New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon faced sustained heckling and had to fend off questions about a revived Treaty Principles Bill as he returned to Waitangi this year.

ACT leader David Seymour predictably attracted his own jeers, and NZ First’s Winston Peters focused on a return serve.

The opposition was not spared criticism either yesterday, with Labour accused of backstabbing, and Te Pāti Māori given a stern word to sort out their internal problems and finish the work it started at Parliament.

But Luxon was clearly the one attracting the most ire.

Even before MPs walked onto the upper Treaty Grounds, a group of 40 or so protesters led by activist Wikatana Popata gathered as he made a rousing speech beneath the flagstaff — calling the coalition “the enemy”.

“These fellas are accountable to America, they’re here on behalf of America e tātou mā. Don’t you see what my uncle Shane [Jones] is doing?” he said.

“My uncle Shane, he’s giving the okay to all the oil drilling and the mining because those are American companies e tātou mā. So wake up.

‘Not scared of arrests’
“We’re not quite sure who our enemy is, well let me remind us: those people that are about to walk in, that’s our enemy . . .  we’re not scared of your arrests, we’re not scared of your jail cells or your prisons.

“We’ve been imprisoned . ..  we kōrero Māori to our tamariki at home, we practise our tikanga Māori at home, so you will never imprison us.”

The group performed a haka in protest against the politicians’ presence amid the more formal haka welcoming them to the marae. A small scuffle broke out as security stopped some of the protesters — who were shouting “kupapa”, or “traitor” — from advancing closer.

Speaking from the pae in te reo Māori on behalf of the haukāinga, Te Mutunga Rameka paid tribute to retiring Labour MP Peeni Henare and challenged Māori MPs working for the government, asking “where is your kotahitanga, where is your unity?”.

The next speaker, Eru Kapa-Kingi, acknowledged the protesters outside — saying he had challenged from outside in the past and now he was challenging from within the marae.

“Why do we continue to welcome the spider to our house,” he asked.

“This government has stabbed us in the front, but others stabbed us in the back,” he said, referring to Labour.

“Sort yourself out,” was his message to them, and to Te Pāti Māori, which in November ousted two of its MPs.

Part of ructions
Kapa-Kingi was arguably a central part of those ructions, however, having been employed by his mother Mariameno — one of those ousted MPs — and leading some of the criticism of the party’s leadership.

His criticism of Labour highlighted the departure of Henare, who he said had been — like his mother — silenced by his party.

Henare soon rose to his feet, saying according to custom those named on the marae were entitled to speak — and he spoke of humility.

“We must be very humble, extremely humble. And so that’s why I stand humbly before you . . .  Parliament kept me safe over the years.

“We have reached a point in time where I have completed my work. And so I ask everyone to turn their thoughts to what was said this morning: the hopes, aspirations, and desires of our people.”

Henare and his soon-to-be-former boss, Labour leader Chris Hipkins, have both batted away speculation about other reasons behind his departure — not least from NZ First deputy Shane Jones.

Hipkins himself acknowledged Henare in his speech, saying “our hearts are heavy today. We know we are returning you to your whānau in the North, but you are still part of our whānau. And we know where to find you”.

‘Lot of rubbish’
He later told reporters Kapa-Kingi was talking “a lot of rubbish”, that the last Labour government did more for Māori than many others, and Labour had already admitted it got the Foreshore and Seabed legislation wrong.

Seymour was up next and spoke of liberal democratic values; dismissing complaints of colonisation as a “myopic drone”; and saying the defeat of the Treaty Principles Bill was a pyrrhic victory because — he believed — it would return and become law in future.

Defending his comments on colonisation later, he said it had been more good than bad, as “even the poorest people in New Zealand today live like Kings and Queens compared with most places in most times in history”.

Conch shells and complaints about growing sick during Seymour’s speech clearly fired up the next speaker, New Zealand First leader Winston Peters — who said he did not come to be insulted or speak about politics.

“There’s some young pup out there shouting who doesn’t know what day it is,” he said, calling for a return to the interests of “one people, one nation”.

As the shouting started, Peters repeated his line there would come a time where they wanted to speak to him long before he wanted to speak to them.

Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson then rose to speak from the mahau, echoing the words of the late veteran campaigner Titewhai Harawira, urging the Crown to honour the Treaty, “it is not hard”.

Green candidates
The party announced during the events yesterday it would be standing candidates in three Māori seats, including list MP Huhana Lyndon, lawyer Tania Waikato, and former Te Pāti Māori candidate Heather Te Au-Skipworth — and Davidson staked out her party’s claim to those seats.

“When the giants, the rangatira of our Green Party — before the Pāti Māori was even formed — were the only party in the 2004 Foreshore hīkoi to meet the people, the masses, to uphold Te Tiriti,” she said.

With the government trampling treaty and environment while corporations benefited, she said giving land back was core.

While her speech was welcomed with applause, the government’s hecklers soon turned up the noise for the Prime Minister.

After skipping last year’s pōwhiri amid tensions over the Treaty Principles Bill, Luxon began by saying it was a tremendous privilege to be back, someone already shouting “we’ve had enough”.

He spoke about the the meaning of the Treaty as he saw it, and the importance of discussing and debating rather than turning on one another.

“It speaks so highly of us that we can come together at times like this, but it is also relevant on Waitangi Day as we think about how we’ve grappled and wrestled with other challenging issues as well,” he said.

Shouts and jeers
Shouts and jeers could be heard throughout, but he ploughed on undeterred.

“. . .  I think we have the Treaty to thank for that, because that has enabled us to engage much better with each other and we should take immense pride in that.”

One person could be heard yelling “treason” as Luxon spoke. He later said it was “typical of what we expect at Waitangi . . .  I enjoyed it”.

Asked if his government was honouring the Treaty, he said “yes”.

“We take it very seriously. It’s our obligation to honour the Treaty, but we work it out by actually making sure we are lifting educational outcomes for Māori kids, we work it out by making sure we are lifting health outcomes, we work it out by making sure we’re making a much more safer community.”

Luxon has been rejecting the idea of a revived Treaty Principles Bill since the day after it was voted down, but his coalition partner Seymour has been pledging its return for even longer.

The Prime Minister has reiterated his stance several times in the lead-up to Thursday’s pōwhiri, and did so again: “David can have his own take on that but I’m just telling you, it ain’t happening,” he said.

Referendum ‘divisive’
Ahead of the 2023 election, he had said redefining the Treaty’s principles was not his party’s policy and they did not support it, that a referendum — as the bill proposed — would be “divisive and unhelpful”, and a referendum would not be on the coalition table.

