It is often said that leopards rarely change their spots.

On that basis, it will be somewhat of a surprise if New Zealand First manages to survive the current three year term as part of the governing coalition. Staying the distance is simply not in the Party’s or its leader’s DNA.

In 1991, just a year into the Bolger National Government’s first term, Mr Peters was ejected from the party Caucus and dismissed as a Minister. That set off a series of events that led to the launch of the New Zealand First Party in mid 1993, and its success at that year’s election. In 1998, after 20 months of the National/New Zealand First Coalition Government Mr Peters was dismissed as Deputy Prime Minister and Treasurer and his Party left the Coalition shortly thereafter. New Zealand First was able to regroup and recover its polling strength sufficiently to ensure it survived (just) the 1999 election. In 2008, shortly before the election, Mr Peters was stood down as Foreign Minister while Parliament’s Privileges Committee investigated allegations of financial irregularities within New Zealand First. Its critical findings contributed to New Zealand First’s defeat at the ensuing election.

Now, with New Zealand First’s polling declining and ongoing speculation of tension within the present Coalition Government, with suggestions New Zealand First calls all of the shots over Labour and its more natural ally, the Greens, the same questions are being asked again. Is New Zealand First reverting to type and is it about to bring about a fracture within the government to allow it to differentiate itself, and perhaps recover its support, in time for the election next year? Critics are pointing to the confusion over abortion law changes and New Zealand First’s apparently late call for a binding referendum, having not raised the matter during the preceding negotiations on the proposed changes, and its less than enthusiastic support for the government’s position on Ihumatao as evidence Mr Peters may be up to his old tricks again.

While the odds fall heavily on the side of New Zealand First confirming its serial inability to stay the distance as part of a government, Mr Peters, by his very survival to this point, has shown he can on occasion defy the odds. It is just possible on this occasion he will do just that, and that all we are seeing at the moment is sabre-rattling to remind the public and the hapless Labour and Green Parties that he, not the Prime Minister, is in charge and drives this government. At the same time, he is none too subtly reminding his government partners that without him and the way he wants to do things, there will be no government.  Ironically, he may well survive until the election, not because he necessarily wants to, but because the Prime Minister knows feeding this tiger is the best way to ensure her own survival, at least in the short-term. But, if New Zealand First’s polling does not recover, even the desperation of this modern-day appeasement may not be enough to keep the house of cards standing.

The National Party will be watching these disruptions with a strong sense of déjà vu. They will be delighted to see Labour being led by the nose, as they were in 1996-98 and now equally powerless to do anything about it. But they should not get too far ahead of themselves. Of course, they would welcome the demise of the coalition, were it to happen. They might even be in a position to form a minority government to lead the country through until the next election, but they would be no better off as such a government would have to pay the price of relying on at least New Zealand First’s abstention on matters of confidence and supply to ensure its survival until then. Even then, given National’s continuing unwillingness to rule out New Zealand First from its electoral calculations, it would have to face the same problem all over again after the election.

Mr Peters’ periodic restlessness is frustrating and unpredictable, and has never provided any contribution to good and stable government. But for him, those are secondary considerations, because his politics are all about putting himself centre stage. While he has judiciously surrounded himself over the years with Caucuses of the timid and the vacuous, they and age are no longer his friends. People are starting to ask what happens next, once he shuffles on, probably sooner than later. New Zealanders have shown him remarkable tolerance over the generations. Very few people, least of all politicians, get more than a second chance in our society, yet this term of government provides a fourth chance for him to try to stay the course.

The logical incentives must be powerful for him to do so, but the old spots are still there. While Labour and National are left helplessly to watch from the sidelines what irrational, Trumpian alarums he will embark upon next to try to recover his support, Mr Peters, true to form, will see that as utterly as it should be, and he will have it no other way.

It is all about him, after all.

