Editorial: Brave move loosens the reins on Act

Act has been thinking. Having entered what its leader, Rodney Hide, describes as the "death zone" by striking a supply-and-confidence agreement with the National Government, it must find ways to avoid the ballot-box punishment customarily dealt to minor support parties.

One innovative response will be allowing its MPs to vote according to their consciences on all pieces of legislation, rather than obliging them to stick to the position agreed by their five-member caucus. In a country where the hold exercised by party whips is particularly strong, the move is as welcome as it is astute.

The chief issue for support parties is retaining their separate identities and not being boxed in by the dominant party in the governing arrangement. The right to vote against the caucus line on all except confidence-and-supply measures means National will not be able to count automatically on the vote of all Act MPs. It will need to pay them greater individual attention.

This step cleverly differentiates the party from others, which deny their MPs the freedom to vote according to their will unless they have special dispensation or the legislation offers what is traditionally a conscience vote. At the same time, it is unlikely to trouble National unduly because its support agreements with the Maori Party and United Future provide a margin of legislative comfort. More fundamentally, this free vote is so logical for a party

of libertarian instinct that it is a wonder it has not been applied before. There are echoes of the stand taken by 18th century British MP Edmund Burke, who said voters should select the best candidates available and then leave them to go about their parliamentary work. What representatives owed their constituents - or, in Act's case, their caucus colleagues - was their judgment, not their obedience.

Mr Hide says the differentiation will also enable Act to avoid the fate of New Zealand First and the Alliance, parties which he believes foundered because they became too closely associated with leaders who dictated policy. That may be overstated, but the free vote will doubtless make some Act MPs more relaxed about some of their party's twists and turns. The most obvious of these is the flip-flop over Chester Borrows' private member's bill banning gang members from wearing their patches in public areas in Wanganui.

Previously, Mr Hide said the legislation was "rubbish". Act would never support it because it breached people's fundamental rights to wear what they wanted on a T-shirt, he said. That was a principled approach for a party adamantly opposed to laws curbing individual rights, whoever they might be aimed at.

But Act now supports the bill, hoping this will help it secure the passage of its "three strikes and you're out" policy as part of new sentencing-and-parole legislation. That carrot even persuaded Act MP David Garrett to respond to criticism of the three-strikes approach by the Attorney-General with the claim: "We have got too hung up on people's rights."

Some MPs from Act's libertarian wing surely have reservations about the implications of their party's pursuit of an extremely conservative law-and-order policy. They might worry about breaches of the bill of rights law more than Mr Garrett and they might not, in the name of pragmatism, be quite so ready to support the Wanganui gang legislation. A free vote allows them to show their disagreement, even while continuing to support the party's broader thrust.

If this dilutes Mr Hide's power and risks a perception of disunity, it serves the far more important purpose of underlining Act's identity. That will be a crucial ingredient in the recipe required to sustain itself. Bold moves such as this should serve the party well.