Jacinda Ardern’s new “covid cabinet” is pretty much the same as — and completely unlike — every previous government under the mixed member proportional (MMP) system.

The similarity involves the political accommodation reached between Labour and the Greens. Every government formed since 1996 has rested on such arrangements. This one does too.

The difference lies in Ardern’s administration being the first single-party majority government since the electoral rules changed in the mid-1990s. Add to that the arrangement with the Greens and they have a massive 74-seat bloc in the House — 13 more than is needed to govern.

In brute political terms, Ardern is at the head of one of (and perhaps the) biggest parliamentary alliances in the nation’s history.

The Greens’ consolation prize
The deal announced over the weekend is a cooperation agreement. Think of it as the smallest of the consolation prizes, the thing you’re offered when your support is nice to have but not really necessary.

For the 15 percent of Green delegates who voted against it, perhaps it was just too small, and you can see their point. In the last government (when the party had eight rather than ten seats), the Greens held ten full or associate portfolios.

None of their ministers sat in cabinet, true, but there were four in the executive. Now there are only two, holding four portfolios between them — and they’re still not sitting at the top table.

Look more closely at the detail, though, and things get more interesting.

A new kind of MMP
The Green ministers will participate in relevant cabinet committees and informal ministerial groups, have access to officials’ papers, and get to meet with the prime minister at least every six weeks. Labour and the Greens’ respective chiefs of staff will also meet regularly.

What’s more, the party will chair one parliamentary committee and get the deputy’s slot on another. In non-portfolio areas of mutual interest, Green spokespeople will have access to Labour ministers and departmental advice.

All that and they get to publicly disagree with the government on policies that fall outside Green portfolios. That is not a bad policy haul for a party Labour does not need to form a government.

And there is no way any of it would have happened under the single-party majority governments we used to see under the previous first-past-the-post system. So it may be a consolation prize, but in fact it’s not that small.

A more diverse government
As well as being the first single-party majority MMP government, it is also a diverse one. In her first term Ardern acknowledged the importance of having more women in cabinet. Nearly half (47 percent) of the new Parliament — and a majority of Labour’s caucus (53 percent) — are women.

To some extent this is reflected in the makeup of the executive. Eight of the 20 full cabinet members are women; in total, women comprise 43 percent of the wider administration. There are more women in the ministry than in the National Party’s caucus.

The executive also contains a solid number of people of colour: perhaps as many as a quarter of all ministers and parliamentary under-secretaries are non-Pākehā.

On election night, Labour’s Māori caucus conveyed a direct message to the prime minister about the importance of a solid Māori presence in cabinet. She appears to have listened.

Between them, Labour’s Māori MPs get five seats in cabinet. Add positions outside cabinet as well as the Greens’ Marama Davidson and Māori comprise 25 percent of all members of the executive. Perhaps most noteworthy is that Nanaia Mahuta becomes the country’s first female Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Ardern has also looked carefully at her back bench and the clutch of incoming MPs, bringing some of them into the political executive. Jan Tinetti and Kiri Allan have been marked for higher things for some time, while the newly minted MP Dr Ayesha Verrall comes straight into cabinet as an associate health minister.

Power and control
Under certain circumstances a large parliamentary caucus can be a challenge. Thwarted egos, stifled ambitions, fits of pique — once the thrill of the election result has worn off, managing relations between those who are in government and the wider parliamentary party will be one of the chief challenges facing Labour’s whips.

The Green co-leaders aside, Ardern’s executive comprises 40 percent of the Labour party’s caucus. Given the conventions of collective cabinet responsibility, this means that members of the government have a near majority within caucus, so discipline shouldn’t be an issue — yet.

It is hard to overstate just how much control Ardern has over New Zealand’s 53rd Parliament. Even before special votes are counted, the parliamentary arithmetic renders National, ACT and the Māori Party virtually irrelevant.

Labour dominates the executive, and between them Labour and the Greens will dominate the legislature and its committees. Voters have placed considerable power in Ardern’s hands. It’s time to see what she does with it.

Dr Richard Shaw, is professor of politics at Massey University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Green Party delegates have voted to accept a deal with Labour which will give it two ministerial portfolios outside of cabinet in the New Zealand government.

Consensus was blocked, so the party required 75 percent of delegates to get the deal across the line this evening.

Labour offered the Green Party the two portfolios as part of a cooperation agreement.