Australia’s latest announcement that it intends to toughen its already strict deportation rules, with their likely impact on New Zealanders, is a slap in the face for the diplomacy of the Prime Minister.

Remember that barely two weeks ago the Prime Minister was repeating her assertion to her Australian counterpart that the current policy was discriminatory and a “corrosive” factor in the ongoing relationship between the two countries. Australia’s response was not just to ignore completely her representations, but, now, to also rub salt in the wounds by the latest announcement. In the meantime, various Australian journalists, far less in the Prime Minister’s thrall than their New Zealand counterparts, have been vocal in their cynicism and criticism of the New Zealand position.

All of which leaves New Zealand in a very difficult position. No matter how obnoxious we may feel the Australian policy is – and successive governments since it was introduced in the time of Helen Clark have been vocal in their opposition – Australia has not only snubbed its nose at New Zealand’s protestations, but has now felt sufficiently emboldened to go even further. Successive Prime Ministers have ruled out New Zealand stooping to Australia’s level in retaliation which, although admirable in its own right, has effectively left us with nowhere to go but acquiescence. The more we protest, the deafer Australia seems to become, so more of the same from our part is not going to change anything.

Australia has now roughly and cleverly boxed the Prime Minister into a corner. It has created the perception of a nice, well meaning but ineffectual Prime Minister “concerned” about the treatment of New Zealanders in Australia and refugees on Manus Island versus the pragmatic, realistic Australian leader determined to keep Australia’s borders secure by either deporting undesirables to their country of origin or not letting them in in the first place . New Zealand’s moral outrage is all very well, but starts to lose its impact if it cannot deliver the desired change. This is the dilemma our Prime Minister now has to contemplate.

It is a pity the Prime Minister was in the Tokelaus on a long-scheduled visit when this latest announcement broke, but that does not prove Simon Bridge’s erroneous claim that she is a part-time Prime Minister. However, it does give some substance to his point that she seems far more comfortable in the international limelight than dealing with the immediate problems confronting New Zealand as a country.

If the New Zealand news media in general was far less in awe of the Prime Minister and seemingly unwilling to make life too difficult for her they would be starting to ask some tough questions by now.

For example, what advice has the New Zealand High Commission in Canberra been passing to the Government? Surely it would have been picking up strong messages from the Australian Government over a period of time on its attitude and future intentions on deportations and passing these back to Wellington to better inform our responses? What advice were officials in Wellington preparing for the government on the developing situation, Australia’s increasingly entrenched position, and options for possible diplomatic responses? If the advice was that Australia was increasingly unlikely to budge, what was the rationale behind having the Prime Minister continuing to ride a high moral horse that was not going anywhere? Or was that her decision, contrary to any official advice?

While most New Zealanders will support the Prime Minister’s ongoing concerns, equally most New Zealanders will not like being made a fool of by Australia’s latest decisions. They will be keen to know whether we do have some sort of long-term end game in mind, and that this is merely an unfortunate hiccup on the way, or whether our Prime Minister has simply been comprehensively outplayed by the Australian Prime Minister and his colleagues on the issue. They will want to know whether the one-upmanship of the sports field for so many years has now become the way the political relationship between our two countries will henceforth be conducted.

Above all, they will be looking to the New Zealand news media to start to treat the Prime Minister seriously on these and other issues by asking the tough questions they have shied away from for too long.  She is articulate and able, and deserves to be held to account as such, rather than just continuing to be demeaned by being portrayed as little more than a smiling face on a magazine cover.    

  

---

 [PD1]o

We are pretty good in New Zealand at passing groundbreaking legislation through our Parliament and then leaving it to moulder until some government decides it is not working and should be radically changed.

Seldom do we stop to look at whether the reason for the legislation not working as intended is not so much the legislation itself, as the way bureaucrats and successive governments have chosen to implement it. No, instead we adopt the “baby out with the bathwater” approach, and start all over again, assuring only that without fundamental changes to the way legislation is implemented, the same thing will happen all over again.

