A tense and intriguing political chess game is being played out in Parliament's Privileges Committee at present. It is a game none of those involved can afford to lose, yet inevitably someone will.

On the face of it, the issue at hand is whether the spontaneous haka performed by three Te Pati Māori MPs during the vote on the First Reading of the Treaty Principles Bill last year was a breach of what is quaintly referred to as Parliamentary Privilege.

The concept of Parliamentary Privilege dates back hundreds of years and devolves from the procedures of Britain’s House of Commons devised to enable Members to speak freely in Parliament without fear of legal consequences or loss of freedoms (or their heads at that time). Anyone who inhibits in any way Members of Parliament from freely expressing their opinions in Parliament or going about their normal Parliamentary business is in breach of Parliamentary Privilege and is therefore subject to the judgement of the Privileges Committee – effectively Parliament’s court – for their actions.

In this instance, the allegation before the Committee is that by performing a haka while the vote was being taken on the Treaty Principles Bill, the Te Pati Māori MPs were disrupting the free expression of Parliament’s views on the Bill at that time and were therefore breaching Privilege.

However, the issue now runs more deeply than that. Te Pati Māori’s ill-informed dismissal of what it calls Parliament’s “silly little rules” about Privilege, potentially poses an even greater challenge to the system. They say their actions highlight Parliament’s lack of recognition of tikanga, and that simply must change.

On the other hand, Parliament’s Speaker Gerry Brownlee in a somewhat rare and unusual intervention on a matter still under consideration by the Privileges Committee has described Te Pati Māori’s position as “complete nonsense.” He says a distinction must be drawn between Parliament’s rules and procedures and upholding tikanga.

Brownlee says separate work is already underway through the cross-party Standing Orders Committee to see how tikanga can be more fully integrated into Parliament’s rules, with a report due before the end of this term of Parliament. For that reason, he dismisses Te Pati Māori’s haka actions as “grandstanding”.

But Te Pati Māori rejects the notion that the broader work around tikanga should be treated separately from the haka protest. According to co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer the question of tikanga was central to the three MPs’ decision to perform the haka. Therefore, she argues, they must stand up to the Privileges Committee, which she fears wants to “criminalise the haka and criminalise our tikanga” by finding against them.

For its part, the Privileges Committee will want to steer a careful course. The Committee is made up of senior MPs from all parties and is chaired by the Attorney-General Judith Collins who is also a KC. Its focus will be on whether the three MPs’ actions breached Parliamentary Privilege, and if it finds so, what sanctions should be imposed on them. The committee is unlikely to delve too deeply into the wider question of tikanga, leaving that to the Standing Orders committee work already underway.

Should the committee conclude the three MPs have breached Privilege, the delicate issue will be what sanction it recommends Parliament should impose. For the sake of Parliament’s integrity and credibility any penalty should be significant – it cannot look like a slap with a wet bus ticket. However, at the same time, it cannot be unreasonable, which would simply inflame the current situation further and embolden Te Pati Māori’s line that it is the victim of a repressive, racist system. In short, Collins and her committee are going to have to apply a judgment of Solomon.

What is at stake here is the credibility of the body of Parliamentary practice and the protections of Privilege built up over hundreds of years. Therefore, the Privileges Committee cannot act in a way that could be interpreted as arbitrarily weakening that long-standing strong tradition for contemporary political convenience. Should it do so, the institution of Parliament will be the loser.

Ironically, the situation is a little easier for Te Pati Māori. An adverse finding from the Privileges Committee would certainly be a blow to the Party’s credibility to work within the system (in the same way as is its ongoing failure to provide proper accounts to the Electoral Commission in breach of the law). At the same time, however, it would confirm Te Pati Māori’s narrative that the whole system is geared against them, and that in Ngarewa-Packer’s words “This is the cost of standing up. We’ve had this before, and, you know, we just have to pay it again.”

In the end, the issue is less about the Treaty Principles Bill haka, which is sideshow puffery, than it is about achieving a reasonable balance between Parliament’s historical traditions and contemporary tikanga. That will only be achieved through constructive engagement by all sides, not more of the game-playing seen so far.

The government’s relief that New Zealand seems to have escaped a bullet regarding President Trump’s tariffs may be short lived. New Zealand exporters will face a flat 10 percent tariff on goods sent to the United States, but that is at the lower end of the scale of tariffs Trump has imposed on other countries.

However, that may not be where New Zealand’s tariff travails end, if history and the experience of other countries is any guide.

In recent days, Trump has turned his attention to the international pharmaceutical industry, suggesting it was time to apply tariffs to pharmaceuticals because America “doesn’t make anything” in terms of drugs and medicines. He has particularly singled out Ireland, telling the country’s Prime Minister at the White House recently that "all of a sudden Ireland has our pharmaceutical companies, this beautiful island of five million people has got the entire US pharmaceutical industry in its grasp."

America is currently Ireland’s major export market, receiving around 28% of all its exports. Around two-thirds of Ireland’s exports to America are pharmaceutical products, manufactured by American companies operating under licence in Ireland. The Irish economy is therefore especially vulnerable to any new tariffs (potentially as high as 25%) Trump may impose on pharmaceuticals.

New Zealand has no pharmaceutical manufacturing industry to speak so therefore is not vulnerable to tariffs in this way. But it does have the government’s drug procurement agency, PHARMAC, which America has long regarded as anti-competitive in relation to American products entering the New Zealand market.

PHARMAC was established in 1993 to arrange the purchase and supply of the medicines New Zealanders need. Its centralised approach and tough, single price negotiating stance has infuriated pharmaceutical companies the world over, arguably driving those that were operating in New Zealand at the time to move offshore. While PHARMAC has also been the recipient of constant local professional and political criticism for its hard-line approach, it has gained grudging recognition for the part it has played in keeping the country’s overall medicines bill under reasonable control.

