Over the next 15 months, the clear strategic imperative for all three Coalition partners is break-out. Each must seize as much of the Right’s ideological territory as possible for themselves

By Chris Trotter*

"He said what!" David Seymour’s response to Tama Potaka’s less-than-fulsome endorsement of Act’s beleaguered Regulatory Standards Bill (RSB) is readily imagined. Interviewed by Jack Tame on TVNZ’s Q+A show, Potaka floated the possibility that Act’s legislation might be reported back to the House of Representatives with recommendations relating to te Tiriti and tikanga.

That is fighting talk.

Did the Minister of Māori Development not get the Memo? Could Potaka really be unaware of Seymour’s public warnings that the RSB is to be passed – entirely unmolested by second thoughts? That it’s a non-negotiable element of Act’s coalition agreement with National?

Seymour was unable to convince his coalition partners to pass Act’s Treaty Principles Bill. That’s why he’s telling National and NZ First that if they step back from their commitment to the RSB, then all bets are off.

But, would the Act leader and his parliamentary caucus colleagues really walk away from the Coalition and move to the cross-benches? More to the point, would they be willing to vote against their former partners, or even abstain from voting, and allow Labour, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori to defeat the Government? Are they prepared to precipitate an early election?

One must assume that they are willing to exercise “the Samson option” of bringing down the house, because if they are not, then their followers will feel, rightly, that they have been betrayed. Act’s electoral fortunes could then be expected to take a sudden turn for the worse.

On the other hand, taking a stand on the principle that once a political party’s word is given, then it must be honoured, would likely achieve a number of important Act objectives.

Not the least of these would be slowing the steady rise of NZ First as the Right’s honest broker. Winston Peters ‘going first’ in the role of deputy prime minister allowed him to strengthen his credentials as the Coalition’s reliable ‘voice of reason’. The man whose commitment to economic and political stability has encouraged a growing number of conservative New Zealand voters to view NZ First as being indispensable to both.

Seymour and his colleagues cannot be unaware that Peters’ ‘soul of moderation and responsibility’ routine is one the Act leader will now be expected to replicate. Quite apart from the fact that David Seymour doesn’t really do moderate and responsible – preferring, instead, the role of the political disrupter and agenda-setter – the expectations which Peters has shrewdly laid across the shoulders of his electoral rival are calculated to leave all the running on the Right to NZ First and National.

The role of deputy prime minister demands a large measure of statesmanship. Unfortunately, in the current political climate, statesmanship does not win elections. In an acutely polarised ideological environment, where extreme solutions attract many more votes than ‘sensible’ policies bearing the Establishment’s’ seal of approval, the gravitas expected of prime-ministers and their deputies confers scant electoral appeal.

Over the next 15 months, the clear strategic imperative for all three Coalition partners is break-out. Rather than hanging together, it makes much more sense for National, NZ First and Act to hang separately. Each must seize as much of the Right’s ideological territory as possible for themselves.

Act and NZ First have always understood that, when it comes to increasing their share of the Party Vote, the primary target must always be National. Leonard Cohen used to sing: “First we take Manhattan/Then we take Berlin”. In the case of the smaller right-wing parties, it’s more a case of “First we take as much as we can off National, then we take the support that Labour has burned-off.”

That this is what their “partners” are planning is hardly news to National’s election strategists. To counter such political cannibalism, National’s objective is clearly to highlight the tail-wagging-the-dog problems associated with minor parties attracting excessive voter support. Accordingly, Christopher Luxon’s appeal to the electorate must be for a large enough share of the Party Vote to put Act and NZ First back in their boxes.

As Prime Minister, John Key could turn for support to the Māori Party on his left, and Act on his right. Crucially, neither of these ‘friends’ were in a position, numerically, to pull-the-plug on his government. That’s because John Key could rely upon his party attracting a Party Vote in the high-40s. National’s problem in 2025 is that it has been unable to get anywhere close to Key’s levels of support.

That could change, however, if Luxon and National were willing to cry “taihoa!” on the ‘nonsense’ policies of Act and NZ First. Indeed, a very large chunk of the right-wing vote has been crying out for Luxon to do exactly that for a very long time. Luxon’s less-than-stellar performance in the preferred-prime-minister stakes is, almost entirely, born of the perception that he lacks the spine to call his coalition partners into line.

With all these factors in play, it isn’t hard to develop narrative political arcs for the next few months.

Seymour can be expected to demonstrate zero willingness to acquit himself as a traditional deputy prime minister. His mission, rather, will be to demonstrate the political courage required to expose the timidity and conventionality of his coalition partners. Requiring National and NZ First to keep their promises to pass the RSB, as-is, and being seen to do so, would be the best start.

Winston Peters and NZ First face the less daunting, but ultimately more rewarding, challenge of presenting themselves as the champions of traditional, decent, and fair-minded New Zealanders. The voters who have had enough of ideological radicals and political cowards. Essentially, Peters’ job is to drive home the simple message: “You can’t risk a Parliament without us in it. Think of NZ First as your insurance policy against political extremism.”

National’s break-out strategy is unquestionably the most difficult, and the most risky. From presenting as a rather detumescent collection of middle-managers: neither fish nor fowl; radical nor conservative; National needs to show that it has recovered – to borrow Luxon’s own term – its “mojo”.

Seymour and Act, in particular, need to be put firmly in their place. That means courting Act’s rebellion by drastically redraughting, or withdrawing altogether, the RSB. Providing National holds its nerve, this is a no-lose strategy. If Seymour flounces-off to the cross-benches, then, fine, ask Dame Patsy to dissolve the House and issue the writs. If he meekly bows to National’s will, then, even finer. Luxon’s ample supply of mojo will have been demonstrated, and National’s poll-numbers should improve markedly.

Labour would, of course, deride the all-too-obvious disunity of Luxon’s government and offer itself as the moderate and responsible alternative. And, who knows, it just might work (provided the Greens and Te Pāti Māori could be persuaded to shut-up and nod enthusiastically).

A left-wing victory at the polls could only be won, however, if Labour, by some miracle, was able to come up with a suite of moderate and responsible policies that stood even a remote chance of being translated into an improved economy and a happier country.

That would be the sort of break-out nearly all New Zealanders could get behind.

*Chris Trotter has been writing and commenting professionally about New Zealand politics for more than 30 years. He writes a weekly column for interest.co.nz. His work may also be found at http://bowalleyroad.blogspot.com.