OPINION
If a statesman is someone concerned with matters beyond their time in office, then Act’s David Seymour qualifies.
Seymour and his deputy Brooke van Velden see their primary responsibility as ensuring there is a serious, medium-sized classical liberal party to vote for when they are retired.
That doesn’t conflict with wanting to seriously tackle New Zealand’s multiple immediate crises. They believe the best way to secure Act’s long-term future is in a National-Act coalition that finally ends New Zealand’s quarter-century drift.
Audrey Young’s feature on Monday speculating about the shape of a National-Act government has revealed a chasm between the parties’ expectations.
National strategists say Young’s suggested Cabinet and portfolio allocations were “roughly on the right track”. Act strategists call them “an outrage” and say their leaders would walk away from such a deal.
Act insiders say the Herald’s senior political correspondent doesn’t open her laptop without first working her unrivalled network of political sources, built up over three decades in the press gallery. The more conspiratorial read her feature as Christopher Luxon’s opening gambit to lower expectations of Act’s role in a coalition.
Act worries Luxon envisages the sort of deals that saw it back the Key Government on confidence and supply in exchange for a few morsels.
Luxon’s refusal again this week to rule out working with Winston Peters’ NZ First has heightened Act’s alarm. Its strategists suspect Luxon’s intention is another Key-English or Ardern-Hipkins Government, with working groups substituting for action and a sole priority of not rocking the median voter’s boat.
Act went along with that after it won only 1.5 per cent in 2005, 3.7 in 2008, 1.1 in 2011 and 0.7 in 2014, continuing to exist only because Don Brash informally backed Act’s Epsom candidate in 2005 and John Key more formally thereafter.
Act was not just beholden to Key’s National, but never won enough votes for National and Act to govern alone. Key needed Peter Dunne’s various United parties, and also welcomed Tariana Turia and Pita Sharples’ Te Pāti Māori (TPM) into his tent.
Under those circumstances, Act accepted it was lucky to even get participation certificates, like the Three Strikes sentencing policy, some charter schools and a handful of working groups, which Key duly ignored.
In 2023, Seymour would easily win Epsom even if National’s Paul Goldsmith campaigned against him. Van Velden is on track to win Tāmaki, even with National’s Simon O’Connor being backed by a wider network of Christian fundamentalists to try to hold on.
Not since July 2020 has Act polled below the 5 per cent threshold. Since the last election, it has almost always been in double figures. With just 59 days until voting opens, recent polls give it 12-15 per cent, somewhere between a third and a half of National’s support.
In the one poll taken since Luxon went on the attack after Kiri Allan’s car crash, while Seymour was more gracious, the Act leader’s preferred prime minister rating was more than two-thirds that of his blue rival.
The only precedents for the current situation are the first two MMP elections.
In 1996, National won 33.9 per cent and NZ First 13.4, so that Jim Bolger and Peters could form a majority coalition of 61 MPs.
Three years later, Labour won 38.7 per cent and the Alliance 7.7, so that Helen Clark and Jim Anderton formed a minority coalition with 59 seats, backed by seven Greens.
These were more equal partnerships than known since. National agreed to Peters being Deputy Prime Minister and Treasurer. There were 17 National ministers, of whom 15 were in Cabinet, and nine NZ First ministers, five in Cabinet.
With the Government only able to be formed with both parties, National agreed NZ First would have eight Cabinet ministers by October 1998, and National just 12.
In 1999, Anderton became Clark’s Deputy Prime Minister, with a powerful new Soviet-sounding job created for him to counter Treasury called Minister of Economic Development, which Key neglected to abolish and gave to Gerry Brownlee and Steven Joyce.
Despite the Alliance holding only 17 per cent of the Government’s MPs, and not enough to provide Labour a guaranteed majority, it had 20 per cent of Cabinet seats.
The Alliance had big wins, including Anderton’s Kiwibank and Women’s Affairs Minister Laila Harre’s paid parental leave scheme, both initially deemed too left-wing by Clark and Michael Cullen, but kept by Key and now mainstream.
The Alliance’s Sandra Lee ran Conservation and Local Government, and Matt Robson Corrections and Courts.
Act can’t agree to being treated worse by Luxon than the way Bolger treated NZ First in 1996 or Clark treated the Alliance in 1999.
Polls suggest Act will hold about 40 per cent of a National-Act Government’s MPs and will deserve — as Bolger promised Peters in 1996 — eight Cabinet seats to National’s 12.
It expects meaty portfolios for its senior ministers, rather than rats and mice. If Seymour is not Minister of Finance, then Luxon might need to consider re-creating the Treasurer role, in addition to Seymour’s new Minister of Regulation job.
Van Velden wouldn’t be content looking after charter schools, but would want to be Minister of Education proper, to bring rigour back to the curriculum at all levels.
Given Act’s concern about National’s propensity to cuddle up to the Chinese Communist Party and Luxon’s nonchalance this week about signing up to its imperialist Belt and Road infrastructure programme, van Velden would need to keep an eye on foreign policy as an Associate Minister of Foreign Affairs.
Act expects Nicole McKee to have a senior role in law and order, Andrew Hoggard to be Minister for Primary Industries, Simon Court Minister of Transport, and Parmjeet Parmar Minister of Commerce or Immigration.
Beyond such minimums, Act might look to Todd Stephenson and former foster-home child Karen Chhour to take Cabinet-level roles in Health and Social Welfare respectively.
Of course, Seymour and van Velden know there’s not much they can do if Luxon decides their party is unworthy of the influence Bolger granted NZ First and Clark the Alliance.
Act would never allow a Labour-Green-TPM Government to take office, nor support a Luxon-Peters Government on confidence and supply.
But, if Act is not to be a near-equal in a National-Act coalition, much better to sit on the crossbenches and require Luxon to negotiate its support — and pay for it in policy — whenever National decides it really does want to get something done.
Act knows that passively propping up yet another cynical, unambitious, poll-driven government wouldn’t be in New Zealand’s interests - or its own.
Matthew Hooton has over 30 years’ experience in political and corporate communications and strategy for clients in Australasia, Asia, Europe and North America, including the National and Act parties, and the mayor of Auckland.
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