Jacinda Ardern’s intricately-interlocked ministry is in place. The BIMs have been delivered. One will likely open a door to a wide new space Ardern will want to drive into.
A BIM is officials’ “briefing to the incoming minister”. In 2014 ministers heavily redacted many, which reflected badly on officials’ supposed party-political independence. Earlier this year officials briefed ministers on Winston Peters’ superannuation.
Yesterday was Labour Day. Actually, it was Labour day last Thursday, courtesy Winston Peters. And this is Labour week as Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern settles in — well, zips in.
Stale white males from Richard Prebble up are harrumphing that she won’t last, that hers will be a fractious or chaotic one-term government at most.
Usually domestic matters are top of mind for a Prime Minister. But whoever is Prime Minister — still unknown at the time of writing — will face what may be the biggest foreign policy challenge in a generation.
This will be so whether New Zealand First chooses a two-bloc arrangement — National plus New Zealand First versus Labour plus Greens — or a three-way deal with Labour plus Greens.
There has been much grumping that Winston Peters and New Zealand First, with a 7.2% vote, decide who leads the government. That’s MMP.
These grumpers, who tend to be beneficiaries of the current economic paradigm, brush off the two democratic votes for the MMP system, in two referendums in 1992-93 and one in 2011.
To borrow the formula for English monarchs: the Maori party is dead; long live the Maori party. But who will the successor be?
That is the question Tariana Turia, Pita Sharples, Te Ururoa Flavell and Marama Fox leave behind them at their party’s tangi.
In Treaty of Waitangi terms that is both an article 2 and article 3 question.
While politicians dance their coalition gavotte, there is time to ponder big issues.
Election campaigns foreshorten policy horizons from causes to symptoms in pursuit of here-and-now votes.
But the looming 2020s are likely to continue the digital reshaping of our lives and require major policy adjustments in tax, regulation, economic management and social services, assistance and equity.
National operates on the principle that in politics there is only first place because that is where the power is. So assume Bill English is prepared to pay what it takes to get Winston Peters on board.
Peters meanwhile has adopted his habitual sphinx-like position. It may be some time before we know for sure the government makeup.
Here’s Labour’s tax slogan: “Let’s do this but not yet and maybe not at all.”
Last week Labour pushed the panic button — a week after Steven Joyce’s backfired panicky attempt to dig a big hole in Grant Robertson’s fiscal numbers.
Helped from the sidelines by Winston Peters demanding Labour come clean, Joyce’s “show us the numbers” tax assault forced a Labour retreat to safe ground. National might want Joyce as campaign chair next time after all.
In the back rooms, some public servants say, Steven Joyce can be a bully. This past week bully Joyce has been roaming in the open.
He even infected the usually (though not quite always) courteous Bill English. National turned into the nasty party.
Result: National looks discombobulated. Result: some voters sense National thinks it might lose. They look around.
There is one certainty in this election of upsets, diversions and sudden career endings: Parliament will be younger. The under-40s will swell in number. So will the lower-40s.
Already there are 11 under-40 MPs: four in Labour, including its leader, four in National, two Greens and one in ACT.
On parties’ recent polling averages up to late August that would double to at least 21 — more than one-sixth of Parliament.