He was asked, given that, how ironclad his guarantee could be with an election campaign still to come and governing arrangements yet to be confirmed.

“We’ve been there and we killed it, so we’re done,” he said, clearly hoping for finality on the matter.

Te Tai Tokerau kaumātua and veteran broadcaster Waihoroi Shortland bookended the speeches.

Beginning with a Winston Churchill quote — that democracy is a bad form of government but the others are worse — Shortland said it was easy to remark on how divisive Māori were “when you all live in the most divisive house in the country”.

He called for Henare to be allowed to leave politics with dignity, but extended no such luxury for Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi.

“Rawiri, I cannot allow you to come away. Your work is not done. It is crushing to see and to hear what the House does kia koutou, kia tātou, ki te Māori — but we sent you there nevertheless, and that work is not done. Find a way.”

‘Feel the pain’
Waititi had spoken earlier, thanking Eru Kapa-Kingi for what he had said.

“I can hear the anger and I can feel the pain. And the courage to stand before the people and say what you had to say,” he said.

He said the party wanted to meet with Ngāpuhi but had been “scattered” when invited to a hui in November, and indicated an eagerness to meet.

“We are still eager to gather with you but we must make the proper arrangements before we can,” he said.

“It’s alright to have problems. But we must experience those problems in our own house. If those problems go outside, the horse will bolt.”

He said the current government was “nibbling like a sandfly” at the Treaty, and there was “only one enemy before us, and it is not ourselves”.

But that fell short of what Mariameno Kapa-Kingi had hoped for, telling reporters she initially thought an apology was coming.

She said she was disappointed Waititi did not fully address their stoush in his speeches, and she was committed to standing in Te Tai Tokerau — presumably, regardless of her party affiliation.

“I’m not going anywhere until our people tell me otherwise. I’ve got much to do.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

In the wake of New Zealand’s recent election, and subsequent coalition negotiations, Winston Peters has emerged as New Zealand’s Foreign Minister again.

I’ve never been able to adequately explain why a populist politician leading a party called New Zealand First would have an interest in a post that takes him overseas so often. But there you go.

Peters is foreign minister and, because New Zealand has no minister for development, he is the politician in charge of New Zealand’s aid programme.

Fortunately, for those who want to work out what Peters will mean for aid, he has a track record.

He was first elected in 1978. Although he’s been voted out numerous times since then, at some point in his political wanderings he clearly stumbled upon a pile of political athanasia pills.

He keeps coming back. As he’s done this, he’s managed to snaffle the role of foreign minister in coalition agreements with the centre-left Labour party twice, in 2005 and 2017.

In his first two stints as foreign minister he was responsible enough. He proved very capable at playing the role of statesman and diplomat overseas.

Dreary back-office work
He also did the dreary back-office work that ministers need to do efficiently. When it came to aid — although it Is almost impossible to know Peters’s real views on anything — he appeared to believe New Zealand had a genuine obligation to help the Pacific.

Beyond that, he was hands-off and happy to let the aid programme be run by NZAid (in his first term) and MFAT (in his second term). By the time of his second term as foreign minister this was suboptimal — as I pointed out in my assessment of Nanaia Mahuta’s tenure as minister, the aid programme has numerous problems and could do with a minister who pushed it to improve.

On the other hand, as former foreign minister Murray McCully demonstrated with such vigour, aid programmes can suffer worse fates than hands-off ministers. Much better a minister who doesn’t meddle than a hands-on minister who thinks they understand aid when they don’t.

Peters was also able to use his role as a lynchpin in coalition governments to get the New Zealand aid budget increased. I don’t know whether this reflected a sincere desire to do more good in the world or whether he simply wanted the prestige of being a minister presiding over a growing portfolio.

Either way, it was a useful achievement.

This time round matters will likely be different though. Peters will probably continue to be a hands-off minister. But the government he is part of is conservative, comprising Peters’s New Zealand First, the centre-right National Party (the largest member of the coalition and currently Morrison-esque in ideology), and ACT, a libertarian party.

New Zealand is currently running a deficit. And the government has promised tax cuts. It is unlikely there will be money for more aid.

Right-wing rhetoric to win votes
Peters himself uses right-wing rhetoric to win votes and — to the extent his actual views can be divined — is conservative in many aspects of his politics. (He only ended up in coalition governments with Labour because of bad blood between him and earlier National politicians.)

Peters, who is 78, doesn’t appear to care about climate change. He is also a strong supporter of New Zealand’s alliance with Australia and the United States.

His views in both of these areas are shared with National and ACT, which could be bad news for New Zealand’s recently improved climate finance efforts. It may well mean a stronger stance on China’s presence in the Pacific too, with the result that geostrategy casts an even larger shadow over the quality of New Zealand aid.

On the other hand, it is possible that even the current government will start to feel embarrassed turning up to COP meetings and having to admit it is doing less to mitigate its own emissions and less on climate finance too.

Similarly, New Zealand’s politically conservative farmers need China as an export market. Perhaps a mix of political economy and international political economy will moderate the government’s approach to the new cold war in the Pacific.

Winston Peters has a track record. But he has never been predictable, and now he is part of a very conservative government, in the midst of uncertain times.

“Predictions are difficult”, Yogi Berra is said to have quipped, “especially about the future”. It’s currently a very hard time to predict the future of New Zealand aid, even with a familiar face at the helm.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Shaw, Professor of Politics, Massey University

It might have taken six weeks to decide the shape of New Zealand’s next government (or three if you count from the final results), but in the end that is the nature of proportional representation. Compromise, trade-offs and haggling are the price of an MMP electoral system designed to avoid single-party rule.

So, after some intermittently passive-agressive political posturing and much striding through airports, the deals were done and signed off in Wellington today. Both the ACT and NZ First parties have agreed, with exemptions, to National Party’s fiscal plan, tax plan and 100-day plan.

With two of the three coalition parties having run on campaign slogans about “taking back” the country and putting it “back on track”, there was a predictable sense of a return to policies of the past.

The Reserve Bank will again be focused on price stability, schools will be required to teach the basics, red tape and civil servant numbers will be cut, the “three strikes” provision will be restored to the Sentencing Act, te reo Māori in government agency names will be reduced, landlords will enjoy interest deductibility, and tax “relief” is again front and centre.

Not everyone got their way, of course. National has had to drop its plan to fund income tax cuts with a levy on foreign property buyers. And ACT’s proposed referendum on the Treaty of Waitangi becomes a Treaty Principles Bill that will go through the select committee process.

