Parliament has risen for the year. MPs won’t be back in the House until February. It is an opportune time to reflect on a year which, if not as tumultuous as the election year which preceded it, was not short of drama, intrigue and — in the case of Jami-Lee Ross — the downright weird.
It is time to put the hurly-burly politics of 2018 into proper perspective. It is time to point out the things that really mattered this year. It is time to make mention of the things that should have got more mention, but got crowded out of the picture.
Shock! Horror! It's actually working
Jacinda Ardern’s initially rickety-looking three-party combo is not merely functioning. It is governing. True, the past 12 months has witnessed a degree of friction between the partners in the current administration.
The surprise has been that the bulk of the bickering has been between Labour and New Zealand First — and not the latter and the Greens, as most people expected. The internal tensions between the governing partners which were evident during the winter — and which prompted sham, artificial and empty displays of unity —appear to have ebbed away.
The focus of the Opposition and political media has also shifted. Instead of searching for cracks in the structure of the government, those forces are applying their collective blowtorch to ministerial incompetence — something which has been Labour's exclusive preserve during 2018 and which is likely to be an ongoing headache for Ardern in 2019.
Poodle or pit bull?
Has Winston Peters finally come up with the cure to the disease which afflicts New Zealand’s proportional representation-based electoral system? Signing up to the role of minor partner in a governing coalition has been to sign a death warrant — your own. Peters' latest elixir for remedying this condition has been a carefully-nuanced display of the extent of New Zealand First’s leverage as Labour’s coalition partner.
It has meant Peters demonstrating a capacity to amend Labour-driven policy. But it also has him not overplaying his hand. It means New Zealand First being seen to suffer policy defeats as well as securing policy gains. Peters has also had a message for the political media: stop portraying every tiff between the partners in a multi-party government as a potential coalition-breaker.
Will this help New Zealand First — currently languishing with less than 4 per cent backing in recent opinion polls — claw its way above the 5 per cent threshold? Who knows. Still— along with Peters trying to reinvent himself as "Mister Reasonable" and Shane Jones taking big punts in pouring cash into projects which might or might not create jobs in the provinces — New Zealand First has a strategy for survival.
A couple of matters of note about Jacinda Ardern
There is no need to provide yet another catalogue of the Prime Minister’s undoubted strengths, suffice to say that Ardern — on current form — is an insurmountable obstacle to National returning to the Government benches after the next election in 2020. Of major worry for National ought be the increasing evidence of her having the political instincts so vital in her "chairman of the board" role.
That comes down to spotting danger before it can damage the Government. It is all about constantly judging the mood of the electorate and responding accordingly. It is about calling a halt to policies which are unpopular, rather than constantly lecturing voters as to why those policies are good for them. As Mike Moore, a former Labour leader, loved to say, the voters are always right even when they are wrong.
Ardern’s guarantee that there will be no more regional fuel taxes while she is Prime Minister serves as a prime example of her putting the "prime" into prime minister. Much less impressive has been Ardern’s occasional tendency to try and hoodwink voters either by being economical with the truth or telling outright porkies.
Her insistence that New Zealand was ahead of the international pack in pointing the finger at Moscow for the attempted assassination of the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal would be laughable had the consequences of the poisoning had not turned out to be so tragic.
Her fibbing by omission on Newstalk ZB with respect to the timing of Claire Curran’s resignation as a minister was similarly unacceptable. So far she has got away with blatant embroidering of the truth. At some point, however, she is going to be caught out. It all adds up to an accident waiting to happen.
The rebel without a cause — or applause
Dissidents, mavericks, renegades, subversives.. Call them what you like. There have always been MPs who fall out with the leader of their party. They normally find themselves being handed a one-way ticket to the political wilderness which is a seat on Parliament’s back benches.
But "normal" does not exist in the upside-down, inside-out world inhabited by Jami-Lee Ross.
Embattled MP Jami-Lee Ross released the latest recording this morning. (Source: Other)
His fixation with destroying Simon Bridges was so all-consuming that he was oblivious to the collateral damage he was doing to the wider National Party.
That alone was treachery in the extreme. Ross' clandestine taping of his phone conversations with a supposed close friend and political ally, along with his putting leading questions to Bridges in the hope that National’s leader would say something which would incriminate him to such a degree that it would force Bridges’ resignation was a new low in the handbook of dirty tricks.
Perhaps most extraordinary of all was Ross' willingness to sacrifice everything he had achieved in politics —including a seat on National’s front-bench — to topple Bridges. Ross must have been aware his actions would end his political career. Indeed, he has rendered himself as unemployable. He didn’t appear to give a hoot. The end-game was bringing down Bridges. Nothing else mattered.
Ross made it as difficult as possible for Bridges to follow the usual steps that party leaders take when dealing with such nuisances. This political horror story to beat all political horror stories was further complicated and compounded through being intertwined with Ross' mental health issues.
Bridges was acutely aware that coming down hard on Ross would see him being accused of picking on someone who was unwell. There are accompanying questions which no-one seems prepared to ask. Did Ross exploit public sympathy for his suffering mental health issues? Did he blame his ailment for his actions? Did he use his medical condition as a shield to hide behind and to handicap how Bridges was able to respond to his treachery? You can be the judge of that.
But the answer surely can be found in the almost complete lack of public sympathy for Ross. Unfortunately for Bridges, neither did the public give any marks to him for what was his very deft handling of an imbroglio which was not just in National’s backyard but which came crashing through the party’s front door.
Bridges’ many critics simply don’t want to know, however. He has instead become the butt of jokes told by just about every comedian in the country. That might seem a crude measure of Bridges’ chances of remaining National’s leader beyond the short term. But the laughter generated by cracking jokes at his expense is a strong indication that most people no longer treat him seriously and that they have written him off.
The mouse that roared
The "Pacific Reset" coded warnings about China’s expansionist inclinations; the purchase of mega-expensive, American-made surveillance aircraft; pleas for the United States to do more in this part of the world. Winston Peters is making it patently obvious as to which side of the Washington-Beijing power struggle he thinks New Zealand should be standing. How comfortable is Labour with that?
Whatever happened to the "build" in KiwiBuild?
They say the devil is in the detail. Too right. Labour’s implementation of its seemingly easy to action pledge to build 100,000 new affordable homes over the next 10 years bears all the hallmarks of a sackful of Satans running amok. Look hard enough and you will see the worry lines furrowing Housing minister Phil Twyford’s brow come close to outnumbering the-affordable homes erected so far under the banner of KiwiBuild.
Those who made a difference in 2018
Andrew Little. A stellar performance across all his ministerial portfolios, second only to the Ardern Show.
Shane Jones. Like him or loath him, Hew Zealand First’s self-proclaimed "retail politician" finally stepped up to the plate and delivered big time.
The Regional Economic Development Minister said he made the comments in a closed meeting. (Source: Other)
The Greens’ Eugenie Sage. At long last, someone is in charge of the Conservation portfolio who sees the job as much more than a means to be photographed while holding cute-looking cuddly animals.
Kris Faafoi. One of a handful of Labour Party ministers who are categorised as being "outside the Cabinet." The Mana MP is surely top of Ardern’s list for promotion. Has made the most of some minor portfolios such as Consumer Affairs and Civil Defence. Smart, calm and measured. Has the Broadcasting portfolio relinquished by Clare Curran to keep him occupied for now. As a safe pair of hands, he is surely destined to get his mitts on much bigger things.
And one who didn’t
Labour’s Clare Curran. Her sacking from the Cabinet and then the ministry as a whole was — in the end — much ado about not very much.
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