However, America has been one of PHARMAC’s most constant and vehement critics, frequently citing its existence – let alone its operation – as a significant barrier to wider trade liberalisation between the two countries. On more than one occasion America has called for the paring back of PHARMAC’s role as the price of any form of freer trading arrangement between the two countries.  To their credit, successive New Zealand governments, have always resisted that pressure.

While PHARMAC does not appear to have been raised during the recent tariff discussions, it seems, given the recent comments about Ireland, only a matter of time before it is. With its preference for substituting cheaper generic drugs for brand-name drugs where feasible, PHARMAC could well be viewed by the Trump Administration as an impediment to the profitability of the American pharmaceutical industry in just the same way it views Ireland’s pharmaceutical manufacturing industry.

And if tariffs are to be imposed on Irish pharmaceutical exports to America, as seems highly likely, New Zealand should prepare for some sort of tariff imposition to blunt PHARMAC’s impact on the profitability of American pharmaceutical companies supplying to the local market. Because there is no New Zealand based pharmaceutical industry to speak of, any response from America will likely be retaliatory across a range of unrelated sectors but aimed at putting domestic political pressure on the government to bring PHARMAC to heel, the way America wishes.

In a word, it would be a case of good old-fashioned bullying, a trade practice America has frequently relied on over the years. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, New Zealand liberalised considerably its laws regarding parallel importing. Parallel importing is the practice of allowing the legal importation of genuine branded goods into a country without the consent or authorization of the brand owner or the official distributor in that market. Parallel imported goods are often cheaper on the retail market than the same goods supplied by the brand owner or official supplier. America lobbied the government of the day and individual politicians extremely hard against parallel importing, which it saw as detrimental to American brand owners, but to no avail.

Many of the arguments now being run by the Trump Administration that American manufacturers have been “ripped off” by cheap imports for years, which is why protective tariffs are now required, are very similar to those raised 25 years ago when parallel importing was an issue. In the current climate, there is no guarantee they will not be raised again insofar as New Zealand is concerned.

Against that backdrop, therefore, and given what seems to be a fast-moving international situation any sense of relief here that New Zealand has escaped the worst of the tariff impositions would be unwise. The recent tariff announcements seem unlikely to be the end of the matter. Trump likes to boast of the number of countries that have apparently approached the White House in the wake of the tariff announcements seeking new more- America friendly trade agreements instead of tariffs.

This makes it clear his wider agenda is to reshape the entire global trading structure away from the free trade emphasis that has dominated international trade discussions since the late 1980s. Trump not only wants to protect American manufacturers from competitive imports, but also to skew the entire global trading system in favour of America’s interests.

New Zealand was a leader in the global free trade movement of the late 1980s and early 1990s. As Trump tries to force the pendulum back the other way, we will not be able to avoid being caught up in the consequences of a struggle that has only just begun.

 

Should former Labour leader and Minister Andrew Little decide to seek the Wellington Mayoralty later this year he will have a very good, but by no means guaranteed, chance of winning.

Little was regarded in national politics as a reasonable, competent safe pair of hands, although sometimes his passion got the better of him, causing the National-led Government to label him "Angry Andy" after one of his not infrequent outbursts in the House when Leader of the Opposition. However, a stint in government as a senior Minister in the Ardern and Hipkins governments seems to have mellowed him somewhat, although that may be severely tested if he ends up as Mayor having to work another of the fractious Councils Wellington has had to endure over recent triennia.

Nevertheless, Little would bring a level of gravitas to the election race that has been missing so far. None of the already confirmed candidates appeals as having the political heft to look like a credible Mayor-in-waiting. Voters yearning for an alternative to the current leadership might well be relieved at the prospect of Little's candidacy. Some may even take the trouble to vote for him, rather than just complain about how bad things in Wellington have become.

Mayor Tory Whanau's reputation has been virtually destroyed by both her personal performance and the Council's public bickering over the last three years. But until Little's name emerged, she remained a reasonable bet to get re-elected because of the array of uninspiring candidates lining up against her and the Single Transferable Vote system Wellington uses for its elections. While she might not be everyone's first choice, she could well win enough of the preferences of lower polling candidates to get over the line again after two or three rounds of counting.

If he runs, Little will need to have a clear electoral strategy to gain most of the second and third preferences of the already declared anti-Whanau candidates. And he will need to communicate that unambiguously to voters so that they understand fully what they must do to defeat Mayor Whanau. Without such an approach, there is the very real prospect of votes being split and preferences wasted, enabling Whanau to come through the middle for a second term.

Little’s second challenge is to craft a credible election platform on which to campaign. Just being a known name with previous central government experience will not be enough – something former United leader Clive Matthewson, another long-term MP and former Minister discovered when he ran and lost to then-unpopular Dunedin Mayor, Dame Sukhi Turner, in that city’s 1998 Mayoral election. Jim Anderton had the same experience as a former Deputy Prime Minister running against previously unpopular Sir Bob Parker in Christchurch in 2010, although that result was heavily influenced by Parker’s forthright leadership in the aftermath of the city’s first major earthquake, just a few weeks before the election.

The problem for Little with policy is two-fold. He has already been critical of the Council’s performance in many areas. However, he will need to be careful in putting forward his policy alternatives not to alienate the Green Party which has endorsed Whanau as its candidate, thereby threatening wider Labour/Green relations in the leadup to next year’s General Election. As a seasoned politician Little should understand that dynamic.

