Back where we started, maybe more self-aware

By STEPHEN LEVINE*

We could say it's all over but the shouting, except that it's now that the shouting truly begins. For it's back to Wellington, back to Parliament, back to the debating chamber with its familiar scenes of MPs haranguing each other in their often vain quest for a truly useful idea.

In the short term, then, that is where we go from here.

But what of the various players? Where do they go from here?

For Helen Clark and for Labour, it is back to power. The Clark-led Government will be able to present itself as an executive with sufficient parliamentary support to carry on the nation's business.

While the Greens offer a possibility of centre-left partnership, the clashes of an at times unpleasant campaign make the prospect of a formal coalition with that party singularly unappealing.

By contrast, the very vision of moderation and common sense projected by Peter Dunne means that his aspirations will need to be kept modest. As a figure attempting to turn "being sensible and reasonable" into an ideology for the 21st century, Dunne offers the Clark-Anderton Government an easy option as a support partner for its second term.

What of the others? Where do they go from here?

For Winston Peters it is back to opposition. That is a role to which he is, of course, well suited in every sense of the word. This is where he excels. Place him around a Cabinet table and he doesn't last very long.

It is the periphery of politics that so becomes him. From that stage, in a spotlight of his own making, he stands ever ready to offer his confident critique, secure in the safety of irresponsibility.

For the next few years he will be less lonely, buoyed by a campaign described by all as "brilliant" - it is remarkable that he should so revile a media whose commentators heap such praise upon him - and with 12 New Zealand First colleagues rather than only four.

But we have been here before with Peters. It is perhaps his good fortune that he will not be receiving that all-important telephone call from the Prime Minister. In 1996 his caucus of 17 included many unready for ministerial office. He failed to heed that still, silent voice, warning him to "beware what you wish for - you just might get it". He overreached and was ultimately undone.

Dunne will also find the new Parliament a much less lonely place. That long, painful period of enduring jokes about his United Future caucus meetings taking place in a telephone booth has finally come to an end.

For the first time since 1996 Dunne has a caucus. He, too, has the good fortune of not being entirely necessary to Clark's Government. If he were, he might well stumble, repeating Peters' mistake of 1996 by bringing MPs into government before they are ready.

For Dunne and United Future, the task will now be to take a deep breath, savour the moment, and then get down to the business of trying to turn an extraordinary, election-night triumph based on a deeply flawed methodology (the worm) into a genuinely credible new political movement.

If he succeeds, New Zealand's politics will finally have been transformed into the elusive consensual style of government envisaged for MMP from the outset.

Of all the players it is Richard Prebble and his Act party who emerge the least changed by the election. They went into it with nine seats and they come out of it the same way. Act can now expect another three years in Parliament free from executive responsibility.

No doubt it aspires to more than this. It would seem, however, that Prebble has taken the party as far as he can. Act is now neither a party of government nor even much of a party of influence.

While Prebble's parliamentary skills are formidable, it is questionable if Act can advance further without other members of his team taking leadership responsibilities.

Act's problems are meagre compared with those of the Alliance. This party was founded by Jim Anderton. To him goes the credit for its formation. To him now goes the credit - if that is the right word - for its annihilation. As a consequence Anderton's reputation and majority have been diminished, but his skills as a survivor are hard to match.

Not far behind the Alliance as losers were the Greens. Like Labour they went into this election with high hopes. These were not realised. The longer the campaign, the more uneasy the electorate became. The Greens' co-leader, Rod Donald, raised his party's expectations just about the time that the party's other co-leader, Jeanette Fitzsimons, was reducing the likelihood of a future Labour-Green Government.

In the end Fitzsimons couldn't even hold her own electorate while Donald failed to attain the Cabinet position he so obviously craved.

For Bill English there may well be a tomorrow. He seems to have inherited what may now be a National Party tradition, acquiring from Jim Bolger the habit of saving his best speech for the post-election summing-up in front of the cameras.

As a rule of thumb, any time you can name the president of a party it's in trouble. These are people who are supposed to be behind the scenes, using their professionalism to advance others' careers rather than their own.

Sadly for her and for National, Michelle Boag is likely to remain a liability with the New Zealand public. If she stays on, a sign of progress for National would be a rise in the number of don't knows answering a question about the name of its party president.

As the election fades away, its echoes bring to mind a fragment from a poem by T.S. Eliot:

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

For the past several weeks we have been on a journey around and into New Zealand. Some unexpected depths were revealed. What do we know of the place that we didn't know before?

We know that New Zealanders have very strong concerns about violence, about immigration and about unresolved claims for justice by Maori. These concerns require a more careful and considered response than they have been receiving.

We know that New Zealanders have a capacity to distinguish between strong government and arrogant leadership. They want one without the other. Muldoonism and its successors have had their day.

We know, too, that New Zealanders prefer candidates to debate with one another with civility and grace.

At the final meet-the-candidates meeting in the small town of Marton, in the Rangitikei electorate, a member of the audience wondered why MPs couldn't continue to argue over policy with intelligence and good humour when they went back down to Wellington. Well, perhaps they can.

As we indeed arrive back where we started in Wellington, with a Labour-led Government, it is worth considering the virtues of approaching our country's problems in a novel way, exhibiting the same candour, courtesy, warmth and decency that National's Simon Power and Labour's Margaret Hayward displayed towards one another as they campaigned among the small towns of Rangitikei.

But perhaps this is a challenge MPs are not yet so desperate as to want to take up.

* Professor Stephen Levine is head of the school of history, philosophy, political science and international relations at Victoria University of Wellington.

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