Maureen Pugh backs into the chamber. Photo / Thomas Coughlan
OPINION:
Thank goodness for Maureen Pugh.
National’s lightning rod for controversy (and actual lightning - she’s been struck three times and lived to tell the tale) provided welcome entertainment as Parliament opened in earnest on Tuesday afternoon.
Pugh had positioned herself as a sceptic of human-caused climate change on Tuesday morning, but by 2pm, she emerged on Parliament’s black and white tiles with a statement avowing she was a believer in human-caused climate change and always had been.
As someone who struggles to keep her head above water at the best of times, you’d think Maureen Pugh would take rising sea levels a little more seriously.
She said she’d misspoken, noting being quizzed by journalists wasn’t her comfort zone. It certainly wasn’t. A petrified Pugh stumbled through her statement then nervously padded backwards over the tiles to the debating chamber, as if losing sight of the gathered media pack would begin the whole dreadful ordeal anew.
It was a sorry episode. Simon Bridges had another way of putting it, but that’s for the past. Leader Christopher Luxon avows this is a “new National party”.
His problem is that the “new” National Party is crewed by the exact same people as the old National Party.
In the past week, responding to floods on the East Coast, Luxon has promised to take forestry slash seriously, saying it was unfair the forestry industry “socialises the costs” of its business while privatising its profits.
A good idea, but he might also wish to turn his mind to the dead wood in his own caucus. As anyone living on the East Coast will tell you, it can be dangerous.
Luxon will be ropeable. He’s done a decent job the last month supporting the immediate emergency response where it’s appropriate and being constructively critical where necessary.
He’s learnt the mistakes of National’s past that it’s best to tread gingerly when it comes to a disaster response. Contrary to idiom, there very much is such a thing as bad publicity.
This has come at the cost of being a tad invisible at times, but it’s a cost Luxon was wise enough to pay - for now.
He will have hoped that returning to Parliament would level the playing field, allowing him the oxygen to prosecute the issues he wants to focus on.
Pugh ruined that for him today.
And what of the speeches themselves?
Each year, Parliament opens with a statement from the Prime Minister, setting out their agenda for the year ahead.
This is tabled and debated, while the Government seeks a renewed motion of confidence in itself.
Other party leaders then respond, with the opposition parties trying to topple the Government with a no-confidence motion.
Today’s speeches were also an opportunity for party leaders to position themselves in the post-Ardern Parliament.
Ardern was absent from the House - she’d said when she announced she would retire that she did not plan to attend many sittings. Expect to see very little of her between now and her keenly-awaited valedictory speech later this year.
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins needed to orient himself towards Ardern’s legacy, while Luxon wanted to paint the new Labour lineup as a phoney palimpsest renewal - with the same old lot lurking behind it (“a speech written for Jacinda Ardern but delivered by Chris Hipkins” was Luxon’s line).
Neither really succeeded in these aims. Both speeches were rewritten heavily in light of the cyclone tragedy and what was left was a Parlia-meh, a dull mumblecore procedural exercise, dressed up with tribute.
It could hardly be any other way. Now’s not the time for tub-thumping and to be fair to the current crop of party leaders, any of the great party leaders of recent years would struggle to deliver what is a highly political speech in a moment at which no one really wants to listen.
Mercifully, the speeches did have valuable factual content.
The biggest news was Hipkins confirming that Auckland Light Rail, a project speculated to be destined for his policy bonfire, was still on the agenda (for now).
So too were the Clean Car Standard, which as of late last year has something approximating bipartisan support, and the Clean Car Discount (known to those on the other side of the aisle as the “ute tax”) - another policy fingered by some for the scrap heap.
The Discount needs to be adjusted this year to keep it sustainable, but its presence in the speech suggests it is safe.
Likewise, the Government’s complicated RMA reforms merited a shout-out. There was some speculation this incredibly complicated and contentious work would be punted into the too-hard basket. Not so, Hipkins plans to pass the legislation by the end of the year.
One thing the Government is doing, but which Hipkins avoided mentioning by name was Three Waters.
He’s Voldemorted the policy - quite happy to talk about it, but not by name.
The statement gestured towards Taumata Arowai, the new water regulator (something the opposition backs), but the words Three Waters were absent from both speech and statement.
The Government is currently looking again at the policy, but there’s no indication of how dramatic that “re-look” will be. Either way, a government facing well-litigated delivery issues will have to do more than change the names of undelivered policy if it wants to win back the narrative.
Or maybe it won’t.
The old cliches go that oppositions don’t win elections, governments lose them. Pugh’s absolute dominance on Tuesday posed the question of whether a government might win an election by simply losing less badly than an opposition.
Tuesday, the circus belonged to Pugh. Hipkins is fortunate the storm shifts attention from his lacklustre speech.
It was a warning to Luxon of just how easily his tactful now-you-see-me-now-you-don’t routine over the past month can be undone by a single MP.
National’s highly-democratic electorate selections mean getting rid of problematic electorate MPs is difficult. Not so list MPs, who depended on the patronage of the party list.
National ranks its list by committee, with both leader and deputy leader represented. The list is often said, in practice, to be the leader’s prerogative.
It will be a test of Luxon’s own standing within his famously factious caucus whether he can exercise that prerogative over Pugh.
His strongest critique of the Government is that it is all word and no deed. The problem is, his caucus’s veritable tango of missteps opens Luxon’s allegedly “new National” up to this critique as well.
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