Two examples this week highlight the point – the Official Information Act and the Resource Management Act. Both were hailed as far sighted and world leading at the time of their passage, yet both now face the cool breeze of review, once again.

The Official Information Act 1982 introduced the then revolutionary concept that government information should be released to the public, unless there was good reason to withhold it, turning on its head the previous notion that all government information was secret and should be kept so. The Act’s principles still stand up well today, but, over time, problems have arisen with regard to the way requests for official information are handled, with too many instances of unacceptable delays in the processing of requests, or the restrictions on the type of information being released.

Most practitioners of the Act will say there is little wrong with its principles, but much wrong with the way it is administered that should be updated and changed.  Yet, significant modification and updating still seem a long way off, with the government announcing a further delay of at last another three months before it decides whether there should be a review of the Act and the way it works, and despite a preliminary review attracting over 300 submissions calling for more transparency with official information.

At the other end of the scale, the government has announced a complete overhaul for the Resource Management Act 1991. This Act puts environmental sustainability at the core of economic development and replaced the previous mish-mash of more than 54 separate pieces of environmental and planning legislation. A point its critics, probably through sheer ignorance rather than wilful deception, keep overlooking.

However, it was launched in a vacuum in 1991, in part because the then National government did not want to give too much credit to its Labour predecessor for developing the legislation, and in part because of its own deep  antipathy to regional government, which had been intended to play a significant role in the Act’s operation. Consequently, it has never really worked as intended, with central government over the years reluctant to issue any national policy statements, and regional and local governments left consequently struggling to find their proper role. It is little wonder that excessive bureaucracy, decision-making timidity and inconsistency have been the outcome. So now the Resource Management Act is blamed for everything from the housing crisis to climate change, and the knives are out for its replacement.

As with the Official Information Act, making the Resource Management Act work as intended would solve many of the problems associated with it. The previous government tried to do so, but it failed because it found that while attacking the Act and promising to gut its principles altogether was far more attractive to a section of its supporters, there was not a majority appetite in Parliament to do so.

Now the present government is promising a root and branch review of the Resource Management Act, although it is likely to be 2021 at the earliest before any real change proceeds. The Minister for the Environment at least seems cognisant of history, so is unlikely to want to cast aside the principles on which it was founded. But he is also likely to face major challenges keeping both the Greens and New Zealand First on side as the review proceeds, and will come under just the same pressure from development and primary production interests his National predecessors did to simply get rid of the Resource Management Act altogether.  It may end up being all too difficult.

He would be on far safer political ground to make it clear from the outset that the principles of the Resource Management Act are to remain inviolate, but that the real focus of his reform programme will be to make the Act work the way it was originally intended. Such an approach is not only more prudent, but actually has a chance of succeeding and enduring.

Otherwise, some successor Minister in the next decade or so, will have the same bright idea all over again.           

There used to be a school of thought on the centre right side of politics that the best way to neuter the Greens as a political force would be to let them have a spell in government. Then, according to the argument, they would show themselves to be so extreme and so wacky that they would never be elected again.

Well, the Greens are now part of the government, and things have not turned out quite the way those centre right speculators might have wished. Rather than being extreme and wacky, the Greens, on the whole, have been responsible and mainstream. In part, this is due to the Greens’ leadership – particularly James Shaw who is both personable and reasonable – and Ministers like Eugenie Sage and Julie-Anne Genter keeping pretty much to the middle of the government’s road, although co-leader Marama Davidson threatens to go off the tracks every now and then. But, in reality, a bigger reason for the Green’s cautious approach so far, is the chain mail blanket of constraint called New Zealand First which smothers them within the coalition.