? BREAKING: We’re thinking ahead by acting now. Today we’re proud to launch our bold new vision for the future that resets and reimagines Aotearoa so all of us and our planet thrive. pic.twitter.com/oOGjU5VnHO

— Green Party NZ (@NZGreens) July 25, 2020

Today’s vote to accept the deal came after several rounds of talks on potential areas of cooperation between the two parties concluded on Thursday.

About 150 Green Party delegates were presented the deal on a zoom call today, before voting on whether to accept it.

Green Party delegates were also told the two select committees Green MPs will chair or deputy chair will likely be Environment and Transport, RNZ understands.

As part of the proposed cooperation agreement, Labour will support the nomination of a Green MP to be the chair of a select committee, as well as a Green MP in the deputy chair role of an additional select committee.

Green Party co-leaders
The ministerial portfolios will be held by the Green Party’s co-leaders, Labour leader Jacinda Ardern revealed this afternoon.

James Shaw will continue as Climate Change Minister and be appointed Associate Minister for the Environment (Biodiversity), while Marama Davidson will be the Minister for the Prevention of Family and Sexual Violence and Associate Minister of Housing (Homelessness).

Despite a landslide election victory for her Labour Party, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said Saturday that the Green Party would be given two ministerial positions to help advance their “shared goals”https://t.co/cY7m3bVrX1

— AFP news agency (@AFP) October 31, 2020

In a statement, Davidson said the Green Party was “thrilled” to enter into this governing arrangement with Labour.

“We entered into this negotiation hoping to achieve the best outcomes for New Zealand and our planet. This was after a strong campaign where we committed to action on the climate crisis, the biodiversity crisis, and the poverty crisis.

“New Zealanders voted us in to be a productive partner to Labour to ensure we go further and faster on the issues that matter. We will make sure that happens this term.”

Shaw said the Greens had a larger caucus this term, who were ready to play a constructive role.

“In the areas of climate change, looking after our natural environment and addressing inequality, there’s no time to waste. Marama will do incredible work rapidly addressing the issues of homelessness and family violence,” he said.

‘First in NZ political history’
“We are proud to have achieved a first in New Zealand political history, where a major party with a clear majority under MMP has agreed to ministerial positions for another party, as well as big areas of cooperation.”

Areas of co-operation will be: “achieving the purpose and goals of the Zero Carbon Act” through decarbonising public transport and the public sector, increasing the uptake of zero-emission vehicles, introducing clean car standards, and supporting the use of renewable energy for industrial heat.

As well as protecting the environment and biodiversity, and improving child wellbeing and action on homelessness, warmer homes, and child and youth mental health.

In return the Greens will not oppose the government on confidence and supply for the full term of this Parliament, and support Labour on procedural motions in the House and at select committees

But the Greens will be free to take their own position on any issues not covered by the ministerial portfolios and areas of co-operation.

Ardern said in the interests of transparency, Labour was releasing the deal publicly in tandem with the Greens’ deliberations.

“On election night I said I wanted to govern for all New Zealanders and to reach as wide a consensus on key issues as possible. This agreement does that, while honouring the mandate provided to Labour to form a majority government in our own right.

Balancing two key objectives
“The cooperation agreement balances these two objectives, whilst not committing to a more formal coalition or confidence and supply arrangement.”

Ardern said strong, stable government was essential to New Zealand as it recovered from covid.

“Between this agreement and our existing parliamentary majority, we won’t be held back from getting on with the work needed to rebuild our economy and continuing to keep New Zealand safe from covid-19.

She said policy areas where Labour and the Greens could work together were places where the policy and experience of the Greens would provide a positive contribution to the Labour government, but without any requirement for either party to have to reach consensus.

“James knows climate change inside out, his expertise in this complex and detailed policy area is an important skill set to tap into, and he has a range of domestic and international stakeholder relationships that are important to maintain.

“Stability and predictability in climate change policy I see as key, and that has also been feedback that I’ve picked up from stakeholders ranging from environmental NGOs to the business community.”

On Davidson’s role, she said Green MP Jan Logie had led the work on family and sexual violence as an undersecretary, and it was at an “important phase of implementation”.

Addressing a national shame
“Again, continuity on addressing this area of national shame is at the front of my mind. It’s also my strong believe that this is an area which should be a ministerial portfolio in it’s own right, and so that’s what we’re doing.”