But here is where the second of Little’s problems arises. The votes he will need to chase to win the Mayoralty are not going to come from the centre-left. Disaffection with Whanau and her Council cronies is most pronounced on the centre-right of Wellington politics. It is the votes of those in the leafy suburbs that Little will need to win to become Mayor and his policy package needs to appeal specifically to them. Otherwise, their votes are likely to be split between the motley collection of centre right candidates already in the race and so ensure Whanau’s re-election.

This will be difficult for Little, given his extensive trade union and traditional Labour background. While he has been regarded as a safe pair of hands, he has not been known so far for his ability to work across party lines. For that reason, many of the voters he will need to win over, and who want to see change, will need to be convinced that they can trust Little as a person and that he will deliver the changes they are seeking. If not, they will probably just sit on their hands and not vote in the election, again increasing the prospects of Whanau’s re-election.

On the face of it, both Whanau’s ineptitude and the scatterbrain performance of her Council supporters, who act more like the most extreme and immature of student politicians than responsible Councillors for the capital city, should have ensured the Mayoralty is there for the taking.

However, Wellington’s electoral dynamics are such that what should be a foregone conclusion is not quite that straightforward. It probably explains why so many quality candidates who have been touted as possibilities have ruled out putting their names forward.

Should Little decide to run, he is arguably the best alternative prospect to emerge so far. But he faces an almighty task to turn that prospect into reality, and to become the capital city’s next Mayor.

 

While the government is in the mood for breaking up failing conglomerates like the supermarket duopoly, it should consider doing the same to one of its own largest agencies – the ubiquitous Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. MBIE was supposed to be the government’s go-to department, but nearly everything it gets involved in ends up turning to dust at some stage.

It was MBIE that devised and managed the cumbersome, draconian MIQ scheme during the Covid19 lockdowns. It was MBIE, rather than the expert drug buying agency PHARMAC, that oversaw the Covid19 vaccine procurement process which left New Zealand one of the last countries in the world to get the vaccines, despite then Minister Megan Woods’ promise that New Zealand would be “at the head of the queue”. Apparently, although the orders may have been placed early enough, MBIE failed to ensure payment in advance to ensure stocks were supplied, a mistake PHARMAC would never have made.

Now, MBIE’s influence appears to have expanded to include judging the value of international events. Its unwillingness to support Auckland Council’s proposal for a bed tax to fund the next America’s Cup defence in Auckland in 2027 seems to have been a major influence on the government deciding not to get involved, and the Cup defence being forced offshore again.

But this is not an isolated case. In recent years, New Zealand has lost the hosting rights for other international sporting events, from the Netball World Cup to the Wellington Rugby Sevens. It is now hard to imagine New Zealand ever hosting a Commonwealth Games or Rugby World Cup series again.

In March 2024, Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters blamed what he called “overly influential bureaucratic processes, power-drunk government departments, and some decision makers who care more about their fiefdoms than our country’s economic development and international reputation” for these decisions. Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown has suggested the government’s failure to support a visitor bed levy for Auckland to help fund an America’s Cup defence could cost it the next election.

Meanwhile, the government’s political defence of the decision not to provide the estimated $75 million necessary to support a Cup defence in Auckland has been predictable. “There is no magic money tree” says Finance Minister Nicola Willis. “Our priority is New Zealanders’ needs”, she adds, citing schools, hospitals and the cost-of-living. And, drawing on unspecified MBIE advice, she “doubts” the projected $2 billion economic boost that a Cup defence in Auckland was projected to provide. But the $75 million that was sought for the projected America’s Cup defence is a small drop in the government’s bucket, around 0.5% of its annual expenditure, before any economic gains are considered.

The decision also likely sounds the death knell for the Eden Park upgrade. The Prime Minister has already made it clear that the government is unlikely to fund the estimated $110 million needed to upgrade Eden Park.  That will further detrimentally impact our capacity to host international sporting events. Yet taken together, the economic benefits over time from the America’s Cup and upgrading Eden Park would have far outweighed the one-off costs.

All this comes barely a couple of weeks after the government’s vaunted infrastructure summit where the Prime Minister and the Minister of
Finance boldly asserted that New Zealand was open for business again and was actively seeking international investment partners for infrastructure development and significant events.

Both the failure to fund the America’s Cup defence and the upgrading of Eden Park send unwelcome signals about how receptive the government is to be doing the types of deals necessary to bring projects to fruition. Both are good examples where the collaborative investment approach the Prime Minister was so earnestly preaching at the summit could have been applied to overall national benefit. Moreover, the apparent failure to embrace these opportunities does not bode well for possible future infrastructure investment partnerships getting off the ground.

All of which comes back to the “bureaucratic processes” and “power-drunk government departments” Peters was complaining about a year ago. Implicit in those comments was a criticism of the monolithic power of MBIE to stifle development opportunities. There may have been logic at the time of MBIE’s formation in bringing together a key range of government functions as a type of one-stop shop to facilitate progress, but MBIE’s consistently cumbersome and myopic approach, on a range of issues over time, has had the opposite effect.  It is not up to the task and needs to be broken up.

To ensure New Zealand does not become a backwater for international sporting and related events, the government ought to establish a stand-alone independent specialist agency to work on both securing such events for New Zealand and the public and private funding required for them to proceed. After all, our country continues to produce the best sports performers in the world across a vast range of sports and cultural activities. We ought to be able to see them compete here, rather than watching their overseas performances in the middle of the night.

But so long as MBIE’s narrow-minded influence holds sway, that will remain the best New Zealanders can look forward to.

 

A common feature under both the old First-Past-The-Post electoral system and MMP today is that New Zealand has never been subject to dramatic, prolonged shifts in political direction.

