Don Brash announced yesterday that the ACT Party, if it still exists after November, may not go into formal coalition with any government.
And nor should they
A principled party would not need to.
And a party with John Banks holding the anchor seat would not want to.
Hone Harawira and Rodney Hide may both have a point.
Both of them are at odds with law they’ve given their vote to. And both are blaming being in coalition for the problem.
Hone is complaining that what the Maori Party has got in return for going into coalition with National government isn’t worth what they’ve given away—and, specifically . Now, Tariana herself responds that Hone “has no respect for this [MMP] environment. He doesn’t have any respect for the coalition agreement that we all signed up to and that we all agreed to.” And she points out that when the Maori Party has only two ministers around a cabinet table of 22, then they will always have to give something away—as they did with the parts of the Foreshore and Seabed (Replacement) Bill that has got so far up Hone’s nose.
And Rodney? Well, he’s right in the gun as Minister for Local Government for delivering to Auckland legislation that allows Len Brown’s Auckland Super-Council to hand power to a $3.4 million board of 38 unelected Maori. How does Hide respond? His law but not his fault, he says. Echoing Tariana he argues that with only two ministers around a cabinet table of 22, there was nothing he could do to stop his law being changed. (Echoing his excuses when he said he had no choice about siding with John Key when the PM attacked one of Rodney’s own MPs.)
Thus do minority ministers become lapdogs.
What Hone and Hide and Tariana are all describing is the process whereby minority coalition partners under MMP are buried when in Government—as virtually every coalition partner under MMP has been.
The Maori Party may escape the curse of the Alliance, NZ First, Mauri Pacific and Te Tawharau because even if they implode over the rumblings from Mt Harawira the Maori Party itself will always get deluded racists to vote for them in the racist seats in which they stand. But for the ACT Party, oblivion now beckons as inevitably as it did for its predecessors who made lapdogs of themselves.
But is it inevitable that minority parties under MMP will always face oblivion?
Not if they don’t go into coalition it isn’t.
It’s argued by the uninformed and unthinking that coalition and “confidence and supply” are necessary to give “stability” to government. These agreements work, these people say. Minor parties have to sign up to them.
What crawling, abject, self-serving nonsense.
If “confidence and supply” agreements have “worked,” then they have worked only for the larger party, which in every coalition formed to date has chewed up, swallowed then spat out its minor partners.
And they’ve hardly worked for New Zealand either, since some of the worst law we’ve seen in the last fifteen years has been either the product of a minor party (Sue Bradford’s tail wagging everyone’s anti-smacking dog, for just one example); been used to make a beard of the minor party (as Hone recognises has happened with Chris Finlayson’s Marin & Coastal Bill); or has been foisted on a minor-party minister in the hope and expectation that if things do go wrong it will bury them and not the major party (Auckland’s super-sized bureaucracy, for example, in which Rodney Hide invested his party’s dwindling political capital—and which he’s now lost altogether).
We’ve ended up in short not with good law, but with law that often even the law’s authors won’t stand behind.
So in that respect, signing up to coalitions and “confidence and supply” agreements are bad for New Zealand, bad for New Zealand law, and disastrous for the minor coalition partners themselves.
But still the dumbarses keep signing up to take the (short-term) baubles of office.
Is that they only thing a small political party can do?
No, it’s not. Instead, they could stand on their principles—if they had any.
Instead of signing up to either coalition or “confidence-and-supply” agreements,” they could make the cast-iron promise that as a party they would vote en bloc for any measure that moves in the direction of their principles without any new measures moving the other way. In the case of the Libertarianz, for example, they could promise support for any measure that moves towards more freedom (however small the move) just as long as there is no new coercion involved.
That would stability without the need for lapdogs, and more stability than we’ve seen in the past 15 years.
Because that’s a cast-iron promise that any major party could take to the bank-or, at least, to the Treasury benches. It would work as a “ratchet,” moving the country towards the minor party’s principles more effectively than having two ministers enjoying the baubles (and blame) of office.
And it would have every politician and every political journalist in the country assiduously studying what the minor party’s principles actually mean, so they’d understand enough about what was being promised to at least sound knowledgeable.
It’s a win-win for everyone, especially for minority coalition parties for whom coalition is just a death warrant for .
If they have any principles, they should stand on those instead.
Every bullfrog and his leg-rope is giving British Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg advice on what he should do next, even NZ bloggers—and Rodney Hide--which is odd, when you think about it, because a fortnight ago very few of those bloggers (or Rodney Hide) even knew who Clegg was; and because Clegg is unlikely to be reading New Zealand bloggers to pick up tips on what to do next.
And even odder still, since so much the advice being proffered consists of telling Clegg to sign up for a “confidence and supply” agreement in return for action on some sort of proportional representation system.
Why is that so odd? It’s odd for two reasons.
First, the Brits are already gun-shy, now, at the horse-trading and log-rolling they’re seeing as a result of this hung parliament, an unusual result in the first-past-the-post system they’ve enjoyed for centuries. So how are they going to feel about the person or party who resolves this present uncertainty by offering much more of it; who delivers a system that virtually guarantees this kind of wheeling and dealing necessary after every election, and every time any major piece of legislation is being discussed.
I suspect that “gratitude” isn’t the word that will be used.