She said the agreement struck the right balance of the parties working on issues where there is agreement, “allowing space for disagreement and independence, delivering business continuity and predictability in key policy areas, especially climate policy, and guaranteeing that Labour’s majority is bolstered on key votes to ensure the ongoing stability of the majority government.

“Never before has one party won a majority under MMP, but that’s not to say that the principals of MMP should be ignored. Furthermore it is also simply not how I do politics.”

She said she would not have invested time and energy in this agreement unless she thought it was in the best interests of the government and also for New Zealand.

“My view is there are skills and talents that exist in other parties in Parliament, I want to make use of those from the Green Party, and work on policy areas in which there are skills and expertise as well, it makes sense for New Zealand to do that. At the same time though, I will use the mandate that we’ve been given.”

This article is republished by the Pacific Media Centre under a partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Strong team. More jobs. Better economy. So say the National Party’s campaign hoardings. Only thing is, last Sunday’s Newshub-Reid Research poll – which had support for the Labour Party at 60.9 percent and for National at 25.1 percent – suggests the team is not looking that strong at all.

Nor will it be having much to say on jobs or the economy following the general election on September 19 if those numbers are close to the result.

As you might expect, National’s leadership dismissed the poll as “rogue”, saying the party’s internal polling (which hasn’t been publicly released) puts it in a much stronger position.

READ MORE: National gambles on Collins crushing Ardern’s charisma in NZ election

But this latest poll is consistent with three others released since May (June 1, June 25 and July 15). Averaged out, these polls put support for Labour and National at 55.5 percent and 29.1 percent respectively.

[Editor: Yesterday’s 1 News-Colmar Brunton poll put National down to 32 percent while Labour moved up another three points to 53 percent.]

That is quite the gap. Assuming they are broadly accurate, what do they tell us about the state of politics in Aotearoa New Zealand?

The centre is now centre-left
For a start, the political centre appears to be shifting to the left. Across the past four polls, support for Labour and the Greens sits around 62 percent. When nearly two out of three voters in a naturally conservative nation support the centre-left, something is going on.

Correspondingly, as the notional median voter shifts left, parties on the right are being left high and dry. The Reid Research poll put the combined support for National, ACT and New Zealand First at 30.4 percent, a touch under half the level of support for the centre-left.

In 2017, National secured nearly 45 percent of the party vote. Nearly half of that support has bled away – and most of it hasn’t gone to other conservative parties. New Zealand First is on life support; the right-wing ACT party is at 3 percent; and the other centre-right parties (including the New Conservatives, the Outdoors Party and the conspiratorially inclined Advance NZ/Public Party coalition) are well off the pace.

The leadership gap
Then there is the question of leadership. Judith Collins was installed in an attempt to re-establish National’s bona fides as New Zealand’s natural party of government. But she has not had the impact Jacinda Ardern did when she took Labour’s reins several weeks out from the 2017 election.

In fact, while 25 percent of those polled by Reid Research support National, the party’s leader sits at only 14 percent in the preferred prime minister stakes: nearly half of those who would vote National do not rate Collins as the prime minister.

The polling suggests that Collins’s penchant for attack politics is not resonating with voters. She has not been helped by the recent antics of (now departed or demoted) caucus colleagues Hamish Walker, Michael Woodhouse and Andrew Falloon, but the buck stops with her.

National’s default claim of being the better economic manager also took a blow in the most recent poll. Asked who they trusted most with the post-covid economy, 62.3 percent of respondents preferred a Labour-led government and only 26.5 percent a National-led one.

Could we see an outright victory?
Something may be about to happen to the shape of our governments. Under New Zealand’s previous first-past-the-post (FPP) electoral system we saw a string of manufactured governing majorities.

For the better part of the 20th century either National or (less frequently) Labour would win a majority of seats in the House of Representatives with a minority of the popular vote. Indeed, the last time any party won a majority of the popular vote was 1951.

That may be about to change. Since the first mixed member proportional (MMP) election in 1996 we have not had a single-party majority government: multi-party (and often minority) governments have become the norm. That is because MMP does not permit manufactured majorities in the way FPP does. To win an outright majority you need to enjoy the support of a (near) majority of voters.

Labour may be on the verge of doing precisely that. If it does, it will be a very different kind of single-party majority government to those formed after FPP elections.

In 1993, for instance, the National Party formed a single-party majority government on the basis of just 35 percent of the vote. If Labour is in a position to govern alone (even if Ardern looks to some sort of arrangement with the Greens) it will be because a genuine majority of voters want it to.