Unpredictable internal dynamics

Unsurprisingly, in this coalition of many colours, National secures the lion’s share of the 30 positions in the executive (including positions within and outside cabinet), holding 19 roles. ACT and NZ First both have three positions inside cabinet, with their leaders sharing the deputy prime minister role in turn.

Past coalitions have tended to comprise one major party flanked by a smaller partner on its left or right. Sometimes, too, those governments (single- or multi-party) have been supported on confidence and supply by parliamentary partners who formally sit outside cabinet but occasionally get executive spots.

But this will be the first formal three-party coalition New Zealand has had: one government based on two agreements wrapping together three parties. A government can only ever speak with a single voice, but this one has multiple moving parts.

It will also have an unpredictable internal dynamic. A single relationship between a senior and junior partner is one thing; this government has three discrete relationships, and they will not always be in harmony.

Incoming prime minister Christopher Luxon had the phrase “strength and stability” on high rotation during negotiations: the structural design of his government will test the bar he has set.

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Dispute resolution

The shape of the administration, and the chequered coalition history of NZ First leader Winston Peters, mean the processes put in place to ensure the effective day-to-day management of the government take on added significance.

Those arrangements are surprisingly thin. A coalition committee will monitor progress against the contents of both agreements. But it will only meet once during each House sitting period. This is a strategic committee, not one established to deal with the routine political challenges associated with keeping a three-way coalition on the rails.

Nor is it entirely clear how the daily conversations required in multi-party governments – including finding time on the legislative agenda to get through two coalition agreements’ worth of work, let alone all of the other policy challenges the next three years will deliver – are going to be structured. Surprisingly, there is no reference to holding regular meetings of the party leaders.

Instead, beyond a beige agreement to “undertake their best endeavours to achieve consensus on Cabinet decisions”, and the now standard MMP commitment to a “no surprises” policy, the parties’ respective chiefs of staff will be the key players.

They are the ones to whom disagreements between parties will be referred. Only if they cannot resolve the issue will the party leaders be drawn in. It is a reactive rather than an active model.

Beyond that, there is the standard commitment to maintain collective cabinet responsibility, and to the long-established “agree to disagree” provisions contained in the Cabinet Manual. And that’s it.

Potential fault lines

It is already possible to discern some of the challenges the coalition is going to face. The first will be finding an equilibrium point.

ACT’s more doctrinaire MPs will chafe at being dragged to the economic centre by NZ First. Likewise, NZ First’s social conservatives and economic nationalists will not enjoy aspects of ACT’s libertarianism.

Luxon will be constantly reminded that being a prime minister in a three-party coalition is not like being a corporate CEO – and not all his challenges will come from Peters or ACT leader David Seymour.

For instance, there will be National MPs who were spokespeople during the previous parliament but who now see an ACT or NZ First minister in “their” cabinet seat. In time, ambitious people who missed out on ministerial appointment can become restive.

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Lost voices: ethnic diversity in the New Zealand parliament will decline after the 2023 election

More broadly, tensions may well emerge between cabinet’s role as the centre of policy and political decision making and the prerogatives of individual ministers. It is not hard to envisage, say, a National minister pressing ahead with policy in their department rather than having always to run the coalition gauntlet in cabinet.

If this happens on any serious scale, not only will the fundamental principle of collective responsibility come under pressure, whole-of-government coordination (which is likely to be tested anyway by plans to cut the public service) will become challenging.

A loose federation of parties

Finally, small parties that prop up larger ones in office have often fared badly at the next election.

Having returned National to office in 1996, for example, NZ First came within 63 votes in Tauranga from tumbling out of parliament in 1999. In 2020, three years after installing a Labour-led government, it was turfed out.

ACT has no comparable record. But if the past is any guide, if polls start looking shaky for the smaller parties, watch for toys being ejected from political cots.

Today was all about the choreographed unveiling of a new government. But the extent to which the administration’s promises come to pass will depend on how the three parties get on once the gloss has come off and the pressure is on.

The coalition agreements are full of policy. But read the documents carefully and it is hard to escape the impression that, when it comes to the back-office arrangements that make governments tick, this is less a single government in lock-step than a loose governing federation of three parties. Now we get to find out if three parties can fit into one government.

Richard Shaw no recibe salario, ni ejerce labores de consultoría, ni posee acciones, ni recibe financiación de ninguna compañía u organización que pueda obtener beneficio de este artículo, y ha declarado carecer de vínculos relevantes más allá del cargo académico citado.

– ref. Three parties, two deals, one government: the stress points within New Zealand’s ‘coalition of many colours’ – https://theconversation.com/three-parties-two-deals-one-government-the-stress-points-within-new-zealands-coalition-of-many-colours-217673

Government-formation negotiations are ongoing between National, Act and New Zealand First. We do not know how long these will take. Neither it seems, do they.

Importantly, there are fundamentally no hard deadlines on government formation negotiations in New Zealand. It will take as long as it takes. I’ll start by saying that some of the hypotheticals I talk about here are ridiculously unlikely. National, Act and New Zealand First will almost certainly either come to an agreement, or realise they cannot, well before we reach the ones I mention at the end. The point I am making is well-established by them however: there really are no hard deadlines. There is no date by which, if negotiations haven’t resolved anything, there must be a fresh election. Unless they’re still going in 2026, of course, when we’ll need an election anyway.

In New Zealand, a decision to hold an early election is one that is made by the Prime Minister. This power – like all other powers the Prime Minister has – is circumscribed by the caretaker convention. If a Prime Minister has the confidence of more MPs than not, they may exercise the power to advise the Governor-General to dissolve Parliament and hold an election.

If a Prime Minister is operating in caretaker mode, that is, is governing without the clear support of a majority of MPs, the power to advise the Governor-General to dissolve Parliament and hold an election can only be exercised – like all the other powers – if more MPs than not support the exercise of the power.

This means that, no matter how longs things take, there will be no advice from the Prime Minister to the Governor-General to hold a new election unless at least one of the parties involved in negotiations to form a government agrees to the holding of a new election.

There are soft deadlines all the time. There are soft legal deadlines. Saturday 11 November 2023 was one. It was the date negotiations had to be resolved if we wanted to avoid the necessity of having Chris Hipkins reappointed as Prime Minister because the writ wasn’t able be returned within 28 days of the election. But that date passed, and Chris Hipkins was appointed Prime Minister again (to operate within the confines of the caretaker convention).