The Greens’ problem now is not being so radical as to scare the living daylights out of those nice people in the middle class who vote for and financially support the Greens because they want to keep their native bush outlook in the leafy suburbs and quite like the fact that tui, kereru, and even kaka are becoming much more visible in their neighbourhoods. Rather, their challenge is to appear radical enough to continue to attract the support and activism of the more hard-line environmental idealists on whom they have relied for so long. The Greens’ responsibility in government will be sorely testing their patience. This, coupled with the now traditional loss of support all government support parties suffer, means the Greens can no longer take their presence in the next Parliament for granted, the way they were used to before 2017.

This week’s historic announcement regarding the transition of agriculture into the Emissions Trading Scheme is a good example. This is a significant announcement, given the long term intransigence of the agricultural sector to such a move. The announcement is a small step, admittedly, but it is an important step in the right direction, and it, and the emerging consensus that led to it, are worthy of celebration. But, instead of plaudits for engineering a step forward, the Greens are being criticised by many normally regarded as in their core constituency, including a former co-leader, for not going far enough, being too timid, and still allowing agriculture generally a near free ride when it comes to taking responsibility for its emissions. Compounding this frustration is the announcement that because of a provision in Labour’s coalition deal with New Zealand First, there will be a 95% discount rate meaning that by 2025 agriculture will be required to meet only 5% of the cost of their emissions. Whatever hope there may have been for more progress after the review group’s report has been dashed completely by Labour’s earlier agreement with New Zealand First to limit the cost to farmers to just 5%.

Once again, as has been the case so many times since 2017 on issues of importance to them, the Greens have been left looking a little silly and somewhat politically inept. The question that now raises is how much more humiliation the Greens’ rank and file membership will be prepared to accept before walking away altogether, and simply transferring their support to Labour. Some will stay the course, appreciating that saving the Green brand ranks higher than temporary achievements in government, but others will become more disillusioned, and will start to question whether being part of government is actually worth it,  or whether it is doing more harm than good.

The problem is New Zealand First, not the Greens. But the Greens had the power within their own hands after the last election to have avoided this occurring. It would have been an enormous risk to do so, and would have been extremely difficult to sell to the membership base, or even promote to it, but the best thing the Greens could have done to preserve themselves long term would have been to have formed a coalition with National after the last election.

A National/Greens coalition would have had an outright majority in the House, so there would have no need to involve New Zealand First in any way. They would have been left to moulder in irrelevance on the Opposition back bench, and left to disintegrate. That would have established a largely tripartite structure for the future – National and Labour, with  the Greens as the  permanent party of government, the swing party that could switch between the two over the years, but always ensuring that the Green agenda was part of the government agenda. Had the Greens been prepared to consider such a scenario, National would surely have leapt at it, and would have been prepared to cede virtually the entire environmental agenda to the Greens, so desperate were they to remain in office. James Shaw, not the present incumbent, would have been Deputy Prime Minister, calling the shots on regional development in a considered and environmentally sustainable way, not the crude, pork-barrel way it is happening right now. But, instead, we have ended up with a very inexperienced and not especially talented Labour-led government where the considerably less talented, serially erratic New Zealand First holds all the cards, leaving the rather more competent Greens to just chip in now and then from the sidelines. And National desperately trying to invent a new Blue-Green party to be its salvation in 2020.

Of course all this would have been far easier said than done, and the reluctance of the Greens’ leaders to even consider the proposition for a moment, let alone allow it to go anywhere near the party membership was absolutely understandable and unsurprising. It would have required a level of devious determination and imperviousness to criticism that would have been far too great for most people to even contemplate. And the Greens, as they were once prone to repeat with nauseating frequency, always have been a party of principle, which meant the idea was never a goer.

However, as things have turned out, the irony now is that the earlier wishes of the centre right speculators may yet come to pass, not because the way the Greens have behaved in government has scared the horses, but rather because their timidity and impotence has left their supporters to wonder what was the point of voting for them after all.

 

Greens, seized of the urgency of the climate change debate, in particular, may well decide that cutting out the government middle person altogether, and  putting time and money instead into the likes of activist groups like Forest and Bird and Greenpeace (which they already control)  is a far better and more direct way to take action to save the planet, than relying on the politicians, even the Green ones.