Rogue poll or outlier on the same trend, Collins has had her honeymoon (if it can even be called that). In a way, though, neither Ardern nor Collins is the real story here. Much can and will happen between now and September 5 when advance voting begins. But something bigger and more fundamental may be going on.

If the pollsters are anywhere near right, New Zealanders will look back at the 2020 election as one of those epochal events when the electoral tectonic plates moved.

Dr Richard Shaw is professor of politics, Massey University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

For those interested in politics being more transformational and meaningful, an important report was published recently which relates to some of these issues. Produced by researchers at Victoria University of Wellington in conjunction with Parliament’s Office of the Clerk, the report contains some important – and contentious – recommendations for reform of New Zealand’s democracy – see the report here: Foresight, insight and oversight: Enhancing long-term governance through better parliamentary scrutiny.

Veteran political journalist John Armstrong said the report “arguably is the most meaty menu in terms of options for change in a fundamental component of the political system since the Royal Commission on the Electoral System of the mid-1980s” recommended the shift to MMP – see his must-read column: Report critiquing Government swept under the rug along with thoughts of the future.

Armstrong laments that the report hasn’t had much attention, suggesting it should be “compulsory reading” for MPs. But he’s not holding his breath: “How regrettable, wasteful and unforgivable it will be if MPs shun what is nothing less than blueprint for a much-needed overhaul of New Zealand’s increasingly sorry excuse for a Parliament.”

So, why aren’t our politicians interested in this report? Armstrong suggests that it challenges the very nature of modern politics, saying the report is “a very welcome antithesis to the self-serving unwillingness of politicians to address the future for fear of losing votes. It rejects the attempt to divorce the present from the future. It suggests numerous mechanisms to acknowledge the long-term rather than being fixated with the short-term.”

The report is all about finding ways to reconfigure parliamentary politics to be more future-focused, and able to deal with long-term and often intractable issues such as environmental collapse, and demographic population changes causing problems for resource use. It makes the argument that politicians don’t deal with such problems because they’re more focused on short-term and day-to-day problems in society.

This is all best explained by one of the co-authors of the report, Jonathan Boston, who argues that because of the way New Zealand’s system of political accountability is currently set up, “poor decision-making may go undetected while non-urgent, but potentially serious, long-term problems receive inadequate political attention. Future citizens are then left to pay the price” – see: Taking the fight to short-termism in government.

Boston has a number of questions about whether our system of parliamentary scrutiny is producing a forward-looking system of government: “Are they successfully identifying, mitigating and managing significant national risks? Are they sufficiently alert to slow-burning or creeping problems, not least those with irreversible consequences? Do they have effective strategies to address major long-term policy challenges such as biodiversity loss and climate change, the fiscal impacts of demographic changes or the social consequences of disruptive technologies? In short, are they exercising sound anticipatory governance?”

Although all politicians are likely to be more focused on the “present” than the “future”, Boston believes our democratic configuration “compounds the presentist bias in decision-making”.

A package of potential reforms is raised for debate in the report. These range from a number of changes that could be made in the way Parliament operates, through to the number of MPs (proposing an increase to 150), to the length of the parliamentary term (proposing it be extended from three to four years).

It’s this latter recommendation that has received the most media coverage. Jonathan Boston went on TVNZ’s Breakfast to advocate for the reduction in elections, saying that the main advantage to having less frequent elections is that politicians would then have “more time and opportunity to address big, long-term issues, whether they are environmental, economic and housing and so on” – see: Extending MP terms to four years would allow more ‘thoughtful analysis’, expert argues.

Speaking on RNZ’s Morning Report, Boston elaborated on the problems of the current three-year election cycle: “As it currently stands a new government can be formed and then in effect got to spend maybe the first year trying to work out what it’s going to do, the second year trying to do it and then the third year preparing for the next election. In dealing with very complex, difficult issues, that’s a very, very tight timeframe” – see: New report calls for four-year term, more MPs in Parliament.

In addition, RNZ reports Boston’s view that “short electoral cycles are compounded by the rapid nature of social media and the news media. Professor Boston said relentless reporting puts governments under pressure to deliver quickly, which encourages a short-term approach.” Boston is quoted saying: “I think we have plenty of evidence in New Zealand of governments of all persuasions really struggling to address big issues like climate change, fresh water, housing in very short parliamentary terms.”

