Senior ministers have been abroad on national business: trade and climate change. Doing such business well needs a firm, broadly agreed national foundation. Can Parliament measure up?
Not if you judge it by the National-Labour petty points-scoring on swearing-in day last Tuesday.
Shadow leader of the House Simon Bridges withdrew National’s agreement the previous day to back Trevor Mallard for Speaker to leverage an increase in select committee numbers above what he had proposed pre-election.
Colin James’s Otago Daily Times column for 7 November
Bill English’s mission is to stop the new government “frittering away” his government’s fiscal and economic gains.
Jacinda Ardern and Co don’t intend to do that but do aim to fritter away homelessness, child poverty the economy’s low-wage settings and tax privileges for the better-off.
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.