Second, most of the recommendations from local bloggers have averred that “confidence and supply” agreements have “worked” here in New Zealand. But have they? Just take a roster of every party here who’s signed up to a “confidence and supply” agreement with one of the big parties, and see where they are now. Alliance, NZ First, Mauri Pacific, Te Tawharau… Most of them now gone and all-but forgotten, all of them wiped out by their association with government and the ministerial baubles they were offered—burned off by their closeness to power, and inability to sufficiently distinguish themselves from their larger partner. (To which list you can add ACT, for whom extinction now is only a matter of time; but not the race-based Maori Party since their existence is uniquely backstopped by holding race-based seats, nor Jim Anderton’s and Peter Dunne’s one-man bands—whose existence has been maintained by force of personality. This last, by the way, is a joke.)
So if “confidence and supply” agreements have “worked” they have worked only for the larger party, not for their erstwhile smaller partners that have been chewed up and spat out just to maintain the larger parties’ grip on power—and it’s hardly worked for New Zealand either, since some of the worst law we’ve seen in the last fifteen years has been either the product of a minor party (Sue Bradford’s tail wagging everyone’s anti-smacking dog, for just one example), or has been foisted on them in the sure expectation it will bury them (Auckland’s super-sized bureaucracy, anyone, in which Rodney Hide has invested his party’s little remaining political capital,and for which he’s enthusiastically made himself the scapegoat), and it’s certainly produced most of the worst political grandstanding anyone would ever want to see (a chocolate fish for every time Winston Peters has staged a walk-out would leave you feeling as sick as we all do when his face pops up on our TV screen).
So in that respect, signing up to a “confidence and supply” agreement is hardly the sort of advice Mr Clegg should take, is it, unless he wants to be reduced to a Dunne-like rump. (And who would want that ignominy?) No, the simple fact is that “confidence and supply” agreements have been disastrous here for every smaller party propping up a larger one.
No. A much better option for a minor party, one I’ve always favoured ahead of either coalition or “confidence-and-supply” agreements,” is the cast-iron promise that as a party you would vote en bloc for any measure that moves towards more freedom (however small the move) just as long as there is no new coercion involved.
That’s a cast-iron promise that any major party could take to the bank-or, at least, to the Treasury benches. It would work as a “ratchet,” moving the country towards more freedom one baby step at a time. And it would have every politician and every political journalist in the country assiduously studying what freedom actually means, so they’d understand precisely what was being promised. [About which, more here.]
Mind you, however, to make such a promise the party themselves would need to have some sort of firm commitment to maximising freedom, and removing unnecessary controls. So in that respect, since that project and those principles are is of absolutely no interest to Clegg’s clog-wearers, that advice is about as useless as all the rest of the advice Mr Clegg is now getting.
But at least I’m sufficiently self-aware to know that.
UPDATE: Devil’s Kitchen makes his own prediction:
“You can bet your last penny that—no matter what the outcome is of the backroom deals that are currently being undertaken—the resolution will have been arrived at not for our benefit, but theirs.
“The idea of a hanged Parliament continues to look ever so attractive...”
And, on the splits that are delaying all the various “three-ways” being proposed,
“Of all the three main parties, it is the split in the LibDems that has always been the most apparent. On one side you have the (mostly) classical liberal Orange Bookers and, on the other, the completely hat-stand, socialist, sandal-wearing element.
“I am sure that the Labour Party is just gearing up for a massive internal punch-up but, in the meantime, I suspect that it is the LibDem ferrets who are fighting in that sack...”
To quote the great philosopher Tom Waits, "The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away." David Farrar has all the small print about the 'coalition' deals between National & Act, National & Peter Dunne Nothing, and National and the Maoris. I'm going to try and digest the details before commenting too much, and suggest you do the same.
In the meantime, how about thinking about a decent acronym for the new National/United/Maori/ACT Government? NUM-nuts is the best I've thought of.
UPDATE 1: From the NACT agreement:
"National agrees to a review by a special select committee of Parliament of the current Emissions Trading Scheme legislation and any amendments or alternatives to it, including carbon taxes, in the light of current economic circumstances and steps now being undertaken by similar nations."
On the surface, this is great news. But I wonder which party, ACT or National, the "review" of the Emissions Trading Scam is intended to protect? That is, is it a review designed to quietly extinguish the scheme, as I would like, and on which ACT campaigned? Or to delay implementation of National's own ETS scheme?
And when will we know for sure?
In any case, the Appendix to the NACT agreement gives more details of the terms of reference for the proposed Climate Change Select Committee, which potentially offers plenty of scope to "hear competing views on the scientific aspects of climate change from internationally respected sources and assess the quality and impartiality of official advice" -- i.e., to point out the many warmist myths on which policy has to date been prepared.
One would hope that such a committee would prove as impartial and objective as the Royal Commission that so glorious kicked the Genetic Engineering bogey out of the park. "Technology is integral to the advancement of the world," they said. "Fire, the wheel, steam power, electricity, radio transmission, air and space travel, nuclear power, the microchip, DNA: the human race has ever been on the cusp of innovation. Currently, biotechnology is the new frontier. Continuation of research is critical to New Zealand's future."
I look forward to a similarly ringing burial of the warmist mantra.
UPDATE 2: Blair M likes the NACT Agreement. Gives ACT a soapbox and the Tories a spine, he reckons -- although it could also be a 'Public Choice form of National 'privatising their gains' and nationalising their dead rats by blaming them on the smaller party.
UPDATE 3: And Lindsay Perigo congratulates Rodney Hide on his Local Government appointment, although he doesn't seem to realise the portfolio doesn't unfortunately cover the RMA. That's Environment. And the loathsome Nick Smith's got that portfolio sewn up -- he's the worm who calls the RMA "far-sighted environmental legislation."