There are soft political deadlines too. There was a date that things would have needed to be resolved by for Christopher Luxon to be able to attend this year’s APEC leaders meeting by. That didn’t happen.

And there will be others. At some point, if negotiations continue, this becomes the longest-ever negotiation to form a government. But that’s only politically relevant. It wouldn’t mean anything, legally.

And there’s also a date that this would have to be resolved by so that Christopher Luxon can be sworn in as Prime Minister before the first opening of Parliament for the swearing-in of MPs. But this isn’t a hard deadline either. MPs can be sworn in before Ministers. The opening of Parliament and the first sitting of the House after the 1996 general election occurred before the swearing-in of Ministers from the National-New Zealand First coalition (albeit, the negotiations had been resolved).

They don’t have to be though. At some point, it possibly becomes politically difficult for National. And if it keeps going, it possibly becomes politically damaging for National. They may decide that the harm to them being caused by negotiating is worse than the harm that would be done to them by being seen by the public as forcing New Zealanders back to the polls. But that’s just politics. If National, Act and New Zealand First are content to continue discussions, and none of them wants a fresh election, the can go on basically indefinitely.

Legal things will crop up. Like the re-swearing in of the old Government Ministers. Like the first sitting of the House. But they will just happen. The House will sit to swear-in MPs and to elect a speaker whether negotiations have concluded or not. But once those formalities are done, the House can just adjourn until next year and the talking can continue. The expectation is that the Governor-General will attend at the state opening of Parliament and give a speech from the throne. That can probably happen, albeit the content of the speech will be subject to agreement under the caretaker principle. There is no need for the House to adopt a reply to the speech before everyone is ready to. It can just meet every so often, and National, Act, and New Zealand First would have the numbers to adjourn. One really big soft legal deadline is imprest supply. At some point in the middle of next year, the permission that Parliament has given the government to spend money runs out. But Parliament exists, and there will be MPs. If they’re committed to making negotiations work, they’d just make sure it happens.

Politically, do I think this is at all likely? No. They’ll agree something at some point, or realise they cannot. There are even halfway houses. If it’s taking ages to resolve, but National, Act and New Zealand First are still committed to resolving it, they could even agree in the interim, Christopher Luxon could be appointed Prime Minister instead of Chris Hipkins, to operate under the caretaker principle. I don’t think that’s likely either.

But anyone who tells you there’s a legal deadline this all has to be done by is mistaken, unless the deadline they’re talking about is 10 November 2026. At that point, Parliament will have expired.

*******

Graeme Edgeler is a Wellington barrister, with a professional interest in constitutional and electoral law.

From winning a single-party majority in 2020, Labour’s vote has virtually halved in 2023 in the Aotearoa New Zealand general election.

Pre-election polls appear to have under-estimated support for National, which on the provisional results last night can form a government with ACT and will not need NZ First, despite those same polls pointing to a three-way split.

While the Greens and Te Pāti Māori both saw big gains, taking crucial electorate seats, it has been at the expense of Labour.

Special votes are yet to be counted, and Te Pāti Māori winning so many electorate seats will cause an “overhang”, increasing the size of Parliament and requiring a larger majority to govern.

There will also be a byelection in the Port Waikato electorate on November 25, which National is expected to win.

So the picture may change between now and November 3 when the official result is revealed.

But on last night’s count, the left bloc is out of power and the right is back.

Big shift in the Māori electorates
Te Pāti Māori has performed better than expected in the Māori electorates – taking down some titans of the Labour Party and winning four of the seven seats.

The party vote remained at 2.5 perecent — consistent with 2020.

One of the biggest upsets was 21-year-old Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke’s win over Labour stalwart Nanaia Mahuta in the Hauraki-Waikato electorate. Mahuta has represented the electorate since 2008 and has been in Parliament since 1996.

This was a must-win race for Mahuta, the current foreign affairs minister, after she announced she would not be running on the Labour party list.

Labour won all seven Māori seats in 2017 and six in 2020.

Advance voting
In 2017, 1.24 million votes were cast before election day, more than the previous two elections combined.

In 2020, this rose to 1.97 million people – an extremely high early vote figure attributable to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This year, more than 1.3 million New Zealanders cast advance votes before election day – higher than 2017 but significantly lower than 2020.

The comeback kid
After a dismal showing at the 2020 election, NZ First’s Winston Peters has yet again shown himself to be the comeback kid of New Zealand politics. Peters and his party have provisionally gained nearly 6.5 percent of the vote, giving them eight seats in Parliament.

On the current numbers, the National Party will not need NZ First to help form the government. But the result is still a massive reversal of fortune for Peters, who failed to meet the 5 percent threshold or win an electorate seat in 2020.

The heart of Wellington goes Green
Urban electorates in the capital Wellington have resoundingly shifted left, with wins for the Green Party’s Tamatha Paul in Wellington Central and Julie Anne Genter in Rongotai.

Chlöe Swarbrick has retained her seat in Auckland Central.

The Wellington electorates had previously been Labour strongholds. But the decision by outgoing Finance Minister Grant Robertson to compete as a list-only MP opened Wellington Central to Paul, currently a city councillor.

Genter takes the seat from outgoing Labour MP Paul Eagle.

Both Wellington electorates have also seen sizeable chunks of the party vote — 30 percent in Rongotai and almost 36 percent in Wellington Central — go to the Greens.

Debrin Foxcroft, deputy New Zealand editor, The Conversation; Finlay Macdonald, New Zealand editor, The Conversation; Matt Garrow, editorial web developer, The Conversation, and Veronika Meduna, science, health + environment New Zealand editor, The Conversation. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Green Party co-leader James Shaw has compared the language of New Zealand First leader Winston Peters to former US president Donald Trump, saying it may be emboldening violence against candidates in Aotearoa NZ’s election campaign.

It comes after several candidates from different parties have spoken out about being targeted, including a home invasion on Te Pāti Māori’s youngest candidate, an assault on a Labour candidate, and another Labour candidate saying she has faced the “worst comments and vitriol” this campaign.

Te Pāti Māori candidate Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke, whose home was ram raided and invaded, put the blame on what she called race-baiting from right-wing parties.

Peters told Newshub Nation that notion was wrong, and accused Te Pāti Māori of being a racist party.

But Shaw — who himself was assaulted in 2019 — suggested Peters could be empowering and emboldening extremists.

“It makes me really angry. Because political leaders, through the things we say create an air of permissiveness for that kind of extreme language and now physical violence to take place and it’s not too dissimilar to what we saw in the United States under Donald Trump,” he said.