While various governments over the years have made bold changes, the process has usually been one of gradualism. If one government goes too far in one direction, the next government either mainstreams or moderates that change. Equilibrium is always restored after swings in the political pendulum. What has therefore evolved has been a process of natural correction rather than radical change.

That was why National’s Sid Holland could deride the Savage Labour Government’s Social Security scheme in the 1930s as “applied lunacy”, only to retain and enhance it when he became Prime Minister over a decade later. Similarly, Sir John Key could dismiss Labour’s Working for Families tax credits scheme as “communism by stealth” in the early 2000s and then embrace it as the backbone of his government’s family assistance programmes a few years later when he was Prime Minister.

On the same basis, Labour vehemently opposed the abolition of compulsory trade union membership in National’s infamous Employment Contracts Act of 1991. However, while subsequent Labour-led governments have modified some of the Act’s provisions, they have never reinstated compulsory unionism, despite it having been a party article of faith for so many years.

Senior Labour MP Willie Jackson made a telling observation at the weekend that one of the reasons Labour lost the last election was because of “identity politics”. He acknowledged that “we did not take enough people with us last time” on the various policy changes the government made. He repeated Labour leader Chris Hipkins’ earlier comment that Labour will not reinstate the policies the electorate rejected in 2023, nor will it overturn all the current government’s policies. As an example of one of the current government’s policies Labour would likely retain Jackson cited the controversial ban on gang patches.

Therefore, New Zealand First’s declaration of a “war on woke” should be looked at against this backdrop of the dominance of the politics of natural correction. At one level, Winston Peters’ declaration is a local version of Trumpism, designed in the main to lock-in the ongoing support of the 5-6% of the electorate that traditionally votes New Zealand First, as well as appealing to those conservative National and Labour voters who feel the country is no longer going quite the way they want it to.

In that regard, it marks the start of New Zealand First’s 2026 election campaign and makes it clear the party intends to be a large thorn in the side of whichever bloc ends up in power, whether New Zealand First is part of it or not. It appears to have ruled out working with Labour, at least under Hipkins’ leadership, claiming it was lied to by Labour when last in coalition with them.

Again, that approach is likely to resonate with New Zealand First’s core base, which has always seen the Party as the aggrieved outsider, perennially wronged by what it considers the excesses of the two old major parties that “need to be taken down a peg.” The fact that both National and Labour have derided the “war on woke” reinforces the New Zealand First base’s view that their cause is right and that they must continue to support the party, in or out of government.

But in the wider context of the politics of natural correction, New Zealand First’s declaration is also important. Peters’ speech outlined a wide range of issues on which he considers the previous government went “woke.”  Some of those policies have also been criticised by his coalition partners, National and ACT and are in the process of either being moderated or dumped altogether. Others, if Jackson’s comments are genuinely reflective of his party’s current position, are unlikely to resurface under a future Labour-led government. Still others are no more than figments of New Zealand First’s vivid conspiratorialist imagination, but valuable rallying cries for its disaffected voter base, nonetheless.

But however much, or little movement there is on any of the so-called “woke” issues, it will, thanks to its overt early claiming of the territory, be a victory for New Zealand First. Any significant movement away from allegedly “woke” policies will prove to New Zealand First they were right all along, while minimal or minor change will enable the party to keep pushing the case for more. It is a simple and cynical, but highly effective, political strategy that comes at no significant cost to New Zealand First.

Previously, there might have been political risks in advocating such an approach so blatantly, but the return of Trump and the sweep of regressive changes he has unleashed has given a new legitimacy to those hankering to promote a similar agenda elsewhere. The rise of Farage’s Reform Party in Britain, and the Alternativ für Deutschland (AFD) in Germany, for example, has shown how appealing Trumpian rhetoric and policies can be to disaffected voters the world over. New Zealand First’s “war on woke” is simply trying to ride the same political wave.

However, the dominance of the process of natural correction means that the "war on woke" is unlikely to succeed to the same extent here. Instead, it is far more likely to end up as a campaign of rhetorical flourish ahead of substance, which will suit New Zealand First very well.  The process of natural correction that has so often been criticised, especially by the ACT Party in recent years, for holding New Zealand back, will likely in this instance prevent a lurch to full-scale Trumpism.

Nevertheless, by claiming the “anti-woke” ground as his own, Peters has stolen an early march on his rivals and thereby probably ensured New Zealand First’s re-election. Peters has always understood better than most that politics is about the acquisition and retention of power. The “war on woke” is simply his latest means to achieve that end.

 

New Zealand’s accident compensation scheme has long been hailed as world leading. Introduced just over 50 years ago, ACC (as it is widely known) provides comprehensive coverage for personal injuries for all New Zealanders and visitors. In return for ACC’s no-fault coverage, New Zealanders have given up the right to sue in cases of personal injury.

ACC was intended to make compensation for personal and work-related injuries fairer and more accessible for everyone, not just those in paid employment. However, as with all broad-brush approaches to complex and varied questions, it has not always worked out that way.

While dealing with physical injuries (falls, fractures and the like) has been comparatively straight-forward, there has been a greater understanding in recent years that long-term, often life-threatening conditions can be acquired in a workplace environment and are therefore also a form of personal injury that ACC should compensate.  Within that, some glaring anomalies have become apparent.

One of the most obvious impacts relates to volunteer firefighters. While they are covered for physical injuries incurred while performing their duties, they are not covered for any wider work-related illness or injury because they are volunteers and therefore not in paid employment as firefighters. Indeed, ACC categorises volunteer fire fighting as a “leisure” activity, because no taxable income is involved. Employed firefighters, by contrast, are fully covered.

But 86% of all firefighters are volunteers. According to the “Hidden in Plain Sight” report last year, volunteer firefighters are the primary responders to most fires, motor vehicle accidents and medical emergencies across New Zealand. The annual economic contribution of their services is more than $820 million. Yet ACC treats them less favourably than it does the much smaller number of employed firefighters, who do the same work.

