Editorial: National has every right to hold talks

Opinion

The news that the National Party has been talking to the Maori Party and others has been reported with an overtone of disapproval.

One interviewer, National Radio's Linda Clark, believed that having conceded the election the National Party leader, Don Brash, should have gone away for the week and left Helen Clark to get on with forming her Government.

If the positions had been reversed, if National had edged ahead of Labour by just 2 per cent of the vote, would the same apply?

The fact is that proportional representation puts all shades of public opinion into the equation after an election. After four MMP elections we are still forming the conventions by which it might operate to our general satisfaction.

Each election adds another tentative convention. This one saw two small centrist parties resolve their particular strategic problem by announcing in advance they would talk first to the party that won the largest number of votes.

That was a perfectly sensible and responsible way for New Zealand First and United Future to avoid constant badgering about which of the big parties they would put in power, given the chance.

It was a first-past-the-post solution that was welcomed in this column. It was preferable to the prospect of minor parties playing off both big parties as Winston Peters was able to do after the first MMP election.

It still seems a satisfactory procedure. Labour is the party with the recognised mandate to form a Government. National's leader conceded as much as soon as the final count was announced.

But he did not thereby relinquish all right to influence the dynamics of the next Parliament.

National, with nearly as many votes as Labour, has every right to make its positions clear to other parties before they commit themselves to binding agreements. And they have every right to find out the position of the alternative Government.

The Maori Party, for example, will have some very clear projects it will want to begin in its first term in Parliament. It wants to put the survival of Maori electorates beyond abolition by a bare majority vote in the House.

It wants to restore Maori access to the courts for claims to the foreshore and seabed and the hui it is holding around the country at present seem to want to enshrine the Treaty of Waitangi in law.

It needs to know whether it can make progress on those fronts only with Labour's support, for which it might be required to bind itself more tightly than it would like to a Labour-led Government.

It needs to know whether National would refine its position on the Maori seats to allow their survival to be subject to referendum or a two-thirds majority of the House. If so, the Maori Party may be able to retain the independence it would prefer.

Likewise, United Future and NZ First need to know whether a National alternative is conceivable should Labour present them with a Government wedded to the Greens.

National has not helped Helen Clark put a Government together yet but nor has it overstepped the bounds of our nascent convention. Labour remains the party almost certain to lead the Government for a third term and all other invited parties are talking to the Prime Minister on that basis.

Her dilemma remains what to do with the Greens. She will see a long-term advantage of Labour in forging a close association but probably at a short-term cost.

A Labour-Green coalition would sharpen the divisions apparent at the election and make it difficult for Labour to win a fourth term.

In a similar MMP predicament, Germany's major parties are considering a grand coalition. Clearly no elected party is expected to put itself out of the calculations there. Nor need they here.