Thomas Coughlan: Will 2023 deliver NZ's most extreme government in 30 years?

Christopher Luxon or Jacinda Ardern may lead one of the most extreme governments in decades. Photo / Mark Mitchell

OPINION:

There's a rule to governing under MMP: campaign and build coalitions to the centre.

Like all good rules, it isn't one always followed. Helen Clark's first government was formed with the Alliance, then led by Jim Anderton who famously left the Labour Party because it wasn't left wing enough (or it left him, if you believe his telling). In 2002 she again welcomed Anderton into government, but signed a deal with United Future.

Clark followed the rule in subsequent elections, famously leaving the Greens out in the cold in 2005 and welcoming NZ First and United Future into her ministry.

National's John Key also thought the idea was a good one. An inveterate dealmaker, Key inked agreements of various strength with every party in Parliament after the 2008 election, leaving only Labour out (yes, he even inked a Memorandum of Understanding with the Greens).

This looks set to change next year, with neither major party having a plausible coalition partner to the centre.

The demise of United Future and NZ First has left a vacuum at the centre of politics. Parties like The Opportunities Party are keen to fill it, but just getting into Parliament will be a tall order (right-wing voters might question whether a tax on land values is really all that centrist - left wingers might equally ask whether TOP's aspiration for a flat income tax paired with a Universal Basic Income is simply a regurgitation of Roger Douglas's 1980s incomes policy).

This has left us with a political landscape unique to the MMP era: a left v right drag race between the two major parties and their support partners.

As fate would have it, all are polling roughly equally - which is fairly rare. The most recent 1 News-Kantar public poll had National leading Labour by just three points, with Act and the Greens level on 9 per cent each.

The absence of an alternative to the centre is already changing the political landscape by emboldening Act and the Greens.

Act's David Seymour jealously guards his party's historically high polling. He makes a strong play for the culturally outraged, economic libertarian vote - and clearly has little fear that in doing so he risks putting marginal centrist voters off National.

One plank of National's tax policy, the removal of the 39 per cent tax rate, polls terribly (1 News-Kantar poll found 65 per cent of voters didn't like the idea, and it's understood to be unpopular with focus groups.

That being the case, National probably has something to fear from being tarred by Act's much more radical income tax policy: flattening the tax system, reducing overall revenue and cutting government spending at the same time.

Illustration / Guy Body

But if Act is dragging the right rightwards, the Greens are equally pulling Labour to the left.

The James Shaw leadership hokey cokey (in, out, then shaken all about) has proved to the party the need to burnish its leftwing credentials and avoid the perception that it exists to greenwash Labour.

This leftwing tilt was not a result of what happened to Shaw - although that event probably gave the party the impetus to talk about it more. Even before the leadership ructions, the Greens reckoned 2023 was their lucky year, precisely for the fact that Labour would lose its outright majority and have no party with which to build a coalition to the centre.

The Greens, like Act, know that the landscape of 2023 will give them maximum leverage.

Both parties can name their price for going into some form of coalition - or they can sit on the cross benches, sustaining the Government issue by issue. The Greens already gave us a glimpse of this in the last term of Government, forcing Labour to go to National to back anti-terrorism legislation, before Labour realised National's price was too high, forcing it to capitulate to the Greens' demands.

No major party would want to deal with an emboldened support partner on the cross benches, meaning the price they would be willing to pay to bring that party into coalition would be higher.

This changing landscape will have an effect on campaigning. Expect the infamous "rule-out game" to change (the "rule-out game" being when reporters ask politicians to rule in or rule out ever implementing a certain policy).

In the last election, Labour leader Jacinda Ardern could confidently dismiss the Green Party's wealth tax proposal under attack from National. Ardern later ruled it out (although there's still some confusion over whether that rule out applied only to that term of government or as long as Ardern was leader).

This election, neither Labour nor National can confidently rule out policies from their support partners. A leader could, borrowing a leaf from Key's book, put their job on the line - saying they'd resign before implementing a policy (Key did this over raising the Super age). It's not clear what the support parties would do in this situation.

Would Act and the Greens fight for a policy to the extent they would irrevocably weaken the prime minister's reputation by forcing them to u-turn on what amounts to one of the most sacred promises a politician can make.

(Of added interest is the fact that both Ardern and Luxon's enthusiasm to paint themselves as moderate centrists - something their support partners might not let them deliver on).

This is uncharted political territory for New Zealand. More than a quarter-century after switching our electoral system, we've seen MMP's success at neutering the excesses of powerful one-party governments. The history of governments since 1996 has been one of long, sustained moderation.

MMP has always been dogged by fears of the tail wagging the dog, but to the extent that's been seen, it's always been to the centre with centrist support partners using leverage to moderate the two parties. We've never seen a minor party to the extreme of a major party use its leverage to drag a government to the left or right.

All of that points towards a coin-toss election in 2023 that could result in the most right- or left-wing government New Zealand has seen since we switched electoral systems to, in part, make such an extreme government impossible.

There is another scenario, which is that these two extremes create an opening in the centre of politics for another party to fill. Perhaps a new party like TOP, or an old one ...

After all, there's another rule to MMP politics, alongside always building coalitions to the centre - and that is that you should never rule out NZ First leader Winston Peters.

Despite persistent questioning, neither Ardern nor Luxon have yet done so.