For some years now, the United Fire Brigades Association, which represents volunteer firefighters and whose Board I chair, has made representations to successive ACC Ministers under both governments to change this anomaly so that volunteers are treated equally with their employed counterparts. With one exception, our representations have been met with polite indifference. We have been told any change along the lines we have been proposing would have to be applied to all volunteers across the community, which would be far too expensive.

That is a spurious argument. The issue we have been raising relates specifically to emergency service volunteers and the special risks they are exposed to. It would be comparatively easy to craft an amendment to deal with this situation, if there was the political will to do so.

The only ACC Minister to show any real interest in and understanding of the issue was Matt Doocey, who was, unfortunately, reshuffled out of the portfolio earlier this year. His successors are yet to show their interest.

Earlier this week, Queenstown volunteer firefighter, Katherine Lamont, launched a petition to Parliament to change the ACC legislation to give volunteer firefighters the same ACC coverage and benefits as employed firefighters. The United Fire Brigades Association has welcomed her initiative and fully supports the petition. In its first few days, the petition has already received more than fifteen thousand signatures. It can be signed at https://petitions.parliament.nz/5872f736-ed2f-443c-f919-08dd5b668762 before April 30.

The egregious anomaly regarding the inferior treatment of volunteer firefighters is reflective of the extent to which our volunteer emergency workers are generally taken for granted. Yet, without them we would have no effective national emergency management response.

The government likes to talk of the work of the National Emergency Management Authority. But without the on-the-ground input of volunteer firefighters, it is no more than an irrelevant bureaucratic paper tiger. Our volunteers need to be nurtured and treated equitably, rather than ignored. If NEMA counted for anything and was worth taking seriously, it would be prominently advocating for the volunteers on whom it relies. But, to date, there has been nothing – it is no more than a handful of people running round central Wellington with clipboards and spreadsheets. NEMA’s annual operating budget of around $50 million could be far more effectively applied to meeting the needs of volunteer firefighters in emergency situations.

The United Fire Brigades Association will continue, now bolstered by the strong support for Katherine Lamont’s petition, to lobby the government to amend the ACC Act to ensure volunteer firefighters are treated equitably with their employed counterparts. The petition also provides a wider opportunity for New Zealanders generally to have their say on the issue, which is why the UFBA is encouraging people to support it.

The “Hidden in Plain Sight” report made clear the value of the contribution volunteer firefighters make to the wider national community. It is not unreasonable to expect the government to recognise that contribution by ensuring they are treated fairly and equitably for the service they provide.

That, after all, is supposed to be the New Zealand way.

The school lunches debacle is a classic example of what happens when social policy projects lose sight of their original objectives.

When the school lunches scheme was established in 2018 the intention was to provide a healthy lunch to those students who because of their circumstances might be going without lunch altogether at school – which would be having a negative effect on their learning – or whose lunches were inadequate and non-nutritious. It aimed to build on more localised programmes that had been run by voluntary agencies like KidsCan over the years.

However, concerns that targeting disadvantaged children by providing them with a school lunch might stigmatise them amongst their peers led to the programme being effectively universalised for those schools involved. Even that was a problem – it stratified schools as rich schools and poor schools and made the false assumption that no children from deprived backgrounds went to rich schools, or vice versa.

The change to greater universal provision meant costs grew rapidly – by the end of 2023 the government was spending more than $320 million a year on school lunches, up from $260 million when the scheme was established.

Unsurprisingly, when the current government took office in 2023 and sought to pare back government spending, the school lunch programme was an early target. The government produced a plan to centralise and standardise the school lunches operation which would save $130 million annually. Subsequent events have shown, even after all the criticism and political posturing from schools and disenfranchised former providers is discounted, that this was not quite as simple or straightforward a process as first envisaged. Today, the government is engaged in a major rescue exercise to try to make its school lunches reforms viable and credible.

However, the basic problem is far more fundamental than just the ability of the current national contractor to deliver the government’s revised approach. The seeds of the current crisis were sown when the objectives of the original scheme were broadened in 2019 to include all children in qualifying schools. That inevitably meant that it was likely to become financially unsustainable in the longer term, forcing whichever government was in power to review what was happening.

But sadly, this approach and result is not an isolated instance. The worthy intention of successive governments not to draw undue attention to disadvantaged or at-risk groups that were receiving the benefit of social assistance has led to policy interventions becoming more broad-brush than targeted to where need was greatest.

For example, the world-renowned Dunedin longitudinal study has found that it can identify children and families likely to be at-risk at an early stage. Similarly, Police data shows that there are a small number of families that dominate the criminal offending statistics. The implication of both is that we have now the data to target specific policies and interventions around those families.

But successive governments – except for Sir Bill English’s short-lived government and its focus on a social investment guiding social service provision – have shown no interest in wanting to follow such a data-based approach to social policy.

Indeed, if anything, their approach has been towards greater universalism, and more broadly based policies. The net result has been more and more resources wasted on people who do not really need government support, while the most vulnerable and at at-risk do not get the help they need, because the government cannot afford the burgeoning cost of universalised social services.

While this broad-brush approach remains the focus, it is inevitable that most social policies will fail to significantly address the needs of those at whom they should properly be aimed. And that will give rise to questioning of the way in which the services are being provided, rather than whether they are being aimed at those that need them. This is precisely what is happening in the school lunches debate at present.

If the government was genuinely brave and serious about reforming social policy to ensure it best meets the needs of those at-risk, it would be looking to a fundamental, back to basics, reset along these lines.  However, that will never happen because too many people now gain from the smothering web of universal social assistance, and no government will want to be seen to be taking something away from people, even if they do not need it.

