KEY POINTS:
What role should the Act Party be given in the Key Government? Act went into the post-election negotiations having campaigned hard on three policies in particular: to refuse parole after a third violent offence, to get rid of the emissions trading scheme and to cut Government spending. Only the last fits easily with a responsible Government programme.
The "three strikes and you're out" penal policy was a good line in an election pitch but unless its application is narrowed in the small print of the policy it would require a fearful increase in prison accommodation. National's promise to abolish parole for "the worst repeat violent offenders" is open to a meaning so narrow that it might cover no more than the sort of case already subject to lifelong detention.
National has much better elements to its law and order platform in any case. The most effective deterrent to crime is not the length of prison sentence but the likelihood of being caught. Effective policing is the key, not the construction of more prisons. Policies that tackle juvenile gangs and the drug trade, with programmes to divert young offenders and expose them to better influences, are far more promising.
Law and order is not Act's primary purpose in politics. Nor, obviously, is the problem of climate change. Act wants to get rid of the emissions trading scheme but proposes no other solution to global warming. The party is sceptical of the problem in any case. "New Zealand is not warming," says its policy. "There is no warming trend since 1970 and the slight warming trend since 1950 is not statistically significant."
National's position, by contrast, concedes the problem and promises to produce an amended emissions trading scheme quickly. National talks of a scheme that better balances economic and environmental interests but that is a long way from Act's aim.
The intended partners' difference on climate change may be the main reason their partnership cannot be a formal coalition. If Act wants to be free to oppose emissions trading legislation it should settle for a portfolio outside the Cabinet and one that cannot bear on the energy, transport, agriculture, science or forestry sectors. The options narrow.
The last of Act's trio of priorities is the one in which it might be most useful. When it comes to cutting the core public service, Act could put genuine steel in National's razor. Mr Key has been inclined to soft-pedal this policy, preferring to emphasise no reduction in "front-line" staff.
But he is probably now learning how much the public accounts have suffered from Labour's fattening of public service numbers and pay, as well as from poorly targeted health, early education and welfare schemes that he has undertaken to retain. That is where he needs Rodney Hide and, behind the Act leader, the experienced eye of Sir Roger Douglas to ask the right questions of every line of departmental costs.
It has been said Mr Hide may be offered the post of Minister of Inland Revenue, a job often done outside the Cabinet and a department that has previously attracted his critical attention. That role could usefully be combined with his or Sir Roger's chairmanship of an expenditure review committee. Responsibility for tax gathering could sharpen Act's care for how the revenue is spent.
In the end Act probably has to accept whatever its leader may be given. With less than 4 per cent of the vote, the party is lucky to have five MPs. It is a beneficiary of New Zealand First's failure to clear the threshold. Act's commitment to support National eclipses any policy it promised. But it has strengths to offer and an astute Prime Minister would give it some hard work.
