EDITORIAL: MMP Comes Of Age.

National Leader Luxon remains in the box seat to form the next NZ Govt following the counting of special votes. Meanwhile the Greens and Te Pati Maori are riding high, but with a vacuum still unfilled in leadership on the left.

But more importantly - in the last two weeks since the poll MMP is not really functioning as it is supposed to. Chris Luxon is not the "Incoming Prime Minister" he is just the Leader of the National Party and people should not call him such (including Chris Hipkins - and whomever replaces him until he can command the confidence of the house.

Ever since election night a march to a National- NZ First-ACT Govt has been presented as the inevitable and only option in the media and in the street.

This remains a likely outcome. If Winston Peters can agree on terms with David Seymour and Christopher Luxon it will deliver a strong Right leaning govt with an 11 seat majority in the house.

One which may take NZ strongly to the right, delivering cost cutting at a time when the country will be facing global financial crisis headwinds.

But it is not the only option.

And other ones should at least be considered.

The Greens and National could technically form a government with 63 votes in a 123 seat parliament with a bare majority - as could Labour-NZF-Greens-and Te Pati Maori - and this coalition would have a 7 seat majority. Winston would probablyt have to fall out with his current interlocutors for that to happen - but that is not an impossible thing to imagine.

Also for that to happen there would need to be someone on the left in a position of power and influence willing to at least speak to Winston Peters.

For now apparently nobody is. Tomorrow the Labour Party Caucus will meet and hopefully that will fix this. As Chris Hipkins has declared an absolute opposition to talking to NZF he needs to go. 
As of Friday the Greens had not yet talked to Labour. My understanding is that neither had tried to do so - hopefully this has now been fixed.

In simple terms Chris Hipkins has declared a loss before a loss has materialised on election night. He gave up before entering the ring, and is stubbornly maintaining this position. This is deeply disrespectful to both MMP and the voters who voted for left leaning parties who have just as much reason to expect their parties to try to deliver on the policies campaigned on.

In MMP terms this election result is more complicated than most and definitely a watershed in many ways.

It is a maturation of MMP in NZ IMO. A further step on the path towards MMP functioning more similarly to how it operates in Denmark and Germany.

In Germany the Govt. often puts together bespoke support arrangements – i.e. cobbles together cross party majorities to address particular policy issues on the fly.

This also happens here also - the cross party support for the Therapeutics Products Bill being one example. This will now die with Winston Peters however.

The scale of the political superstructure is of course a lot bigger in Germany where the main Parliamentary parties have a depth of detailed focus and experience in their caucuses enabling pluralistic policy debate and options to be contested more openly.

Stakeholder groups are also larger, and better resourced more professional and perhaps a little less captured than ours, as is the public service.

From observation in NZ we way more often than is healthy tend to suffer from group thinking - within both media and politics. For e.g. the persistent view that “Capital Gains and Wealth Taxes are impossible”when in most of the world they and inheritance tax are completely normal and contribute majorly to tax revenus.

From what I have observed in recent months (I returned to NZ in April and May and then again in September a month before this election) There is a tendency for tribalism, special interests (interests of donors and grandees), and loyalty to often prevail over the public interest in terms of good Government. There seems to be too little pride taken in doing a good job. Politics - in lobbyist terms - seems to have been gamified in a very unfortunate manner.

During the election itself many of the policy ideas campaigned on where pure hot air, i.e. impossible to implement - in coherent dog-whistle policy statements on Three Waters and Co-governance were particularly daft. And unfortunately much of this was not called out effectively in the media..

It was alarming how much of the Brash 2005 (Orewa) era of divisive politics has returned.

- A referendum on the Treaty (David Seymour ACT proposed) is legally impossible. Te Tiriti is recognized in law.

- And three Waters and Co-Governance cannot be repealed. Doing so would unravel years of work in preparation address water infrastructure issues which are real and problematic. If the first thing an incoming govt. does is to deliver on this promise it would cause actual chaos, economic and political across the country.

Wiser gallery heads tell me not to worry about this. The manifesto promises will be addressed by tinkering with legislation, and making small legislative changes in wording whist leaving the substance intact.

Co-governance is also not - as Winston Peters said on the campaign debates - “Apartheid.” This is crazy talk.

Te Tiriti is finally being recognised as it ought to be. Incremental progress is beiing made in reconciling NZ-Aotearoa's settlement. In the Seabed and Foreshore case. The Supreme Court found that Water is a Taonga in Te Tirii terms, and that Maori do have rights in relation to its governance. This is settled law. And this is why we have 3 Waters.

Parliament may be sovereign but there are limits to its power. We also have law.