A recent prominent National politician had the so-called Serenity Prayer penned by American philospoher, Reinhold Niebuhr, "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, And wisdom to know the difference" displayed on a plaque on his office wall. It always struck me that the quotation was as much a statement of this person's approach to politics, as it was a reference to religious faith.

Whatever its significance, though, it certainly has relevance to the National Party of today. In its quest to return to power next year it faces many obstacles, some clearly of its own making, and some quite beyond its control. Its problem seems to be making the distinction between the two, let alone focusing on the factors it can influence, and ignoring the rest. National is simply spending too much time chasing parked cars, and not enough time spelling out where it might be different from - and consequently better than - the current government.

A recent good example was the incredible comment from leader Simon Bridges that he was open to working with New Zealand First after the next election if the circumstances made that an option. All that has done has been to confirm New Zealand First's status as a potential kingmaker once more for either the left or the right side of politics. In so doing, it has restored a relevance to New Zealand First that was increasingly lacking, as well as giving disgruntled National voters somewhere to park their vote, in the hope it might ultimately be of help in getting National back into government. It might well be just enough to get New Zealand First over the line again at the next election.

But it is all pie in the sky lunacy. Even if New Zealand First scrapes back into Parliament at the next election, it is not going to work with National, no matter how desperate the blandishments that might be thrown in its path. Mr Peters is this country's ultimate "utu" politician. His driving motivation of the last 30 years has been to make National pay and continue to pay for the way it has treated him in that time - from his expulsion from the first Bolger Cabinet and then the Caucus in the eawrly 1990s, then his sacking as Treasurer by Jenny Shipley, and finally John Key ruling him out as a governing option in 2008 and 2011. Having now achieved office with Labour, there is absolutely no incentive for his returning to his National roots. Utu, after all, knows no time limit.

If all that is not enough to bring National to its senses, the a dose of the realities of history should. New Zealand First's electoral success is normally in direct proportion to the influence voters sense it might have after the election. Hence, the strong showings in 1996 and to a lesser extent in 2017 when it seemed inevitable it would be difficult, if not impossible, to form a government without New Zealand First; and, the far weaker showings in 1999 after the failure of the first coalition, and 2008 when John Key bluntly ruled out any deal with New Zealand First.

Courting New Zealand First, the way Mr Bridges now seems to want to do, plays right into New Zealand First's hands, making them centre stage once again. And that will not end well for National, either in or out of office.

It is time for National to return to the John Key strategy and rule out New Zealand First altogether. While on the face of it this is a high risk strategy for National, it does have some upsides. First, it is a clear message to even the most obtuse National voter that a vote for New Zealand First is no more than a vote to re-elect the current government. Second, because such a declaration immediately would deprive New Zealand First of its ability to play both sides off against each other, it would diminish its relevance, and therefore also increase the possibility of New Zealand First being tossed out of Parliament altogether, (with a significant porportion of its votes transferring back to National?). And third, it would allow National to focus on its story and the message it wants to promote to voters, without having to worry about how that may sit with New Zealand First.

National cannot change New Zealand First's historic antipathy to National. That is not within its ken. but ruling out working with them is certainly something National can change to. All Mr Bridges needs now is the courage and the wit to see the difference.

In a recent column I was very critical of the performance to date of the current Speaker of the House of Representatives whom I suggested was acting in a far more partisan manner than many recent Speakers, and behaving more like the bully boy that he was in earlier years than Parliament’s independent arbiter which the role of Speaker requires. Since that time, the Speaker has further tarnished his reputation with his reaction to the report into sexual abuse and staff bullying within the Parliamentary complex.

