Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Photo / File
COMMENT:
While National languishes, Jacinda Ardern's Government is now cemented as the seventh term of the Clark-Key regime.
Grumbles are growing on the extreme left, but if there is nothing to excite the left, that means there's even less to agitate the right. Half-way through their first term, there is much less about Ardern, Winston Peters, Grant Robertson and even the Greens to concern business than feared.
Robertson's conservative Budget Responsibility Rules are the anchor maintaining policy stability, but are not alone. With Labour's election promise not to change current personal income or corporate tax rates and Ardern ruling out any new capital gains tax, there is very little room in this month's Budget for left-wing spending sprees.
Most of Robertson's new spending will need to go to mental health. Labour's promise to make the first three years of tertiary education free for students is not realistically fundable, so will be restricted to just the first year.
Even more fiscally important is the Government ruling out radical welfare changes, rejecting almost all the Welfare Advisory Group's recommendations, a move overlooked by news of the Prime Minister's engagement becoming public the same day.
Funding is tight even for Labour stalwarts such as teachers and health workers.
Beyond immediate operational spending, the new climate change bill hardly represents Ardern's "nuclear free moment", drawing criticism from both Greenpeace and Federated Farmers, but is likely to be the consensus for all four main parties, including National.
There doesn't seem much risk of new carbon taxes anytime soon, let alone any on methane.
In housing, KiwiBuild is not affecting the market at all, although the ban on foreign buyers certainly has. There is no greater haste on major infrastructure projects than under National.
If anything, roading projects have been cut back. While dodgy in the way demonstrated by National top performer Paul Goldsmith, Shane Jones' $3 billion Provincial Growth Fund is set to be the Coalition's only substantial new capital project this term. The billion trees have been forgotten.
Across the board, stimulus is being left to the Reserve Bank, with its record low official cash rate, rather than being driven by the Beehive and Treasury.
Even on industrial relations, the Ardern Government has kept the 90-day trial period for the overwhelming majority of New Zealand enterprises, along with Sir Peter Jackson and Warner Bros' controversial Hobbit laws.
The ban on new oil and gas exploration has thrilled the green movement, but there is no progress on other environmental issues such as freshwater management or onboard cameras on fishing boats to prevent overfishing.
On foreign policy, all the indications are now that New Zealand will continue broadly on Murray McCully's path. Labour is again a champion for the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Ardern has countered Peters' more sceptical approach to China by making it clear that she backs Belt and Road.
The police, military and spies have no known complaints about their relationship with the new Government, and it is business as usual with Five Eyes. The Americans and Canadians are delighted with the decision on Huawei. Ardern's relationship with arch-conservative Scott Morrison is as strong as between any two transtasman leaders.
Moreover, not just economic but also social conservatives can be much less anxious about Ardern's Government than a year ago.
The cannabis referendum will be organised in a way to make it more likely voters will back the status quo, with uncertainty built in about what a vote for change would mean.
So-called hate speech is extremely unlikely to be criminalised. Abortion reform may be slightly bolder in the other direction. The window for meaningful developments on euthanasia is closing.
All in all, this is a conservative Government that looks to preside over the status quo. It either doesn't have the appetite or lacks the competence to run the transformational agenda it promised.
As discussed in this column a fortnight ago, the safest assumption is that this will all work out for Ardern, leading to a 2020 triumph. Her main risk is an unexpected sea-change.
New Zealand politics tends to move in roughly 20-year cycles, usually following what is happening elsewhere. In the 1930s and 1940s, Savage and Fraser built the welfare state, reflecting Roosevelt and Attlee.
In the 1960s and 1970s that was broadly consolidated by Holyoake and Muldoon's state capitalism.
The 1980s and 1990s were years of radical reform, in the wake of Reagan and Thatcher. Clark, Key and now Ardern have broadly offered stability, mimicking Bill Clinton and Tony Blair.
Stability seems safest but Ardern must be aware that, like the rest of the English-speaking world, New Zealand voters tend to tire of the existing mode of politics after about 20 years.
On the left and right, frustration is growing. The median voter is not always one who just wants to look at wedding photos in Woman's Day.
For the Opposition, policy stability makes life difficult. Simon Bridges mocks Ardern for her u-turns, but those often delight anxious National voters. The rest of his critique seems limited to things like slushies.
National cannot beat Ardern by offering an eighth term of the Clark-Key-Ardern Government, but nor is mere reaction on things like climate change or minor tax cuts a viable strategy.
Like Savage with welfare, Muldoon with energy self-sufficiency, Lange with free-market reform and Clark with the Third Way, National needs to identify and lead locally the next big global idea.
If it can't do that, Ardern's failure to do anything meaningful won't matter at all.
- Matthew Hooton is managing director of PR and corporate affairs firm Exceltium.
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