The perverse outcome of all this is that the current system entrenches division and deprivation, rather than resolves it. The big losers in the school lunches mess remain the group no-one seems willing to talk about – the kids coming to school each day, poorly and inadequately fed. There has been much discussion about previous providers who have lost their contracts, school principals finding the transition to a new system difficult, or even some students finding the meals do not meet their tastes. But there has been little obvious consideration of the needs and responses of the genuinely at-risk children for whom a school-lunch is not another “nice to have” provided by the state, but a genuine necessity.

So long as the current “all things to all people” approach to social services provision continues, programmes such as school lunches will keep failing to meet their objectives, however they are structured. And the level of public dissatisfaction at their mounting cost and apparent ineffectiveness will increase.

Yet, the potential is there to make genuine change for the good by using the data now available to develop targeted programmes focusing on meeting genuine need ahead of just making people feel good. Hopefully, one of the lessons emerging from the school lunches debacle is the imperative to concentrate on resolving real, genuine evidence-based need, ahead of any other factors.

But the uncomfortable truth remains that feel good universalism ultimately satisfies nobody – and leaves the basic challenges of inequality and deprivation unresolved.

Sudden resignations and abrupt departures seem to be the fashion at present.

 

First there was the chief executive of Health New Zealand who announced her resignation four months before her contract was due to expire, and left her role almost immediately. Then there was the Director of Public Health who announced he was stepping down and would be leaving within a couple of weeks. He was followed by the Director-General of Health who announced her resignation and left a week later. This week there has been the resignation of Pharmac's chief executive, effective from the end of May, and the bombshell announcement of the Reserve Bank Governor's resignation and immediate departure.

 

Five public sector heavyweights resigning and walking out the door within the space of a month must be unprecedented. The resignations may all be unrelated and therefore simply coincidental, but the number of sudden resignations in such a short time suggests not and raises suspicions of some sort of behind the scenes agitation and orchestration by Ministers. Each of the departing officials had had their run-ins with members of the current government, both since the election and when they were in Opposition beforehand. 

 

However, with the exception of the position of Governor of the Reserve Bank who is appointed by the Minister of Finance, Ministers are not supposed to have any overt role in the appointment and dismissal of senior public servants – that is the preserve of the Public Service Commissioner. Indeed, unrelated comments last week by the Prime Minister and other Ministers that they were considering amending the law to give Ministers a greater role in the appointment of senior officials aroused strong criticism that this amounted to political tampering with the independence of the traditionally neutral public service.

 

But that is not to say that there are not ways now in which Ministers influence senior public service appointments. The Public Service Commissioner's recommendation of a departmental chief executive’s appointment is signed off by Ministers. That is usually a formality, but it has not been unknown – although rare – for a recommendation to be sent back for "reconsideration".

 

Similarly, Ministers can – and do – raise concerns with the Public Service Commissioner about the performance of chief executives with whom they are unhappy, for whatever reason, in the expectation he will take the appropriate action. In a more direct way, Ministers can make their discomfort with certain senior officials well known, either in Opposition before they come to office or once in power, with the intention that the officials concerned will get the hint and decide to move on.

 

If this is the case in each of the current resignations, it raises wider questions about the future neutrality of the public service. While Ministers must have confidence in their senior public service officials, they cannot try to compromise their neutrality by expecting them to do the government’s political bidding. Officials must always be able to work closely and professionally with Ministers on the development and implementation of government policy, while keeping their political distance. That separation gives the public service its integrity and credibility and should not be interfered with for the short-term political advantage of the government of the day.

However, the spate of recent resignations, along with the unrelated comments about giving the government more direct power in the appointment of senior public servants suggest the traditional concept of public service neutrality is being blurred. Although we are thankfully a very long way from the American model where several top tiers of the public service are expected to tender their resignations whenever the Administration changes, we could be moving to a time where senior officials are expected by Ministers to be more openly politically aligned to the government’s objectives, and to step aside if they are not.

 

Indeed, this may already be the case, given that the appointments in question all happened under the previous Labour-led government, but it still has implications for those who will take on the now vacant senior roles. It is hard to imagine that they will not be people seen to more aligned to the current government’s agenda, which will both immediately raise questions about their own political neutrality and have a flow-on effect on the wider public service. And once the process of politicising senior public appointments becomes embedded, it will be very difficult to wind back.

 

The new Public Service Commissioner has already spoken about changes he wants to make to improve the delivery of public services to increase confidence in the public sector. In the light of recent events, he may now well need to add specifically reinforcing the political neutrality of chief executives to his list of proposed reforms.  

 

 

Reports that the American billionaire and Trump loyalist insider Peter Thiel is winding down his business interests in New Zealand call to mind one of the more controversial issues relating to New Zealand citizenship in recent years.

Peter Thiel is an entrepreneur and venture capitalist who co-founded PayPal in 1998 and the major data analysis company Palantir Technologies in 2003, amongst other global technology businesses. He has been a substantial contributor to the United States Republican Party over the years, supporting many right-wing causes, and was on the executive of Donald Trump’s transition team when he was first elected President in 2016.

In 2011, Thiel was granted New Zealand citizenship, despite having spent only 12 non-consecutive days in the country, compared to the normal residency requirement of 1,350 days. At that time, there were many wealthy Americans seeking to relocate in New Zealand as a bolthole and promising in return to invest substantially in the New Zealand economy.

Most of these applications were unsuccessful, but Thiel’s application was approved under the “exceptional circumstances” provisions of the Citizenship Act because it was considered to be in the “public interest”. Ministers argued he would be a “great ambassador and salesperson” for New Zealand.