However, in the last couple of weeks he has taken a stand on a couple of more minor issues that do have some impact on the standing of Parliament, and he deserves some credit for this. First, was his decision to ban MPs from bringing file boxes in party colours into the Parliamentary Chamber. There was nothing worse than looking out at the sea of red, blue, green or black boxes across the top of desks, looking more like team scarves at the football club, than a Parliamentary Debating Chamber. And then there was his decision to ban party logos from lecterns for press conferences and the like held within the Parliamentary complex. Small moves indeed, but positive steps nonetheless to restore a small measure of dignity to Parliament, for which the Speaker deserves credit.

There is one much more significant issue the Speaker needs to address in this regard. In the days before MMP, the convention was that Members were never referred to by name in the Debating Chamber, but by the name of the electorate they represented, or, in the case of Ministers, the portfolio they held (ie., the Member for So-and-so or the Minister of Such-and-such). With the advent of MMP and list MPs not holding an electorate seat  that convention became impractical, for obvious reasons, and Members started  to be referred to by name. There is no problem with any of that, and no need for change.

But, a whole new language has developed about how list MPs are permitted to style themselves. Rarely does one see the description “X” Party list MP – far more common is the appellation “X Party list MP based in the “Y” electorate, or representing the “Z” region, implying somehow that these MPs who have no direct electorate responsibilities as such have at the same time a de facto role as alternate electorate MPs. Many of them have stood in and been defeated in the electorates they like to claim association with, but this not justify the way they have been allowed to describe themselves over the years. Both the major parties are at fault here - they cling to the practice for two main reasons: first, it enables them to claim an ongoing presence in the area between elections, and perhaps set up a taxpayer-funded electorate office there; and, second, it sends a message to the parties’ local supporters that even though they do not hold the electorate seat, the party still cares for them nevertheless.

Now, however cute and cosy all this might be, it is actually a perversion of the MMP system. MMP draws a distinction between electorate MPs elected to represent a particular geographic locality, and list MPs elected to represent a party’s interests more broadly. If it had been MMP’s intention to have electorate MPs directly elected, and list MPs acting as electorate surrogates, we would have been better placed to have simply gone for multi-member constituencies and MPs being elected on a preferential basis, with no need for party lists. In other words, the Single Transferable Vote or STV system. But we did not. In two referenda New Zealanders opted clearly for the MMP system, and until or unless the public preference changes, it is Parliament’s responsibility to respect and uphold that choice, and not try and make it something else.

And, as Parliament’s person, the Speaker is primarily placed to uphold that responsibility. He is the one best placed to stop the game playing of the parties about how list MPs are described, and to insist that everyone plays the game properly and straightforwardly. To that end, he has the authority to require List MPs to describe themselves exactly as what they are – “X” Party List MP – without the additional embellishment.

When it came to issues like changing the Parliamentary Prayer, or banning the coloured boxes and party logos, the Speaker acted on his own authority, without any obvious consultation with the political parties, which might hsve been the case in earlier times. He obviously calculated that in the end the issues were not that important to MPs to cause more than a day or two’s passing irritation.
The challenge now is for him to show similar courage and independence in respect of the way List MPs are styled, especially as this is an issue MPs are likely to feel somewhat more strongly about. On taking office at the start of this Parliament, the Speaker, consistent with all his predecessors, promised to carry out his duties “without fear or favour”. So here is an opportunity for the Speaker – a List MP himself – to demonstrate that in practice.

Parliament's current Speaker is turning the ancient and venerable institution on its head. Traditionally, the Speaker's role has been a rather conservative, sometimes passive, one to preside independently, without fear or favour over proceedings in the House, to ensure that no Member of the House acts in a way that brings Parliament into disrepute, but that every Member, regardless of how senior or junior they are, or what party they represent has a fair and reasonable opportunity to promote their views on the issues before the House. For those reasons, Speakers of the House of Representatives normally stand aside from partisan political activities during their term, and put a reasonable perceptible distance between themselves and their own party, so they cannot be accused by anybody of any form of political bias.