“Half of the argument about Trump was whether he personally intervened to make those things happen and at one level it doesn’t matter, he created an atmosphere where these extremists felt empowered and emboldened to kind of enact their kind of crazy, racist, misogynist fantasies.

Lead to physical violence
“And that did lead to physical violence there and it’s leading to physical violence here too.”

However, Shaw told RNZ he was not surprised given the “misogynist and racist rhetoric”, which he said had been at least in part been given permission by political parties in this election campaign.

“[It] has created a situation where that kind of online hate and violent language is only one or two steps from actual acts of physical violence and now you’re starting to see those manifest. It is really worrying.

“I think all of us have a responsibility to try and create an atmosphere for democracy to take place, which is respectful, where people can have different opinions and for that to be okay.

“And I think that at the moment we’re seeing a rise in this kind of culture or language which is imported from overseas, that is not just unhelpful but downright dangerous.”

Te Pāti Māori said the break-in at Maipi-Clarke’s house was yet another example of political extremism in New Zealand.

Co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer said some right-wing politicians were emboldening racist behaviour and needed to take responsibility.

‘Harmful inciting’
“We have seen a harmful inciting, a very harmful emboldening of extremism, this is an example of that.

“We’ve had it with our billboards – they’ve been so destroyed that we haven’t been able to afford to replace a lot of them now. It’s just been disgusting, the extent of racism.”

This year’s election had brought some of the worst abuse Te Pāti Māori had ever experienced, she said.

New Zealand First leader Winston Peters claimed of Maipi-Clarke’s incident that “it couldn’t have been a home invasion” and he would answer more questions about the case when he knew all the facts.

“As for the first one [alleged assault on Labour’s Angela Roberts], violence of that sort is just not acceptable, full stop.”

He believed the time for candidates was worse was during the Rogernomics period of the 1980s.

“With respect, I can recall during the period of Rogernomics, there was a full scale fight going on inside the Labour Party convention.”

Minorities persecuted
Labour Party leader Chris Hipkins — who has vowed to call out racism — said a number of parties were deliberately trying to persecute minorities and it was reprehensible.

Assaulting candidates or threatening their safety “shows total contempt for the very principle of democracy”, he said.

He had made it clear to all Labour’s candidates that if they thought their physical safety might be at risk, they should not do that activity, Hipkins said.

“I think there has been more racism and misogyny in this election than we’ve seen in previous elections.”

Hipkins said he had respect for women and Māori who put themselves forward in elected office, but they should never have to put up with the level of abuse that they have had to in this campaign.

National Party leader Christopher Luxon told reporters his party had referred several incidents to the police too.

Luxon said he condemned threats and violence on political candidates, or their family and property, as well as all forms of racism.

Number of serious incidents
“It’s entirely wrong. We’ve had a number of serious incidents that we’ve referred to the police as well, over the course of this campaign.

“I think it’s important for all New Zealanders to understand that politicians are putting themselves forward, you may disagree with their politics, you may disagree with their policies, but we can disagree without being disagreeable in this country.”

He would not detail the complaints his party had made to police.

He said political leaders had a responsibility not to fearmonger during the campaign.

“Running fearmongering campaigns and negative campaigns just amps it up, and I think actually what we need to do is actually everyone needs to respect each other. We have differences of opinion about how to take the country forward, we are unique in New Zealand in that we can maintain our political civility, we don’t need to go down the pathway we’ve seen in other countries.

“It’s just about leadership, right, it’s about a leader modelling out the behaviour and treating people that they expect to treated.”

Asked if National had a hand in being responsible for fearmongering, he said it did not, and their campaign was positive and focused on what mattered most to New Zealanders.

Worry over online abuse
Shaw was worried for his candidates, having seen the online abuse they were subjected to.

“It’s vile, it is really extreme and it is stronger now than it has been in previous election campaigns and like I said I don’t think it takes much for a particularly unhinged individual from whacking their keyboard to whacking a person.”

But it was worse for female candidates and Māori, he said.

“Not just a little bit, not just an increment, but orders in magnitude, from what I’ve seen my colleagues be exposed to. It is just unhinged.”

There has been increased police participation in this campaign, Shaw said.

“Parliamentary security have got new protocols that we are observing. We have changed, for example, the way we campaign, the way we do public meetings, or when we’re out and about, we’re observing new security protocols that we haven’t had in previous years.”

Hipkins said where there might be additional risk, they have worked with Parliamentary Service on a cross-party basis to ensure there was additional support available for some MPs.

All parties have an interest in ensuring the election campaign was conducted safely, he said.

What has happened?
This week, Te Pāti Māori candidate Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke’s home was ram raided and invaded, with a threatening note left.

Police said they were investigating the burglary of a Huntly home, which was reported to them on Monday.

Te Pāti Māori issued a statement saying it was the third incident to take place at Maipi-Clarke’s home this week.

Also this week, Labour candidate for Taranaki-King Country Angela Roberts said she had laid a complaint with the police about being assaulted at an election debate in Inglewood.

Hipkins said he had great respect for Roberts, and he told her she could take any time off if she needed to, but she has chosen not to.

“She’s an incredibly staunch and energetic campaigner and I know it knocked the wind out of her sails a little bit, but I know that she’s bouncing back.”

On Thursday, Labour candidate for Northland Willow-Jean Prime told reporters she has faced the “worst comments and vitriol” in the seven campaigns she has been through – two in local government and five in central government.

“I was being shouted down every time I went to answer a question by supporters of other candidates primarily, there were not many of the general public in there,” she said of a Taxpayers Union debate in Kerikeri.

“Whenever I said a te reo Māori word, like puku, for full tummies, lunches in schools, I was shouted at.

“When I said Aotearoa, the crowd responded ‘It’s New Zealand!’. When I said rangatahi, ‘stop speaking that lanugage!’ that is racism coming from the audience, that’s not disagreeing with the gains I’m explaining that we’ve made in government.”

She said she noticed that type of “dog-whistling” in other candidate debates, but not whilst out and about with the general public.

“What is really worrying is that they feel so emboldened to be able to come out and say this stuff publicly, they don’t care that other people that might be in the audience, that might be listening or the impact that has on us as candidates.”

The New Zealand general election is on October 14, but early voting begins on October 2.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

New Zealand police are investigating after the home of Te Pāti Māori election candidate Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke was invaded, vandalised, and a threatening letter left behind.

They said the burglary of a Huntly home was reported to police on Monday.

