Labour is Snookered

Winston Peters is NZ's Actual Prime Minister

Below is veteran columnist, John Armstrong's take on New Zealand's unfolding constitutional revolution.  We suspect that he has failed to grasp fully the political pressures, on the one hand, and the de facto changes to NZ's constitution, on the other. 

 Labour Has Been Outsmarted and Outmanoeuvred

John Armstrong
One News

Don’t listen to those who dismiss the current muscle-flexing by Winston Peters as nothing more than the standard fare of MMP politics.  It is anything but.

Were there a handbook covering the mechanics of forming and running a coalition government, the New Zealand First leader would currently be writing a new chapter—one which would be without a happy ending for Jacinda Ardern, her coalition managers and the rest of the Labour Party.  The latter should be worried — very worried.

It is the ongoing conundrum of multi-party governments that minor parties which behave themselves and keep their heads down have almost without exception have had their heads lopped off come election-time.  Peters seems to be experimenting with the notion that minor parties which are far less polite get noticed by voters rather than being suffocated.

If that is not enough to give Labour grief, Peters appears to be engaged in trying to pull off what would amount to a massive shift in power within the coalition.  Forget cracks about cracks appearing in the coalition’s facade.  Peters, for one, will not be going anywhere. . . .

Peters now has the dream job of foreign minister. Yet, he also remains an absolutely pivotal figure in domestic politics.  With regard to the latter, it is obvious there been a major shift in New Zealand First strategy.


What began as an isolated case of New Zealand First thwarting Labour’s desire to eradicate a hardline law and order statute — namely the three-strikes law — has become what looks suspiciously like a carefully orchestrated campaign which has the junior partner in the coalition making ever more frequent raids deep into territory where Labour would insist it has the right to call the shots.

Labour can tolerate having to keep living with the three-strikes law. It can tolerate not being able to raise the annual refugee quota.  After all, prior to a National government-instigated rise in the quota which took effect this year, the quota had been held at 750 for the previous 30 years, believe it or not.  What Labour cannot accept is its coalition partner blocking its long-promised legislation rolling back some of National’s so-called “reforms” in the industrial relations arena.

If Labour is not seething over that, it should be. The dominant partner has to bite its tongue, however.  To react too strongly to New Zealand First’s intention to put up amendments to the Employment Relations Amendment Bill would be to pour petrol on a bonfire called “Coalition Tensions”.  Few things excite the media than the words “splits” and “divisions”.  Peters hardly needs to be told that.

Labour has been outsmarted and outmanoeuvred by him, however.  He has decreed that anything which is not included in the two parties’ coalition agreement, the Speech from the Throne, which sets out a government’s legislative programme, the Budget or Labour’s 100-day Action Plan is not Government policy.  It is —to use Peters’ term — a “work in progress’’.

New Zealand First is using these criteria, either as a means of blocking or amending Labour initiatives or as a bargaining chip at the Cabinet table.  The moot question is how long Labour can afford to put up with a partner causing such high levels of aggravation.

What Armstrong fails to grasp, it seems, is that Jacinda Ardern is now little more than a titular figurehead.  She cannot win back control of the government.  She knows now that if she fails to accept Winston Peters as the Ringmaster--the actual Prime Minister--her government will fall.  She is in the grip of a relentless vice.  There is nowhere else to go.