But it was not until 2017 that Thiel’s New Zealand citizenship and the details surrounding it became known publicly. At that time, I was the Minister of Internal Affairs, responsible for citizenship matters. However, I had not taken up that role until 2014, three years after Thiel had become a citizen.

Nevertheless, because of the public controversy the revelation of the circumstances of Thiel’s citizenship caused, I carried out my own informal review of the case. Following a recommendation from the Ombudsman I agreed to release previously withheld official information about Thiel’s citizenship application. This showed that Thiel had actively lobbied Ministers to become a New Zealand citizen but had rarely been seen in New Zealand since being awarded citizenship.

Based on the information available to me at time, I concluded that were no reasonable grounds for granting Thiel citizenship. I told both Parliament and the media that had the original decision been mine to make I would not have approved the application.  At the same time, I acknowledged that I had no legal authority to overturn the decision, except in the most unusual of circumstances where Thiel had been proven by a Court to have acted deliberately against New Zealand’s interests or threatened our security. Neither of these were ever likely to happen, so Thiel remains a New Zealand citizenship to this day, even if his interest in this country appears to be diminishing.

In the wake of the Thiel affair, Internal Affairs officials proposed to me ways of making the citizenship process more transparent to “help address possible perceptions of undue influence and better ensure public confidence”. These included an "open citizenship register”; writing into law which factors could be used when considering "exceptional circumstances"; and even setting out a specific exception for activities such as vast financial investment.  Another option would be a periodic independent assessment of all these decisions, which are relatively rare, by the Auditor General.

I agreed with most of these proposals (although I preferred the Ombudsman instead of the Auditor General as the review authority) and directed they should all be considered as part of the wider review of citizenship law I had planned for 2018. However, I left my role as Minister in late 2017, and the review I had planned appears to have never taken place.

The government’s recent announcement of a new visa scheme to make it easier for foreign investors to come to New Zealand reopens many of the questions raised by the Thiel citizenship affair. While visa schemes making it easier for foreign investors to invest here and create jobs to grow the New Zealand economy should be welcomed, they must not be allowed to circumvent the rules by which New Zealand residents become citizens, in the flagrant way the Thiel case did.

Citizenship should always be granted only in accordance with the provisions of the Citizenship Act. Where there are exceptional circumstances requiring the exercise of the Minister’s discretion, these should be fully documented and be reviewable by the Ombudsman. Indeed, when I was Minister and made citizenship decisions either against the recommendation of officials, or exercising the exceptional circumstances discretion, I always set out my reasons in full in a memorandum attached to the case file.

Citizenship is a precious privilege accorded to those born here, qualifying New Zealand residents, and those with a special association with this country. The Thiel case is a salutary reminder that citizenship can never be allowed to become just one more commodity to be casually traded as part of a putative investment deal. 

MMP was expected to break the old Parliamentary duopoly of National and Labour and lead to far more inclusive and diverse political debate. Certainly, the increase in the number of parties in Parliament has spread the range of views being heard in the House, but it is doubtful that this has led to a greater level of debate about those views.

Contrary to what some might imagine, Parliamentary debates are not free-ranging expressions of opinion, where differing ideas and policies are contested. They are extremely regimented. Most debates are time limited, with speaking times (ten minutes per speaker) and speaking order pre-determined evenly between the government and Opposition sides of the House. A typical debate comprises twelve speeches, with each of the six parties currently in the House getting at least one call.

Debates have therefore become occasions to state party positions, rather to contest differing ideas. Consequently, MPs often appear to be no more than the delegates of their respective party when speaking in the House, rather than legislators debating the merits of specific legislation. In short, contemporary political debate has become all about political parties rehearsing established political opinions to their respective political audiences, rather than debating new ideas and seeking to reach consensus about the best way forward.

The same tactic also applies to the wider approach most parties take to promoting their interests. In this respect, it is worth recalling Hillary Clinton’s observation that good political stories always contain a “goodie” and a “baddie”.  So, when the parties tell their stories to their supporters, they are always the
“goodie” identifying the “baddie” they are fighting to protect the country from, as the reason why people should vote for them.

The current spat between New Zealand First leader Winston Peters and Green MP Ricardo Menéndez March is a case in point. The row is less about Menéndez March’s use of Aotearoa to describe New Zealand than it is about asserting the respective brands of New Zealand First and the Green Party.

To traditionalist, anti-multicultural New Zealand First, the very presence in Parliament of Mexican immigrant Menéndez March is bad enough, but his reference to Aotearoa instead of New Zealand was wokeness in the extreme. Peters’ comments were therefore a dog-whistle to those voters who hold similar views, that New Zealand First is in their corner.

The obverse applies in the case of the Green Party. To them, Menéndez March was showing proper respect to tangata whenua by referring to New Zealand by its original name and acknowledging their traditional rights and role. But neither New Zealand First nor the Green Party has any real interest in debating their respective positions with each other – the far more important point for both was to window dress where they stood for the benefit of their supporters.

The same goes for ACT and Te Pāti Māori and their dispute over the Treaty Principles Bill. Each desperately needs to be able to portray the other as intolerant, unreasonable and anti-democratic to validate its own position and strengthen its appeal to its core supporters. Again, it is less about reasoned debate of differing points of view than an absolute statement of an unshakeable position. The last thing either seek or want is any form of compromise or reasoned discussion.

This sharpening political fundamentalism is creating a difficult problem for both National and Labour, more traditionally broad churches than narrow lines of opinion. It is more acute for National at present, simply because it is the leading party of government.