Mr Mallard seems hell-bent on changing all that. He is a long serving MP, second only in seniority to the Deputy Prime Minister in the current Parliament, and, as a former Whip and Minister, has seen more than most about the management of Parliament. Faced with a new government and a totally inexperienced Prime Minister he seems to have taken on the role of her protector in the cut and thrust of Parliamentary debate, Question Time in particular. While his paternalistic approach towards the Prime Minister may be understandable in the circumstances, it is, at the same time, not only utterly patronising, but, worse, it is completely inappropriate and totally compromising of the presumed impartiality pf the Speaker.

When his innovation of adding or subtracting the number of Supplementary Questions the various parties are entitled to during Question Time as penalties for what he considers bad behaviour is considered as well, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that Mr Mallard still sees himself to be an active player in the Parliamentary game, rather than its impartial referee.

There might less of a debate about the current Speaker's performance if the perception was that his interventions were evenly spread between the Government and the Opposition. But the reality is that because Parliament is the Opposition's main platform for criticising the Government (which, conversely, by the nature of its role has many more opportunities to promote its message) it is the Opposition that always tends to feel most acutely the way it is treated by the Speaker, no matter how partial or impartial the Speaker may be. And that puts an added pressure on the Speaker to be doubly sure that his treatment of the Opposition in the House is not just fair and reasonable, but is overtly seen to be so. That is where Mr Mallard is failing.

Of course, given his experience, he knows full well the various games the Opposition are playing - he has played many of them himself when in Opposition - but that does not mean it is his role as the impartial referee to try and head them off from doing so, before they actually do so. Yet, time and time again, he seems too quick to intervene to cut the Opposition short, to the benefit and delight of the Government. That is not as it should be.

There were examples of all of the Speaker's shortcomings on display in the House this week. His decision to throw the Leader of the Opposition out from Question Time because he was making alleged "barnyard" noises in response to answers being given by the Prime Minister was an over-reaction. Yes, Mr Bridges was at fault because Ministerial answers are supposed to be heard in silence (yet I seem to recall being interjected upon by Mr Mallard many times when answering questions) but his misdemeanour deserved a stern rebuke, not an expulsion.

Even worse, was the Speaker's decision to "Name" Dr Nick Smith - whom he had just expelled - for shouting criticism of the Speaker as he left the House. Now, I have no particular brief for Dr Smith - he can be unreasonable bordering on utterly impossible at times. (Indeed, I well recall trying to negotiate with him about the Resource Management Act, and being told he was only willing to do so if I gave him a prior commitment that whatever happened we would reach an agreement!) But his behaviour, while impulsive and silly, did not justify his being "Named". Being "Named" means an MP is suspended from the service of the House, initially for 24 hours, but in rising amounts if the offence is repeated, and deprived of salary and access to the House's resources for that time. Put into perspective, Dr Smith's offence was akin to the serial parking offender who wrote an abusive letter to the local Council, being sent to jail for 10 years, completely over the top and out of all proportion to reality.

The major part of the Speaker's role is to ensure the smooth running of the House, and the Parliament as a whole. That relies on co-operation from the Opposition, which in turn will be based on the confidence it has in the Speaker. Already, the Opposition has labelled Mr Mallard a "bully", making the prospect of serious co-operation for the balance of this Parliament quite unlikely. And the blame for that can be laid fairly and squarely at Mr Mallard's overly (and overtly) partisan door. He needs to take the lead in repairing the damage he has created so far, and assuaging the view that he is probably Parliament's most biased Speaker in the last thirty years.

Mr Mallard revelled in being Parliament's resident bully boy when he was in Opposition. And he was good at it. But trying to reprise the role from the Speaker's chair to protect the Prime Minister and batter the Opposition is not acceptable. If he carries on this way, he will achieve the dubious honour of being remembered as the Speaker who brought Parliament into disrepute.

Dunne Speaks is taking a brief break, but will be back at the end of June.