I’ve expressed the opinion in the past that I’d rather have a National government than see Labour go into coalition with New Zealand First. I take it back. After the scariest election campaign I’ve ever seen, Winston Peters as Foreign Minister seems to be a small price to pay to keep National out of the government. It’s unfortunate and unpleasant, but it could have been so much worse.
I’m disappointed to see the Greens shut out of any formal coalition arrangements, but I can see the logic of it. The Greens are not going anywhere, and Labour knows it can rely on their support. But New Zealand First and United are more risky, and locking them into a tighter working relationship ensures that National is left with fewer options. For a large party like Labour politics is all about controlling the Centre, and their influence now runs all the way from the left to the centre-right and beyond. They’re shoring up their position as the natural party of government in a way they couldn’t have done with a Labour-Progressive-Green coalition.
It also remains to be seen exactly how much influence the various parties will have. After the items agreed to in the coalition talks have been seen to, I rather suspect that Winston won’t have much further input into actual policy. He’s clearly being kept at arms length from anything to do with immigration, and Aunty Helen will presumably continue to do a great deal of Foreign Affairs work.
The Greens, on the other hand, will have a continuing relationship with Labour, and may be able to get quite a few of their policies implemented, even if they don’t have the Green name on them. That would be a problem for other minor parties, but the Green brand is strong and they’re not in danger of disappearing from public view. If they ever fell below the 5% threshold and disappeared from Parliament altogether they could still turn up at the next election and everybody would know who they were and what they stood for. So they have the luxury of being able to talk actual policy instead of fighting for media attention. When Budget time comes around it’ll be interesting to see how many green-tinged programmes get the green light.
The evolution of New Zealand politics since the arrival of MMP is particularly interesting. We’ve moved from one-party governments to formal coalition agreements to loose coalition agreements to loose agreements on supply and demand. I like seeing the rigid distinction between Government and Opposition being broken down.
Helpful, cheers.