Prime Minister Luxon often looks hamstrung by the extreme or unreasonable positions of his support partners. While he cannot endorse them, because they are not what his party stands for, he cannot reject them outright either, because that would destroy his coalition government. But pretending the differences are not there at all, as Luxon often appears to do, is the worst position of all. It leaves the government looking weak and indecisive. Therefore, to resolve this dilemma, National needs to better develop its own political story, complete with its own “goodies” and “baddies”, instead of just hoping, as currently appears to be the case, that its tick-box list of achievements will carry the day.

It is a smaller but similar problem for Labour at present. However, it will grow as the election nears and more attention is paid to the radical policies of the Green Party and Te Pāti Māori and how they might be accommodated in a future Labour-led government. Opposition leader Hipkins is frequently critical of Prime Minister Luxon’s current difficulties, seemingly unrealising that precisely the same challenges are lurking just around the corner for him in the run-up to the election.

The demise of political debate as it used to be, in favour of the fervent, dogmatic statement of party opinion as incontrovertible fact as we have now, has dramatically changed the nature of political discourse around the world. The absolutist way the Trump Administration and its allies operate is the obvious extreme example. But our political system is not immune from these features. The redefinition here of political debate to be less about the exchange of ideas than the statement of pre-determined positions should be viewed with increasing concern, rather than just becoming accepted, the way it seems to be.

Over fifty years ago, the satirical television show Monty Python’s Flying Circus attacked the then emerging lowest-common-denominator approach to resolving complex issues in a skit where the existence of God was decided in a wrestling match, by two falls to a submission.

Sadly, that is precisely the same approach we are taking to complex political issues today.

The first opinion polls of the year send a mighty wake-up call to the coalition government, but they are not the death knell some might think. Polls are always a snapshot in time, subject to particular influences at the time they were taken. A more accurate assessment emerges from the trends that they disclose over time, rather than the result of any one individual poll.

In this regard, a rolling average of the polls shows that while an election held today would be extremely close, the coalition government is still marginally ahead of the Opposition bloc. However, that lead has been reducing steadily. While for most of 2024 the difference between the two blocs did not move much since the 2023 election, National’s support has fallen sharply since September/October, with Labour’s increasing, although not as sharply.

Nevertheless, the National-led coalition is more precariously positioned at present than each of the last two Labour-led governments were at similar stages in the previous two Parliaments. For example, at the equivalent point in in 2019, the Labour-led coalition was leading the centre right bloc by almost 12 percentage points. And at the same point in the last Parliamentary term, in 2022, the Labour-led bloc still had a substantial lead over National and its allies.

Much can of course change between now and election day. By the start of 2019, National was beginning to open a small lead over Labour, only to see that completely obliterated by the onset of Covid19, and Labour’s historic election landslide later that year. Similarly, in 2022 Labour’s comfortable lead over National waned and fell away altogether during the year. Labour’s handling of Covid19 was no longer an asset and was turning people off in droves, leading to the government’s defeat in 2023.

Therefore, it is far too soon to draw firm conclusions about the implications of the parties’ current ratings for the 2026 election outcome. However, some general observations can be made, based on the figures.

The first is that unlike any other lead party of government under MMP, National has no electoral fat to draw upon when times get tough. Its 38% party vote share at the last election – far lower than the vote share of the Key and Ardern governments when they were first elected – means it has no reservoir of support to draw upon.

Its current polling average of just under 33% of the party vote is at least ten percentage points below what it should be for the party to be confident of re-election in two years’ time. Of arguably more concern for the government is that National does not yet appear to have a strategy for growing its vote share to this extent.

At the same time, the situation is not all that rosy for Labour. The polling average shows its vote share has grown by only about three percentage points in the last six months, leaving it still well below the level of support it would need to lead a government after the next election.

Of the minor parties, support for the Greens and ACT has been relatively stable since the last election. Both are on average rating less than a percentage point higher than at the election. Although one recent poll showed New Zealand First’s support hovering around the 5% party vote threshold level, its support on average has not moved from the 6.6% party vote level it recorded on election day. Given New Zealand First’s historic propensity to perform far better at election time than it ever does in opinion polls during a Parliamentary term, that leaves it in a comfortable position at present.

Te Pāti Māori looks to have more than doubled its party vote support since last year’s election – to around 5.4% according to the latest polling averages. But it is unlikely to see this rise in support translate into a significant increase in its number of seats at the next election. This is because all its seats are electorate seats. If it holds all these seats at the next election and wins around 5.4% of the party vote as current polls suggest, it would still only be entitled to the six electorate seats.

This creates a potential problem for Labour should it be in a position to form a government after the next election. Most of the new votes Te Pāti Māori could attract will likely have come from Labour, given Māori voters’ historic links to the Labour Party, but the return in terms of seats won for the centre left bloc may not be as great as it might be had those voters stayed loyal to Labour.

A further complication for Labour is that Te Pāti Māori is almost certain to make policy demands – like the establishment of an independent Treaty of Waitangi Commissioner with the power to veto government actions about the Treaty – that Labour will find difficult to accept in whole or part,  without risking alienating conservative elements of its own core constituency. Hipkins’ vacillation on the issue demonstrates Labour’s problem: it cannot afford to be too dismissive of Te Pāti Māori’s demands because it is unlikely to be able to form a government without them, but, if it is too agreeable, it risks not getting enough votes of its own to be in a government-forming position.

While ACT and the Greens have uncompromisingly nailed their colours to the National and Labour masts respectively, New Zealand First has been somewhat more ambivalent about its options. At this stage, however, there appears to still be too much bad blood between New Zealand First and Labour, following the experience of the 2017-2020 coalition, to see a Labour-led government involving New Zealand First as a viable option.

All this suggests that the next election is still the National-led coalition’s to lose. However, more antics of the type seen from David Seymour of late could hasten that process.