he has followed the tried-and-true path of political comeback. First, came the cultivation of a more laid-back and relaxed public image – in his case, slightly longer and more unruly hair, more casual clothing to suggest a more carefree image. Then there was the gentle self-mocking on television chat and game shows, carefully showing a softer and more humorous side than the brash politician he came across as previously. There was also the mandatory book, so overtly not about politics, yet covertly setting out the new Bridges’ message. And all the while, accompanied by the constant denials of ever wanting or intending to seek the party leadership again. 

While Bridges’ return would be unusual in the context of New Zealand politics, it is not without precedent – Sir Bill English came back to the National Party leadership in 2016, thirteen years after being deposed, although the circumstances were vastly different. A more interesting parallel comes from across the Tasman. John Howard was an abrasive and brash Treasurer under Malcolm Fraser. Howard subsequently became leader of the Liberal Party but was dropped in 1989 because he was seen as no match for then Labor Prime Minister Bob Hawke. Once Hawke had departed the scene (and the Liberal Party had been through three more leaders and two additional election defeats) a more mellow Howard was restored as party leader, going on to win four consecutive elections and become Australia’s longest serving Prime Minister since the dominance of Sir Robert Menzies from the 1940s to the 1960s. 

There is still a mighty long way to go before National can even dare to dream of such a heady future. It cannot happen until National closes the door on its last two disastrous years. Changing the leader is but the first step. More important, will be the development of a coherent policy programme and message to the electorate at large, which still seems as far away as ever. Yet that will be the difference between National looking like a genuine contender at the next election and just another also-ran the way it does at present. 

Changing the leader will not of itself change that – but it will put the party in a position where it can look forward once more. Simon Bridges will therefore need to show he really has risen above the failings of his previous leadership by setting out clearly and persuasively National’s plan for the country’s future.  He will not get a third chance.