The same article quotes former Labour Party president Mike Williams agreeing on the need for change, but suggesting that it would be unlikely: “My gut feeling is both would be rejected. My personal opinion is that the term is too short and four years would be much better. I just don’t think that would be acceptable to the public. They like the option of being able to chuck a government out after three years.”

This ability to throw governments out is also emphasised in the same article by Otago University professor of law Andrew Geddis, as an important part of holding politicians to account in a system with very few checks on power: “We don’t have a written constitution, we don’t have courts that can strike down legislation, we don’t have an upper house of parliament or anything like that… So if we get rid of three-yearly elections and move to four yearly we’d have to ask what other arrangements we put in place to increase the accountability of members of parliament.”

Regardless, it’s highly unlikely to occur since Justice Minister Andrew Little has stated the Government’s lack of enthusiasm for the proposal – see the Herald article, Andrew Little cold on change to four-year parliamentary term.

However, it’s worth noting that “National’s electoral law spokesman, Nick Smith, said the party was considering a policy backing a referendum on longer terms.” And when he retired from Parliament late last year, former Attorney General Chris Finlayson also made a plea to shift to a four-year parliamentary term.

This was taken up at the time by a New Zealand Herald editorial, which argued, “Anything that encourages decision makers in any field to lengthen their horizons is a good thing. Just as business needs chief executives who can look beyond their annual reporting cycle, and beyond their likely tenure at the top, democracies need governments that can look well beyond the next election. Even one extra year in the electoral cycle might make quite a difference” – see: Four year terms could make governments more far-sighted – New Zealand Herald.

In contrast, for some opposing arguments, it’s worth reading an older opinion piece by lawyer Graeme Edgeler: Four-year term better in theory than practice. He puts forward the case that “There’s no evidence that a four-year Parliamentary term would lead to better legislation. And nor is there evidence that the current three-year term prevents Parliament from completing major law reform projects.”

The proposal to increase the size of Parliament from 120 to 150 MPs is also highly unlikely to be accepted by the public. After all, New Zealand has previously had referendums which give an idea of the likely public orientations to the idea.

Brittney Deguara reports: “In 1967 and 1990, two referendums were held regarding a potential term expansion. Both produced results against a term increase, with only around a third of voters supporting the change.  Similarly, a 1999 referendum resulted in the majority of citizens – 81 per cent – voting in favour of reducing the number of MPs from 120 to 100” – see: Proposal to extend parliamentary term to four years, increase MPs to 150.

As blogger David Farrar says the notion is “likely to be about as popular as a Big Mac at a Green Party conference”, but he supports it – see: Good parliamentary reform proposals.

Farrar makes some comparisons between the New Zealand Parliament and those of some other comparable countries: “A rough rule of thumb for the size of national legislatures is the cube root of the population. That would mean we should have 169 MPs. We have one of the smallest legislatures in the world because we have only one chamber. Also we have no state legislatures. Let’s look at the size of legislatures in a few countries. Croatia and Ireland have smaller populations than NZ and have 151 and 218 MPs respectively. Norway, Finland and Denmark have under six million population and have 169, 200 and 179 MPs respectively. Sweden has 349 MPs for 10 million people.”

Reducing the voting age to 16 has been raised again in the report, but this has also been rejected by the Prime Minister – see Danielle Clent’s Lowering voting age not on radar but more electoral education needed, PM Jacinda Ardern says.

Therefore, it seems as if the package of suggested reforms is not getting much traction. But there really are many other options worth debating in the report. As John Armstrong says, even if some of the higher profiles proposals are rejected, this “still leaves a truckload of other recommendations which are not contentious. MPs could pick and choose the ones they favour. In a sense, the gauntlet has been thrown down for the Speaker to pick up. It is an opportunity for Trevor Mallard to show leadership in that role.”

And without some of this type of change, there’s the risk that New Zealand democracy will continue to be mired in what Rod Oram calls the “soundbites, dog whistles, one-liners and other cynical devices” instead of the “fundamental, comprehensive and long-term change” that is necessary – see his column from late last year: Ditch the dog-whistle, save democracy.

Finally, members of the public will soon get the chance to have their say on some of the types of recommendations in the report that pertain to how Parliament operates. That’s because every three years the Standing Orders Committee of MPs call for recommendations for the rules of Parliament, and RNZ’s Phil Smith explains how this works – see: Adding foresight to oversight.