On Friday, Te Pāti Māori issued a statement saying it was the third incident to take place at Maipi-Clarke’s home this week.

The candidate for Hauraki-Waikato said the attack was premeditated and targeted, and politically motivated.

Danger on the campaign trail had increased because of race baiting and fearmongering from right-wing parties, Maipi-Clarke said.

Despite the attack, she was not scared, she told The Hui’s Hauraki-Waikato debate.

However, New Zealand First leader Winston Peters has dismissed claims his party was race baiting, and increasing danger for candidates on the campaign trail.

‘Not responsible’
Peters told Newshub Nation that notion was wrong, adding that he was not responsible for the actions of other people.

He said he would never work with Te Pāti Māori.

Te Pāti Māori said it was working with police to find a person who broke into their youngest candidate’s home.

Co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer said the party was outraged and it was seeing more abusive behaviour in this election than ever before.

“You go at one of our mokopuna, you go at all of us. And it doesn’t matter how different we think, when we see our mokopuna being abused, we will unite and it will have the absolute contrary affect of what I think perpetrators are trying to do when they’re individually picking off on our youngest, on one of our babies … it’s disgusting,” she said.

The party was looking into improving security for candidates to prevent future attacks, she said.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The traditionally blue seat is currently held by Labour — the election of 2020 was the first time it had been won by the left since 1938 — but polls suggest that won’t last much longer.

Five candidates took part in the live-streamed debate at the Homestead Tavern organised by right-wing lobby group the Taxpayers’ Union.

With a partisan audience and The Daily Blog editor/publisher Martyn “Bomber” Bradbury and libertarian Damien Grant as MCs — political commentators from opposite ends of the political spectrum — it was a rollicking, raucous ride, sometimes rude but never dull.

For Prime it was a foray into hostile territory with the Labour MP all but drowned out by shouts and jeers.

She had little chance to defend her party’s record or set out her priorities above the din.

The loudest reaction came after mention of the C word — that’s covid, of course.

Covid response ‘saved lives’
Prime defended the government’s response, saying it was one of the best in the world and had saved lives, but acknowledged some in the room did not agree with her.

There were angry shouts from some in the near-capacity crowd anytime she used a word in te reo Māori, such as Aotearoa or puku [belly].

The other candidates received a warmer reception, with Matt King — the former Northland MP who quit National and set up DemocracyNZ in protest at the party’s covid policy — having the loudest supporters.

New Zealand First candidate Shane Jones continued his campaign theme of describing himself as the politician who delivered for Northland when he held the purse strings for the Provincial Growth Fund.

He also said it was time Northlanders broke their habit of electing lions, only to find they turned into lambs as soon as they took their place in Parliament.

Jones promised a “laser-like focus” on Northland’s infrastructure deficit, especially when it came to roads, rail and shipping.

‘Squeezed middle’
National candidate Grant McCallum, a Maungaturoto farmer who won the party’s selection process to replace King, also promised a laser-like focus — but in his case it would be on costs and the “squeezed middle”.

He said middle New Zealanders had been hard hit by rising prices and interest rates.

King was initially denied a place in the debate, raising the prospect of a protest outside the venue by his supporters, with the Taxpayers’ Union saying he did not meet the criteria.

Those criteria included being a sitting MP or polling at least 5 percent in the electorate.

King was told on Monday he could join the debate after all because the weekend’s Taxpayers’ Union-Curia poll put his support in Northland at 5 percent, once undecided voters were excluded.

King promised to “fight back for farmers” against what he called a “climate change catastrophist narrative”.

ACT list MP Mark Cameron, meanwhile, just wanted less government, saying New Zealanders should be left alone to do what they did best.

Gun register dismissed
He was questioned by MC Martyn Bradbury about ACT’s plans to reverse a ban on high-calibre semi-automatic weapons, which Cameron did not address — but he did say bringing in a gun register had not worked overseas and would not work in New Zealand.

Between the serious politicking there was also plenty of humour.

When New Zealand First was accused of being less interested in real issues than in culture-war talking points such as the use of public toilets by transgender women, MC Damien Grant asked — with some trepidation — how Jones defined a woman.

“Matua Shane Jones has 19 mokopuna [grandchildren],” Jones replied.

“And he has his beautiful wife sitting right in front. Bro, that’s a woman.”

The last word went to Prime, who warned the crowd a change of government would lead to cuts in basic services.

It is not clear, however, if anyone heard her above the jeers.

‘Lot at stake in election’
“There is a lot at stake in this election, and I implore you all, to ask the questions and do the research,” Prime said.

Earlier in the evening, the organisers released the results of a Taxpayers’ Union-Curia poll conducted in the Northland electorate the previous weekend.

The poll showed McCallum had 43 percent of the electorate vote, followed by Prime on 18 percent and Jones on 13 percent.

Both King and the Greens’ Reina Tuai Penney, who did not take part in the debate, had 4 percent support with Cameron trailing on 2 percent.

However, the poll had a relatively small sample size of 400 and a margin of error of almost 5 percent.

The proportion of respondents who had not made up their minds was 11 percent. If they were excluded, McCallum’s share of the vote jumped to 49 percent.

The poll showed broadly similar trends when it came to the party vote, although personal support for Jones (13 percent) was much higher than support for his party overall in Northland (3 percent).

Situation reversed
The situation was reversed for Cameron who had just 2 percent support as a candidate while his party, ACT, polled 12 percent.

Cameron has, however, been campaigning for the party vote only and suggesting his supporters give their electorate votes to McCallum.

Respondents were asked what they believed was the most important issue facing Northland.

Unsurprisingly, given the state of the region’s transport network, 36 percent opted for roads, followed by the cost of living on 15 percent, health on 14 percent and law and order on 8 percent.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Political Roundup: Can NZ First once again fill the vacuum at the centre of politics?

They don’t get much media coverage at the moment, but the New Zealand First party could be central to the next year in politics, and determine the shape of the next government.

The latest opinion survey out yesterday – leaked from Labour-aligned pollsters Talbot-Mills – has New Zealand First on 4.4 per cent. The party has been edging up in the polls all year. The last few Kantar-1News polls have had the party on 3 per cent.

This level of support is actually relatively high for the party which tends to do poorly between election years and then have a surge of support during campaigns. So, it’s certainly not out of the question that Winston Peters’ party could soon register 5 per cent and suddenly become a real force in next year’s election.

This would change everything.

