National leader Christopher Luxon, Act leader David Seymour, and NZ First leader Winston Peters sign their coalition agreement
EDITORIAL
New Zealand has its first three-party coalition government. It has had three parties in government many times previously but never all three in the Cabinet.
The distinction does matter. Parties that support a government with ministers outside the Cabinet are not in the room where final decisionsare made though they may be obliged to support them.
This Government already looks different from any we have known. The leading party looks unlikely to be as dominant as usual, for the good reason that National did not do as well in the election as winning parties usually do.
Consequently, it has been obliged to give its partners six of the 20 seats in the Cabinet and five executive roles outside the Cabinet, equaling National’s number. More than a third of the ministry (11 out of 30) will be from Act or New Zealand First.
Watching the three leaders introduce their coalition to the country yesterday, it was easy to wonder, will this be the Luxon Ministry? Or will it be a three-headed hybrid?
The leaders’ different personalities were on display. Christopher Luxon, calm, measured, strenuously good-humoured. Winston Peters, truculent, scornful of questions he did not like. David Seymour, earnest policy wonk, determined to change a few things.
Peters and Seymour both wanted to be Deputy Prime Minister, so they will each take the role for half of the term. This looks like the dubious Wisdom of Solomon. It could devalue the role to a ceremonial one.
New Zealand First leader Winston Peters, National leader and incoming Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Act Party leader David Seymour. Photo / Mark Mitchell
The Deputy Prime Minister ought to be a person the Prime Minister can trust to speak and act as the Prime Minister would do if present. It really needs to be a person in the Prime Minister’s party. But Peters has taken the title in two previous coalitions and it seems to be important to him.
“We’re not co-deputies,” he snapped in answer to a question yesterday, “and we’re not sharing the role.” They are each doing it for 18 months. Peters is taking the first watch, which invites conjecture on whether he intends to stay in the coalition for a full three years.
Seymour sounded more interested in his substantial assignment, as a newly created Minister of Regulation (more accurately, deregulation). He means to range over the whole of government, questioning the need of all regulations and their costs of compliance for business and the economy.
He is also to be an Associate Minister of Finance, as will be Shane Jones of New Zealand First. They have both sounded as determined as the designated Finance Minister, Nicola Willis, to subject all items of public spending to strict tests of need and worth.
They should aim to find at least enough savings to cover the cost of National’s tax cuts now that the coalition partners have stopped National lifting the ban on foreign house buyers to tax them for the purpose.
The tax cut is a long overdue adjustment of the income thresholds for inflation, which could itself be inflationary unless prices are nearer stability by next July when the cuts are to happen. By then the new Government will have given the Reserve Bank a single target of near-zero inflation, which should help.
The coalition partners all talk of being a government that “gets things done”. That would be a welcome change.
