For the third time this year, the political science boffins here at Another Kind Of Politics have moved the Coalition Government Doomsday Clock forward, putting the time until the unholy trinity goes KABOOM! at 3 minutes and 30 seconds to midnight.
The consensus among our experts is that the mysterious force that holds the three-party coalition together has once again been disturbed by Act leader David Seymour having another hissy fit. Actually, it was more than a hissy fit. It was like he was some enormous baby who didn’t get what he wanted for his second birthday.
Never mind. Crybaby Dave still has his dog whistle to play with.
His tantrum followed the Prime Minister, the down-to-earth multimillionaire Christopher Luxon, doing the completely thinkable this week. He reaffirmed at the Māori King’s coronation commemoration hui that National won’t be supporting Act’s Treaty Principles Bill beyond the first reading — something that was news to no one, apart from the Crybaby apparently.
Luxon made the comment after again having to sit through a hurricane of angry as speakers at the King’s Tūrangawaewae Marae once more told the PM what a pack of ratbags he and his coalition mates are.
Given the disgraceful cynicism involved in National agreeing to support the bill at all — Luxon clearly didn’t much care what happened to race relations as long he got his coalition deal — it is entirely fitting that Luxon should continue to be shouted at by Māori. After all, as a good Christian the PM should know you reap what you sow.
What is much more surprising is the level of grievance coming from Crybaby Dave despite Luxon being entirely consistent on their cynical coalition deal.
What seems to have got the goat of Seymour is that the bill, which is still being drafted, will now be a watered-down version of Act’s original plan — a rewrite which can only be viewed as a cynical effort to keep the bill alive — so Seymour seems to believe Luxon should reconsider the bill as well.
Luxon is many things, bald for example, but he’s not stupid, so he’s highly unlikely to do a U-turn and back the bill whatever it contains.
So Crybaby Dave had his tantrum, telling one reporter that by not changing his position Luxon was being “disrespectful and anti-democratic” — the sort of rhetoric you’d expect from the Opposition, not the leader of one of the parties in government.
Seymour was then asked if he’d blow up the coalition over the bill. His answer was not “no”, but rather the gnomic “well, let’s put it this way, you never play poker with your cards on the table”.
Luxon, as expected, has done his “nothing to see here” thing about the bust up, despite Seymour, who is supposed to be his deputy PM from the middle of next year, not ruling out blowing up Luxon’s government if he doesn’t get his way.
If it weren’t for the fact that Māori are so angry and that nearly half of all New Zealanders believe the government’s policies have increased racial tensions, the whole affair would be laughable.
While Winston Peters, speaking on behalf of Luxon in the House on Wednesday, seemed to leave the door open on Luxon’s support for the bill, the smart money is on it only being a matter of time before this divisive bill bites the dust.
And when it does, Crybaby Dave will have achieved just one thing, apart from worsening race relations, and that’s pointlessly wasting a shedload of taxpayers’ money pushing the abomination through the legislative process.
To the 92% who didn’t vote for Act, that might seem like hypocrisy from a party that does nothing but bang on about fiscal discipline. But when it comes to its pet projects, Act likes to splash tax dollars about just like every other party.
Take the Crybaby’s other major venture, the Ministry of Regulation, a name that’s surely straight out of an episode of Yes, Minister.
Set up at Seymour’s behest to cut government red tape — a nebulous goal if ever there was one, quite possibly by design — it is yet to do anything but create more bureaucrats, with reports this week that it is already three times the size of the agency it replaced, the Productivity Commission.
Further, Seymour’s new ministry-cum-sinecure now has 91 staff whose median salary is 82% higher than the average public servant.
What the ministry will eventually achieve for all those tax dollars remains to be seen — apart from sucking in more tax dollars, of course.
In the meantime here’s a question someone should put to Crybaby Dave: isn’t using bloated bureaucracy to fight bloated bureaucracy, like trying to cure cancer with cancer?
Darleen Tana, Warrior for Democracy
Have you heard the rumour that ex-Green MP and now parliamentary pariah Darleen Tana is about to set up her own party? No neither had I, so I’m starting that rumour right here.
Now that Tana has told her former party they can stick it and she will not leave Parliament of her own volition, she is setting up her own political movement for what remains of her parliamentary “career”.
The rumour, started right here, is that the movement will be called The Pity Party.
It will have only one policy: its leader holding onto her parliamentary salary until the 2026 election.
Political Quiz of the Week
What is the Defence Minister Judith “Crusher” Collins doing in this picture?
A/ Having a barrel of a time in her new defence portfolio.
B/ Imagining taking a shot at a boy racer.
C/ Setting her sights on a leadership challenge.
D/ Scoping out a post-political career as an assassin.
