Sweet Moderation.

Balancing Act: Looming behind the comparatively modest voting tallies of the minor parties, is the clear preponderance of the votes cast in favour of the major parties. Should push come to shove, with the minor parties refusing to play ball unless their key policies are accepted, the prospect of a Grand Coalition of National and Labour will swiftly emerge as the crucial disciplinary threat.

THE PROBLEM FACING EVERY LEFTIST on 14 October is whether any vote they cast will bring anything resembling progressive change. Gaming it out, the radical voter always loses. There is no combination, short of an absolute majority for either the Greens or Te Pāti Māori (TPM) that holds out the slightest hope of delivering genuine transformational change. And, let’s be honest, the chances of either the Greens or TPM claiming an absolute majority of the Party Vote are as close to zero as makes no difference.

But, for the sake of argument, let’s embrace the most wildly optimistic scenario. Labour, after a surprisingly effective campaign, takes 35 percent of the Party Vote. Somehow, the Greens do enough to hold on to their 2020 Party Vote of around 8 percent. TPM, to the shock and surprise of the pundits, proves the Roy Morgan pollsters right by winning 7 percent of the Party Vote.

On paper, that’s a pretty creditable victory for the Left. Labour with 45 seats, the Greens with 10 seats, TPM with 9 seats: together they command 64 seats – more than enough for an effective coalition to govern. But, honestly, what are the chances of cobbling together a radical programme out of the policies of these three very different political parties? The truthful answer is: Not Good.

With more than twice the number of seats than the Greens and TPM combined, Labour will see no reason why it should not call the shots on all serious policy issues. Having ruled out a whole swag of radical Green and TPM policies in the run-up to the election, Labour’s negotiators would present their plurality of the Party Vote as a clear endorsement of the Government’s moderation. Wealth and windfall taxes would be off the table. GST would remain on food. There would be no state-owned supermarket chain supplied by iwi growers.

In staking out this ground, Labour would receive the near unanimous backing of the business community, the mainstream news media, and (from behind the scenes) the public service. After all, the defenders of the status quo would argue, the combined Party Votes for Labour and National account for more than two-thirds of the electorate. Moderation, they would say, won the election – not radicalism. The radical parties of the Left must, therefore, accept that on all important matters the will of the Labour Party must prevail. Had National and Act secured the majority, Act’s radicalism would have had to be similarly curtailed.

Okay, okay, we know: there is no way the Greens and TPM are about to let themselves be thrust back in their boxes – not this time. This time they’re going to play hard ball: no substantive concessions – no votes. This time, from the cross-benches, the Greens and TPM fully intend to control the flow of events. After all, Labour cannot govern without them. So, this time, it’s Labour that will have to bend.

But taihoa, comrades, you’re not thinking this through! There are no cross-benches for you to sit on – not yet. The summoning of Parliament is one of the very few powers reserved to King Charles III, or his representative (in this case the Governor-General Dame Cindy Kiro) and constitutional convention requires that the Crown be satisfied that one or more of the parties elected is in a position to govern the Realm. And, when the Crown says “govern” it means run the country effectively, efficiently, and reliably for three years. Not precariously, from vote to vote, at the whim of one or more of the minor parties.

And, don’t forget, the person advising the Governor-General through this fraught process will be Chris Hipkins. Sure, he will only be a “caretaker” prime minister, but constitutionally he remains the politician Dame Cindy must turn to first. It will be Chippy who keeps her up-to-speed, vis-à-vis the Greens and TPM, right up to the moment he and his colleagues decide it is time to inform the Governor-General that Labour’s negotiations with the Greens and TPM have reached an impasse.

At that point, Dame Cindy will pick up the phone and direct a few well-chosen questions to James Shaw and Marama Davidson. Will their party allow Chris Hipkins to form a strong and stable administration? Will he be able to rely upon the Greens to refrain from turning every important policy decision into a battle of political wills?

What are the chances, really, of James and Marama saying anything other than “Yes”? And then, what are the chances of the designated representatives of the Green membership tipping New Zealand into a constitutional crisis by refusing to back their leaders?

Not that such a refusal would stop the step-by-step Vice-Regal advance towards a resolution of the developing crisis. Dame Cindy’s next move would be to pick up the phone and direct the same questions to Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa Packer. And their response, almost certainly, would be to put off answering Dame Cindy until the TPM President, John Tamihere, had had a brass-knuckle discussion with Chris Hipkins and Willie Jackson about what Labour needed to do to secure TPM’s unswerving backing.

