Balance-of-power ghost haunts Labour, National

By John Armstrong

Trick or treat? Hallowe'en has come early for the main parties, now transfixed by the sound of Winston Peters knocking on the door and the nightmare of negotiating with New Zealand First.

The prospect of his party again holding the balance of power is haunting the hustings before Jenny Shipley and Helen Clark even launch their campaigns next Sunday.

To annoy them even more, Mr Peters has bloody-mindedly timed his party's launch for the same Hallowe'en afternoon to try to upstage them.

Are they going to let him dominate the campaign, as he did last time?

Or can they marginalise him? Richard Prebble has been thinking. The Act leader has urged the Prime Minister to rule out post-election coalition talks with NZ First and ask the electorate to "back her or sack her" for taking a stand on principle.

Mr Prebble believes forcing NZ First into Labour's camp by default would pay big dividends for National and Act, particularly among middle-class voters who might be toying with Labour, but who detest Mr Peters.

His suggestion echoes similar advice to Labour in a column in the left-of-centre Wellington newspaper City Voice. It argued that refusing to deal with Mr Peters would allow Labour to redefine the election and offer voters a clear choice between two blocs - a Labour-Alliance one which would change the Government and a National-Act-NZ First one maintaining the status quo.

National and Labour could both agree not to deal with him. Such a consensus applied in Germany in the early 1990s as fringe neo-Nazi parties nudged the 5 per cent threshold.

The big parties made it clear these extremists would not be allowed into coalition. The neo-Nazi parties lost support as people realised they would never hold power.

But National and Labour do not trust each other enough to forge a similar consensus. Neither will rule out talking to Mr Peters. Why risk alienating him ahead of the election if you need him afterwards and he is still around to punish you?

Why end up being the martyr, argues Helen Clark, if you only hand power to National, thus disappointing your own supporters?

Such appeasement will be rewarded if Mr Peters remains on Parliament's cross-benches and allows Labour or National to run an albeit-constrained minority Government relying on his backing.

Winning far fewer seats in the House than in 1996, Mr Peters' leverage will anyway be correspondingly weaker.

In National's case, however, retaining power probably depends on NZ First's grabbing the balance of power because National and Act may not win enough seats on their own to beat Labour and the Alliance.

This may be why Mrs Shipley is spurning Mr Prebble's advice. He, in turn, is NZ First-bashing to underline Act's campaign pitch as the party of trust and principle.

The attention suits Mr Peters just fine. The simplest way to marginalise him would be to ignore him.