The re-emergence of a 5 per cent NZ First party would suddenly mean the drag race that we are seeing between the left bloc and right bloc would be over-taken by a centre party once again holding the pivot vote. A re-elected NZ First party would be the King or Queen maker again as neither the National-Act bloc nor the Labour-Greens-Te Pāti Māori bloc would be likely to have a majority in the House.

The possibility of both Christopher Luxon and Jacinda Ardern needing the votes of Winston Peters in the house to form the next government should be taken very seriously.

Filling a vacuum at the centre of politics

There is a sense of a growing vacuum at the centre of the left-right spectrum in New Zealand politics at the moment. There is no party in Parliament that can credibly position itself as being between the two blocs of left and right. The old centre parties such as United Future are gone, and few see Te Pāti Māori as genuinely playing that pivot role between Labour and National. And the prospect of The Opportunities Party breaking into Parliament is still unlikely.

NZ First is now well positioned to fill the vacuum that has developed in the centre of politics. Winston Peters is putting his party forward as the only “true centre option”.

As Matthew Hooton writes today in the Herald, the two blocs in Parliament are currently playing right into the hands of Peters by appearing as extreme, allowing NZ First a plausible new pitch for votes: “Vote for the Labour-Green-Te Pāti Māori (TPM) bloc, they argue, and you’ll get ever-more insufferable Grey Lynn wokeism, world-first climate taxes on provincial New Zealand solely designed to bolster Jacinda Ardern’s international brand, radical separatism and ultimately some kind of ‘Tiriti-ocracy’. But vote for the National-Act axis, they say, and a hapless and policy-less Christopher Luxon will be pushed far right by a much better organised and ideologically committed David Seymour.”

NZ First now has a strong catchcry of being the “handbrake” on the excesses of Labour and National extremism.

This weekend’s “Renewal” conference

Winston Peters is now 77 years old, and sometimes appears like a spent force. Certainly, at the last election it was apparent that both he and his party had lost touch with the Zeitgeist and had run out of steam. The party’s thinking was stale, and they were overshadowed by their coalition partner Labour, which surfed the Covid waves to win 50 per cent of the vote.

So, can Winston Peters and his sidekick Shane Jones show that they are re-energised? They will get the chance to do that this weekend, when the party holds its annual conference in Christchurch. The public will get to see if the party has anything new to show, and whether it still possesses the sort of dynamism required to stage a comeback next year. The conference is being billed as the party’s “Renewal” conference.

According to Hooton, at tomorrow’s meeting Peters will “rant” about being the victim of the Serious Fraud Office investigation, which resulted in a “not guilty” verdict in the High Court earlier this year. But there will be other areas of more effective campaigning: “Peters and Shane Jones will find more fertile ground talking about law and order including ram raids, Ardern’s climate-change posturing, and the plutocracy in government departments and big business in downtown Wellington and Auckland.”

The conference will also give a sense of whether the party is still a going concern or has hollowed out, with many former MPs, activists and members drifting away from involvement. Peters is reported today as saying that most of his former caucus are still involved in the party. According to Jo Moir: “Shane Jones, Fletcher Tabuteau, Darroch Ball, Mark Patterson and Jenny Marcroft are all still contributing to NZ First. Marcroft, with Tracey Martin, had initially walked away from the party after the 2020 loss, but according to Peters, Marcroft has come back into the fold.”

Marcroft herself is quoted, explaining her return to NZ First: “There have been some big shifts internally that would allow me to return to the party in some capacity, including more women on the board and electing a gay Māori president”.

The health of the party’s finances might also be an issue at the conference. After all the party’s fundraising schemes have been clearly under intense scrutiny and condemnation in the High Court. But recently, the party declared a $35,000 donation from Troy Bowker, a Wellington private equity investor and donor to the Act Party.

Guest speakers at the AGM tomorrow include Sir Graham Lowe and economist Cameron Bagrie.

Stoking the culture wars

Expect to see Peters and Jones push hard on culture war issues. This is probably the party’s best bet for differentiating itself from Labour and picking up on the anger with the Government. It’s also a fertile area of politics because most politicians have been reluctant to campaign strongly on this (with the obvious exception of David Seymour).

Issues of culture and race remain potent areas of populist electoral politics everywhere in the world at the moment. And Peters is still well positioned to push very hard against things like Three Waters, Māori co-governance, and the Labour Government’s He Puapua report.

As Andrea Vance has argued this year, “His ancestry gives him the freedom to exploit the issue and whip up fears of ‘Māorification’ without being labelled a racist. A strong stance on the issue of Māori sovereignty would also endear him to some older, provincial voters in National’s base who are yet to forgive him for handing power to Ardern in 2017.”

More recently, Richard Harman says that Peters and Jones “both possess strong credentials to question the current Government’s Maori policies. Both are obviously Maori; Jones is fluent in Te Reo, and Peters is a former Minister of Maori Affairs.”

Peters has already signalled that the price for working with Labour again in 2023 would be that they drop their co-governance agenda. And he’s explained that he had previously been a handbrake on these issues: “We were in government for three years. There were matters which were clearly not disclosed to me or my party – He Puapua and going to Ihumatao… Since the [2020] election you have seen the emergence of what are clearly race-based policies and a pathway to apartheid – there’s no other word for it.”

National and Act won’t escape Peters’ critiques on this. Recently he has pointed out that the decision to go with Labour in 2017 was partly because of National’s support of The UN Declaration on Indigenous Rights. He’s said: “I was up against a National Party with nine years coupling with the Maori party and the Act Party that had approved the UN Declaration of Indigenous Rights and changed the foreshore seabed legislation and every other stupid thing that’s unleashing racism and separatism in this country”.

Peters has also said that “separatism” is going to be “a massive issue” during the 2023 election campaign.

No doubt, he will also focus on free speech and climate change. In terms of the latter, Peters has been one of the most scathing critics of the impact of the He Waka Eke Noa proposals for pricing farming emissions. Recently he declared: “It’s all this woke virtue signalling, without real understanding of the industry you’re trying to serve”.

Don’t expect Peters’ usual xenophobic campaigns on immigration, however. As the Herald’s Audrey Young writes today, “given the dire need for immigrants to fill labour shortages, it is unlikely that attacking immigration will feature strongly in Winston Peters’ bid to return to politics next year.”

A focus on the Labour Government letting down the poor

Peters is currently focusing his energies on condemning the core policies of the Labour Government. He has said this week that the local election results, in which Labour-backed or left-candidates for mayoralties mostly did very poorly, were a reaction to Government policies: “it was a serious rejection of some of the central government oversight and imposition on local government, and the desire for people to be in control of their own lives.”

