Editorial: Grand ideas don't ensure dream teams

Grand coalition is an alluring idea for many voters in New Zealand. When they survey all the parties that bid for power under MMP and assess the possible combinations for a parliamentary majority, they are drawn to ask, why not National and Labour? Those, after all, are the only parties with governing pedigree. Though they come from opposing positions, they each lean to the moderate ground where most voters live. Together they could be a good balance. Why not pick a dream team?

Germany, our only model of MMP, has twice been governed by a grand coalition. The first in the 1960s achieved little. The second, in power for the past four years, was no better. The election last week was a blessed release for both partners and for the country's prospects of improving its economy.

The winner, the conservative party led by Angela Merkel, can enter its second term in coalition with the small free market party that should spur some of the changes that need to be made. The loser, the Social Democratic Party, has taken the blow it probably saw coming since the inception of its "forced marriage" with Mrs Merkel's Christian Democratic Union four years ago.

The slender margin of her victory in 2005 had left the previously governing party little option if stability was to be maintained. Its experience offers a lesson to both major parties in this country should they ever be tempted to take the supporting role in a grand coalition.

The Social Democrats, the party that had governed under Willy Brandt and Helmut Schmidt for a decade from 1972 and for two terms under Gerhard Schroeder, received only 23 per cent of the vote this time, against 33.8 per cent for Mrs Merkel.

The risk for any major party entering a coalition with its main rival is that it will lose its own political territory to another and might never recover it. The German Social Democrats share the left of the spectrum with two smaller parties, the Greens and a Marxist Left Party that has a following in the former East Germany. Both did well, the Greens getting 10.7 per cent, their highest ever, and the Left Party 11.9 per cent.

But these are percentages of an election turnout that was the lowest in Germany's post-war experience, which is probably the clearest indicator of the dangers of grand coalitions. Nearly 30 per cent of the electorate did not bother to vote. The largest number of them would have been Social Democrat supporters who did not agree with the Greens or the extreme left. The SDP's task in opposition now will be to give them reasons to vote again.

Meanwhile, Mrs Merkel's popularity on the centre-right has soared, suggesting Germany's first woman Chancellor could be set for a tenure to match the German norm, perhaps not the 16 years of Helmut Kohl but the eight to 10 years of the SDP-led governments.

The stability Germany has enjoyed under MMP cannot be denied. For 40 years to 1998, the system with its 5 per cent threshold allowed only three significant parties in the Parliament. The smallest, the Free Democratic Party that is returning to power with Mrs Merkel, was never out of power for those 40 years.

The little king-maker party, its leader always Foreign Minister, kept the Christian Democrats in office until 1972, the SDP 1982, the CDU again until 1998. The arrival of the Greens gave the SDP an alternative partner in a four-party system and the Left Party is now a significant fifth, though neither major party has been prepared to do deals with it yet.

During in this long record of multi-party stability it is notable that grand coalitions have been the least durable of governments. For those who hanker for the best of both leading parties, there is a lesson there.