Editorial: Government’s liberal drift carries political risks

The country is governed by a party that understands social policy as a matter of economics and civil liberties. The policies it calls "social" are those that attend to the inequalities of income and opportunity and the consequences of popular prejudice or moral judgments. It is the latter that characterise its contribution to national development more than perhaps anything else it has done. The Clark Government will probably be remembered mainly for acts such as the legalisation of prostitution and the creation of what will be seen as a form of marriage for homosexuals.

Critics see such measures as undermining social standards, others see them as merely bringing the law up to date with actual behaviour. Behind one view is a belief that the law should reflect certain values even if it does not enforce them; behind the other view is a belief that the law has no place imposing standards it cannot, or should not, enforce. The Government is generally inclined to the second view, though it does believe, when it wants to, that law can be used merely as a social statement.

The ban on smoking in bars is an example. The MP in charge of that law change, Steve Chadwick, has conceded police will not be patrolling bars looking for telltale ashtrays. "It's about a public sanction," she said. "People who support the bill now can say when they are in a public space and someone lights up, 'Excuse me, you can't do that, it's against the law'." Likewise, with the continued prohibition of cannabis. Police might not enforce that law as strongly as they could, but the Government has quite rightly resisted the urging of its ally, the Green Party, to decriminalise personal use of the drug. Even the unenforced criminality of cannabis strengthens the hand of parents and schools that want to discourage its use.

But a Government that passes laws mainly to express social disapproval of smoking, teenage binge drinking, or any other behaviour, cannot then pretend that more liberal laws on prostitution, gay union and the like are merely pragmatic and morally neutral as far as it is concerned. That pretence was well exposed by the National Party's proposal to extend the Civil Union bill to non-intimate relationships such as elderly sisters living together.

If the Government had been concerned simply to provide homosexual and other de facto couples with next-of-kin rights in law it would have accepted the National proposal. But its real purpose in passing the bill was not mechanical. It wanted to express a moral approval of homosexual and de facto relationships.

Does this society really want to express approval of prostitution? Does it regard same-sex relationships as akin to marriage? The answers are easy for people in politics, academia, media, the so-called "chattering" classes. But quite different answers might be heard from the classes who chatter more privately. Those people might not take part in public debate and their views might not stand up to "enlightened" reasoning, but they are deeply and strongly held views nevertheless. These people do not condone the practices the Government is blessing with legislation and have a deep sense of unease that familiar social standards have been abandoned.

The extent of this unease is hard to monitor in the media or in interviews for opinion polls. They are views the holders might not feel able to express except in a secret ballot. Tellingly, the Government has resisted putting issues like prostitution and gay marriage to referendums. It knows that conservatism on issues such as those is particularly pronounced among lower-paid working people, traditionally the core of Labour's constituency. So far, moral liberalism has not caused Labour to suffer in opinion polls. Too much of a drift, however, may see the tide turn against it.