More Sinned Against Than Sinning: Even today, the man they cast as the villain of the piece; the person held responsible for the collapse of the National-NZ First Coalition in 1998; is the man most wronged by the whole sordid event – Winston Peters.
THE MOST CURIOUS FEATURE of the near universal criticism of
NZ First’s waka-jumping legislation is its political amnesia. It’s as if New
Zealand has never experienced a government held in place by the deliberate
perversion of the proportionality upon which the entire MMP electoral system
rests. A government conceived in treachery and kept in office by Members of
Parliament willing to nullify the Party Votes of the electors who put them
there. A government whose blatant betrayal of the new electoral system was
quietly elided from the media narrative. A government whose principal victim
was cast in the role of prime perpetrator. The Government of Jenny Shipley.
To hear the likes of The
Listener and the NZ Herald tell
the story, NZ First’s Electoral Integrity Bill represented a deadly thrust at
the heart of what it means to be a Member of Parliament. Rather than
acknowledge the role of the individual conscience in parliamentary affairs,
they argued, the legislation would turn New Zealand’s MPs into mindless
automatons; unalterably programmed to toe the party line. The historical fact
that New Zealand has been governed by highly disciplined political parties for
the past 80 years is simply not acknowledged by the legislation’s critics.
What these curiously ahistorical critics appeared to have in
mind vis-à-vis the “right” of
parliamentarians to arbitrarily dissolve all moral and contractual obligations
to the political party whose endorsement was crucial to their electoral
success, is the romantic figure of a lonely and tormented MP torn between
loyalty to party and duty to conscience. All of them appeared blissfully
unaware that the actual turncoats of New Zealand’s recent political history
had, with the honourable exceptions of Winston Peters, Jim Anderton and Tariana
Turia, been sitting MPs who had failed to secure re-selection from their party;
become embroiled in scandal, like the ill-starred son of Norman Kirk; or, were
straightforward political traitors. Hardly shining beacons of ethical
responsibility!
Of those exceptions, only Jim Anderton failed to do what the
framers of the Electoral Integrity legislation urged any MP unable to accept
their party’s policies to do – resign and secure a new mandate. Interestingly,
Anderton’s refusal to seek a mandate from the electors of Sydenham, following
his bitter repudiation of the Labour Party, was roundly condemned at the time.
His famous quip: “I didn’t leave Labour, Labour left me” – so oft repeated by
critics of the waka-jumping bill in 2018 – received scant acknowledgement and
even less support from the right-wing pundits of 1989.
It is also interesting to note that when both Winston Peters
and Tariana Turia resigned their seats and were triumphantly re-elected by
their constituents, the news media responded with thinly disguised disdain. The
refusal of the parties they had left to field candidates against them, far from
being seen as a resounding vindication of their position, was used as a means
of belittling both their courage and their success. The electors’ emphatic
endorsement of Peters and Turia was given far less weight by the news media
than the haughty condescension and vicious criticisms of the victors’ former
colleagues.
Which brings us back to the government formed by Jenny
Shipley in August 1998.
The crisis was triggered by the National Party’s decision,
in contravention of the National-NZ First coalition agreement, to privatise its
shareholding in Wellington Airport. When Peters responded by declaring the
agreement void he discovered that no fewer than 8 of his 17 MPs had turned
their coats and were proposing to remain part of Shipley’s new government.
The commitment of Tau Henare, Tuku Morgan, Rana Waitai, Jack
Elder, Ann Batten, Tuariki Delamere, Deborah Morris and Peter McCardle to the
voters who had sent them to Parliament, as well as to the party they had
solemnly pledged to support, was forgotten. The 8 MPs of the far-right Act
Party, which the deposed National Leader, Jim Bolger, had pledged to keep out
of government were now crucial to the maintenance of Shipley’s majority – as
was the bewildered ex-Alliance defector, Alamein Kopu. Shipley and her turncoat
crew were guilty of a constitutional outrage: they had profoundly distorted the
proportionality of the Parliament elected in 1996 and thus made possible a
government which, had the choices of the electors been respected, could never
have been formed.
That the Governor-General of the day, Sir Michael Hardie
Boys, acquiesced in this distortion of the people’s will is only marginally
less outrageous than the distortion itself. The proper course of action would
have been to dissolve Parliament – thereby requiring Shipley and her supporters
to secure a new mandate from the voters. Instead, New Zealanders were forced to
wait another twelve months before passing judgement on Shipley’s “Turncoat
Government”. Unsurprisingly, it was thrown out.
That the critics of NZ First’s waka-jumping legislation have
forgotten these events is extremely telling. It betrays their profound
diffidence towards the whole democratic process. Twenty years on, they are
still unwilling to sheet the blame home where it belongs – with Jenny Shipley
and her motley collection of chancers, zealots and defectors. Even today, the
man they cast as the villain of the piece; the person held responsible for the
collapse of the National-NZ First Coalition in 1998; is the man most wronged by
the whole sordid event – Winston Peters.
Far from undermining our parliamentary democracy, the
Electoral Integrity legislation, which NZ First insisted form a central part of
this new coalition government’s programme, now stands as a solid protection
against any repetition of the constitutional outrage of 1998. That blatant
attack on MMP which Peters’ perennial critics either cannot, or will not,
acknowledge.
This essay was
originally posted on The Daily Blog
of Friday, 5 October 2018.