Were Chippy and Willie to promise moving the constitutional/Te Tiriti debate to the next level, while pouring a truly outrageous amount of money into Whanau Ora, would John, Rawiri and Debbie say “Yes”? Almost certainly, they would. The TPM call to Government House would be made.

All eyes would now be on the Greens – assuming they hadn’t already caved. Once again the phone would ring. This time Dame Cindy would let them know that if they continued to withhold the votes Mr Hipkins needs, then her next call will be to Mr Luxon.

And if that call was made, to whom would Christopher Luxon speak next? Chris Hipkins? Definitely. John Tamihere? Possibly. David Seymour? Not if he’s got any sense. You see where this is going, don’t you?

Certainly, both James Shaw and Marama Davidson are quite intelligent enough to know who will end up getting blamed if New Zealand, driven by their intransigence, moves inexorably towards a Grand Coalition. That’s why, after securing Chippy’s promise of four Green seats at the Cabinet Table, the reply to the Governor-General will be “Yes.”

Because, it is utterly unrealistic to believe that the National Party will keep baling a left-wing government out of its multiplying parliamentary difficulties by ponying-up with the needed votes whenever the PM calls. If that’s the way of things, then why not demand the Deputy-Prime Ministership for Luxon? Why not secure multiple National Party seats at the Cabinet Table? In other words: why not go all-in for a Grand Coalition? Either that, or force a new election.

It just isn’t that easy to hold a whole country to ransom – especially when your party, or parties, emerged from the election with 15 percent of the Party Vote. In the end, a democratically-governed state simply will not attempt to rule in defiance of public opinion. If a clear majority of the electorate declines to vote for the revolutionary option, then – one way or the other – the policies of sweet moderation will prevail.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Friday, 21 July 2023.

A Grand Coalition For Peace, Unity and Democracy.

Co-Leaders? The uncomfortable truth is: not the Army, not the Police, not the Spooks, and not even a combination of all three, could defeat the scale and violence of White Supremacist and Māori Nationalist resistance which the imposition of radical decolonisation – or its racism-inspired defeat – would unleash upon the country. A Grand Coalition of Labour and National is one of the few correctives available to halt New Zealand’s steady drift towards civil war.

THOSE RESPONSIBLE for New Zealand’s national security face problems considerably greater than anti-vaxxers issuing bomb-threats. (Although with an anti-vaxxer currently being held in what sounds suspiciously like preventive detention, on a charge of sabotage, perhaps they’re mistaken!) Over the next 12 months, the NZ Defence Force, the Police, and the SIS – The Forces of Order – will have to decide which group of potential insurrectionists they have the best chance of beating: White Supremacists or Māori Nationalists?

These two extreme tendencies, both of them hostile to democracy, currently stand outside the arena of practical politics. For them to remain there, however, a political environment supportive of traditional democratic principles and, most crucially, supported by all key state institutions, will have to be actively promoted. Not only that, but an emphatic majority of citizens will have to believe the such official promotion is sincere, and that it will not simply evaporate if ordered to do so by radical political actors.

This is a predicament without precedent in New Zealand history. At no point in the 170-year history of responsible government in these islands has the arbitrary introduction of fundamental constitutional change turned on the outcome of an election. Radical changes have been made in the past, but always within the parameters of parliamentary democracy and the rule of law. It is one of the great strengths of our Westminster system of government: that change is always reversible. What’s done can be undone – if the people will it.

If, however, the next general election produces a Labour-Green-Te Pāti Māori coalition government, then fundamental constitutional changes, of the sort recommended in the He Puapua Report, will be introduced. This can be stated with confidence for the very simple reason that an unwavering tripartite commitment to the “decolonisation” and “indigenisation” of Aotearoa’s governing arrangements would be a precondition for any such coalition’s formation. The Māori Caucus of the Labour Party would demand it. The Greens would expect it. And the support of Te Pāti Māori (TPM) could not be contemplated without it.

