Alliance warns of grand coalition 'fantasy'

By AUDREY YOUNG, political reporter

Laila Harre's Alliance has attacked Labour's new pledge card as a "pledge to National voters" that courts a grand coalition of the two big parties at a cost to left-wing policies.

The card represents Labour's "lowest common denominator," Ms Harre said at her party's campaign launch in a Waitakere City hotel at the weekend.

It represented what National Party voters could live with and still vote Labour.

And the danger of Labour appealing to National voters was that it would then have to keep National voters happy to stay in Government.

"Right-wingers have been fantasising for years about a grand coalition - and this way they can get it without even having the inconvenience of a coalition to manage."

Ms Harre pleaded with Labour supporters to back the Alliance to limit the influence National voters might have over a Labour programme in government.

"The Alliance is the difference between Labour and National.

"Labour voters must split their vote. While Labour waits for economic growth to deliver social justice, the Alliance says that the children in Ranui [a Waitakere City suburb] can't wait for the wealth to trickle down from Remuera."

The only party to get more of a hammering from the red rump of the Alliance was, unsurprisingly, Jim Anderton's Progressive Coalition - their ex-comrades who split away in April with the blessing of Prime Minister Helen Clark.

Alliance president Matt McCarten, No 3 on the party list, was the designated "bad cop" to articulate the sense of betrayal among members:

* "I wonder how old comrades like Matt Robson and Sandra Lee sleep at night being part of a sect driven by a personality cult which uses red-baiting to attack the left."

* "Jim insisted that he put Alamein Kopu and Frank Grover on the Alliance list. I guess it takes one waka jumper to know another."

* "Jim has done us a favour. He has removed all the careerists and opportunists in one sweep."





Ms Harre was explicit on what the Alliance's bottom lines would be in a second, but unlikely, coalition with Labour: commitment to a universal student allowance and a plan to scrap the student loan scheme for free tertiary education.

"Education is our absolute condition for entering a coalition with Labour," she told reporters after the launch.

"We want a commitment to a universal student allowance. We want a plan for introducing free tertiary education and we want the budget to do it over time. That is the thing we will be demanding as part of any coalition agreement we sign up to."

She also made it clear the Alliance would not be as hard-line as the Greens over lifting the moratorium on the commercial release of genetically modified organisms.

The Alliance would argue to keep it in place but it would not withdraw its support for Labour on confidence and money supply issues over it.

Despite polls that show the party languishing below 1 per cent on nationwide party support, Mr McCarten said that Ms Harre could win the Waitakere seat if she was coming a good second in the final week. By then, he said, the momentum and tactical voting would carry her through.

The Alliance is heavily promoting the line that Waitakere voters can get two MPs: Labour's Lynne Pillay from the party list and Ms Harre as the electorate MP.

The same push is going on in the Maori seat of Tainui, where Mana Motuhake leader and Alliance MP Willie Jackson is standing against sitting Labour MP Nanaia Mahuta, and in Te Tai Tokerau, where Naida Glavish is standing against incumbent Dover Samuels.

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