Based on this it is apparent the NZ public have being very cynically manipulated left right and center. National's impressive success to my mind can be attributed to three factors in order of importance.

• House owners are struggling financially and they want house prices to rise - and National was pretty much saying they would do this.
• The age old idea of letting the other team have a go
• The bad blood hanging over from the covid mandates and the Parliamentary occipation
• Poor campaigning by Labour

From a comparative overseas resident perspective the politics of wealth in NZ are deeply dysfunctional.

Labour’s last two terms did a great job of expanding assistance for families into housing. But the work has barely begun. It is vital for this to continue to prevent NZ turning into a nation of haves and have nothings. But a Rigt of Center Govt. with a Roger Douglas/ACT perspective of fiscal activiity means this work may now come to a screaming halt.

A majority of NZers still live in rentals, and renters have next to no rights. How is it that this has not been addressed? 40% of NZers own all the housing and a much smaller group most of the rental housing. In France it is illegal to evict a tennant in Winter. And if you evict a tennant over the age of 65 you have to find them an equivalent rental at the same price. 

Here in NZ have been talking about inequality and the precariat now for a couple of decades but have not really done anything meaningful to address it.

The "apparent" incoming government victors -ACT and National stood (and was well rewarded by the electorate) on a campaign platform focused on sticking a blow torch under property prices at the high end of the market for $2 million plus homes, a policy which seems specifically designed to assist the wealthiest property speculators in the country (including former PM John Key) to get even more wealthy.

Meanwhile the much critiqued “captains call” on wealth tax by Chris Hipkins is doubtless one of the causes for Labour’s routing in the polls.

The public are far from enamoured with either party as a result.

Which is why I think more creativity is needed on the left to prevent what could be a catastrophic level of damage to NZ's economy and society by an even more ill-prepared and experienced National Leadership team than that of Bridges, Mueller and Collins.

Unfortunately the lure of incrementalism and Kiwis’ built in penchant for not rocking the boats of the loud and privileged few maintains an upper hand in NZ .

Monopolies or near monopolies abound. Our Commerce Commission is a damp squib. Our Australian Bank Overlords who have mortgages over a vast portion of our alleged national wealth make 40-50 percent profit margins. Westpac even closed down all its branches in Wellington bar one during Covid. Today it was announced that their profit in NZ had fallen from $1 Billion to $800 million.

An incoming super-neo-liberal National-Act Government (Ruth Richardson was even rolled out in the campaign) with Libertarian like purist approaches to protecting the interests of the wealthy is not what NZ needs.

And Winston is not a natural partner for this. This term is likely his swansong - and this outcome would be literally the antithesis of everything he has achieved over a very lengthy period of political importance. 

Winston has been the politician who has most effectively navigated MMP, over and over again. 

Now he is once again in a position to  potentially put a break on a lurch to the write but seemingly nobody in the media thinks it is possible for him to even consider doing so.

All of this would be alarming enough – but the headwinds NZ is about to face in the wider global economy – which is definitely now heading for a global recession – are such that complacency & walking backwards ought not to be what we are planning to do.

Yet that is precisely what Christopher Luxon, David Seymour, Ruth Richardson, The Taxpayers Union, and Alan Gibbs appear to have planned for us. We are sleepwalking towards a dangerous dystopia where Mark Mitchell (of Dirty Politics Fame) as police Minister may try to get Gang Members to put on makeup to cover their tattoos.

With that in mind I would greatly appreciate it if the currently apparently somnolent left party leadership - Rawiri (TPM), James(GRN) and Chris(LAB) would wake up and at least engage Winston in a conversation about the future of NZ, instead of hiding away and leaving everything to Luxon and Seymour.

As I said at the beginning of this editorial there is a path to forming a Center-Left Govt in the results of this election.

It would be a Labour-Greens-NZF-TPM Govt. It is no more legitimate or illigentimate than a three party Govt led by National. It would have a 7 seat majority which should make it stable. The electorate also voted for this just as much as they did for a National Govt.  And many of the older left leaning voters who switched votes to Winston in the closing weeks did so expressly for the purpose of wanting Winston back in a position where he could put a break on National-Act excesses. This is not a new rodeo.

It is time for the left to wake up and for the prospect of a center left coalition to be talked up. It ought to be at least pursued -even one thought it impossible -  if only to increase Winston’s leverage wrt policy excesses that a Luxon Seymour Govt. has already told us it intends to pursue.

But the main reason it should be pursued is because if it is not, then the Labour Party, Green Party and Te Pati Maori Party would be effectively being disrespectful to the electorate.

ENDS

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