These constitutional commitments could not be kept hidden from the electorate. Their necessity would be loudly proclaimed in the run-up to the election by TPM as a means of mobilising Māori voters generally, and energising young Māori voters in particular. TPM’s most obvious electoral strategy would be seek all seven Māori seats, while freeing their supporters to cast a Party Vote for Labour by way of compensation. Should TPM win all seven seats, but fail to win a commensurate share of the Party Vote, then the next Parliament would have an “overhang” of Left seats – making it even more difficult for the Right to secure a majority.

Would Labour consent to TPM’s strategy? Almost certainly. On the issues of decolonisation and indigenisation the Labour Party Caucus has demonstrated a firmness of purpose not seen since its predecessor’s embrace of “Rogernomics” back in the 1980s. It was not unusual in the late-80s to hear Labour MPs declare that they would rather lose their seat than reverse their support for Roger Douglas’s radical economic reforms. Faced with the option of repudiating the Treaty “partnership”, and the co-governance measures they believe it mandates, this present Labour Caucus (with a handful of exceptions) would almost certainly evince a similar determination to win through or leave Parliament altogether.

Such a coalescence of the Left around te Tiriti and co-governance would, naturally, generate an equal and opposite reaction from the Right. Any notion the National Party may have entertained of attempting to ride the Treaty-and-Co-Governance tiger would have to be jettisoned hastily. Christopher Luxon would have no choice but to embrace Act’s maximalist anti-separatist/pro-democracy policies as his own. David Seymour’s plans for legislatively defining the meaning of the Treaty, and having the resulting law either ratified or rejected by referendum, would thus be presented as the rock-solid commitment of the National-Act coalition government-in-waiting.

Faced with the possibility of losing every centimetre of ground they had won since 1985, Māori nationalists would make no bones about the consequences of a National-Act Government. The re-colonisation of Aotearoa would be resisted – by any means necessary.

Not to be outdone, White Supremacist groups would make it clear that any attempt to “re-tribalise” New Zealand society, by stripping its citizens of their democratic rights and property, would be met with armed resistance.

How would the Forces of Order respond to such threats? Their first move would likely be against the most ardent promoters of the decolonisation and indigenisation agenda. Senior public servants, vice-chancellors and media editors would be “invited” to moderate their radical stance on the politics of partnership. With “radicalisation” occurring apace among the activists of both camps, the Forces of Order’s top priority would be to “depressurize” the increasingly tense political atmosphere.

At the same time “the usual suspects” of the activist Right and Left would be made the subjects of heightened surveillance. All forms of intelligence gathering would be utilised in an attempt to keep abreast of the White Supremacists’ and Māori Nationalists’ activities. From the perspective of the Forces of Order, the best outcome of such a surveillance programme would be the uncovering of plans by both sides to launch a series of attacks on their opponents – up to and including the assassination of the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition.

In these circumstances, the Forces of Order would be presented with the opportunity to persuade the leaders of the Centre-Left and the Centre-Right to dispense with their respective coalition partners and announce their intention to go into the election as a Grand Coalition for Peace, Unity and Democracy. The urgent necessity for such a dramatic solution could be demonstrated by a few suitably terrifying leaks to the most co-operative media outlets. Poll data, real or concocted, would indicate the public’s overwhelming support for the Grand Coalition. Dissenting MPs from Labour and National could then be purged ruthlessly from their Party Lists. At the electorate level, the candidate from the party assessed as most likely to win would be given a clear run by their coalition partner.

With the Grand Coalition parties promising to respect both the Treaty and New Zealand’s democratic traditions, while spending billions to “close the gaps” between Māori and Pakeha, the political prospects for Act, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori would take a decided turn for the worse.

The Forces of Order would breathe a massive sigh of relief. Principally because the question originally posed: who could they beat? – is a trick question. The uncomfortable truth is: not the Army, not the Police, not the Spooks, and not even a combination of all three, could defeat the scale and violence of White Supremacist and Māori Nationalist resistance which the imposition of radical decolonisation – or its racism-inspired defeat – would unleash upon the country. An uncompromising government’s pursuit of one or the other would simply topple the nation into a bloody civil war.

And who would win that conflict? The answer, almost certainly, is – The Australians. Canberra could not afford to have a failed state on its eastern flank – ripe for the picking by a Chinese regime only too happy to sail to the rescue of whichever side seemed most likely to prevail. The Aussies’ pre-emptive intervention would see Aotearoa-New Zealand become the eighth state of the Commonwealth of Australia.

We would all have lost.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 2 August 2022.