As well as stoking the culture wars, however, Peters is likely to paint a picture of the current government being focused on cultural issues while the material needs of people for housing, health and income go unmet. Recently he made this critique of the Government: “People are up against the cost of living and for a lot of people who would be in that wealthy or middle incomes, many of them are struggling and people at the bottom, sadly despite all the problems, the fundamental costs of rates, insurance, cost of living, food, everything is going the wrong way and they’ve done nothing about it.”

And Peters will position himself as the defender of the majority of Māori who are bearing the brunt of government policies and recession. In contrast, Peters argues Labour politicians are only concerned with more elite, cultural issues: “The sad thing is that while politicians like Willie Jackson push their pet project for a certain Maori elite, Maori housing, health, education, and incomes remain on the scrap heap of their political concerns.”

And, of course, there’s always some new Peters-esque phrasing to make his campaigning media-friendly or memorable. Look out this weekend for some new version of “woke” or other critiques of the elite. One word that Peters has started using recently is “Hypersociology”.

Of course, much of this type of language and campaigning will bring ridicule and condemnation, especially from Twitter, the media, and other politicians. But this just works in Peters’ favour. As Hooton has argued, “Winston Peters needs only one in 20 voters – the remaining 19 voters and the mainstream media can loathe and belittle him as much as they like… If anything, the scorn of the 19 and the media helps.”

New Zealand First still have a long way to go in returning to Parliament – and there are plenty of reasons for voters to distrust them. But it’s probably time to start taking a Winston Peters comeback seriously.

Further reading on New Zealand First
Matthew Hooton (Herald): Resurrecting Winston Peters? NZ First ready to be born again (again)
Jo Moir (Newsroom): Peters says NZ First is coming back, again
Martyn Bradbury (Daily Blog): New leaked Talbot Poll – Guess whose back? Back again? Winston’s back, tell a friend

Other items of interest and importance today

GOVERNMENT AND PARLIAMENT, PARTIES
Henry Cooke (Guardian): Will New Zealand’s opposition fall into the same tax trap as Liz Truss?
Guardian: Former New Zealand PM John Key says he would have voted for Trump and Bolsonaro
Katie Scotcher (RNZ): Parties promise cooperation as Speaker orders review of Parliament’s workplace culture
Steven Cowan: Change you can believe in?
Chris Trotter: The Greens’ Politics Of Fear
Rachel Smalley (NBR): Ardern’s star has fallen
Michael Neilson (Herald): Former National MP Matt King’s new party Democracy NZ officially registered

LOCAL GOVERNMENT, THREE WATERS, AND ELECTIONS
Thomas Cranmer: The unbridled power of Te Mana o te Wai
Bernard Orsman (Herald): Political commentator Matthew Hooton appointed to Wayne Brown’s Auckland mayoral office
Todd Niall and Simon Plumb (Stuff): Leaked Auckland Council document reveals first insight into mayor Wayne Brown’s inner circle
Raphael Franks (Herald): New Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown wants Eke Panuku board to resign, is unconvinced it should exist, Herald columnist among new mayoral staff
Peter Dunne (Newsroom): Brown v Govt: Who will blink first?
Brent Edwards (NBR): Push for the Electoral Commission to run local body elections

ECONOMY, INEQUALITY, BUSINESS
Jenée Tibshraeny (Herald): Cost of money printing exceeds expectations, RBNZ now needs estimated $9b crown support
Damien Venuto (Herald): Wealth tax vs tax cuts – which option is the best for NZ?
RNZ: Demand needs to be ‘reined in’ to curb inflation – economist
Richard Harman (Politik): It’s not dark yet – but it’s getting there
William Hewett (Newshub): Greens co-leader Marama Davidson slams NZ’s tax system, says it’s ’emboldening inequality’
Mark Quinlivan (Newshub): Expert warns governments not to implement tax cuts without funding plan as UK’s Liz Truss reveals she won’t slash spending
Jane Clifton (Listener/Herald): No end in sight to New Zealand’s economic long Covid (paywalled)
Herald Editorial: NZ could soon face a big recessionary hangover after post-Covid party
Newshub: Food prices increase 8.3 percent annually, leading to calls for action by politicians, supermarket head blames global headwinds
Lloyd Burr (Today FM): Some ski fields could be closing and our Tourism Minister doesn’t seem to care

CLIMATE
David Farrar: Does anyone believe this?
James Perry (Māori TV): ‘Why blame the cows’ – Māori farmer rejects ETS as money grab
Eloise Gibson (Stuff): New Zealand will lobby other countries to tax cow burps

IMMIGRATION
Josie Pagani (Stuff): Government’s approach to immigration is an imaginary can opener
Dileepa Fonseka (Stuff): Labour takes immigration from ‘reset’ to ‘rebalance’ to ‘rebrand’
Tova O’Brien (Today FM): The baffling disarray of Immigration NZ right now

MEDIA
Tom Frewen: Unfinished business on RNZ charter
Greg Presland (Standard): RNZ, Three Waters and partisan commentary
David Farrar: How Dalziel’s office bullied local media
Stewart Sowman-Lund (Spinoff): The ‘toxic’ Facebook page that claims to be Southland’s biggest news source

OTHER
Ian Powell: The New Zealand Health Charter – worthy or satirical?
Maiki Sherman (1News): Lack of housing for young people leaving state care ‘critical’
RNZ: ‘We need that leadership’ – Baker calls for return to Covid alert level system
Sam Brooks (Spinoff): Hear me out: Shakespeare shouldn’t get public funding
Dylan Reeve (Spinoff): Why I wanted to write a book about conspiracy theories in Aoteaora
David Robie (Asia Pacific Media): Defend NZ’s ‘fragile democracy’ by tackling disinformation, says advocate
Sarah Nealon (Stuff): Investigator Tim McKinnel fronts TVNZ doco Crime: Need vs Greed

As the public decide who to vote for, the matter of whether wealthy interests have been able to influence Government decisions has arisen once again. This relates to controversy from late last year about whether junior coalition partner New Zealand First is using their fundraising mechanism to illegally hide the influence of wealthy donors.

Looking at these fundraising arrangements, the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has concluded that a violation of the Crimes Act has taken place, announcing yesterday they are charging two individuals in connection with the New Zealand First Foundation. This is a significant and unprecedented new chapter in the tussle over vested interests in New Zealand politics – see Derek Cheng’s Findings of Serious Fraud Office probe into NZ First Foundation released.

Party leader Winston Peters made the announcement, claiming the SFO decision meant his party had been fully exonerated. This claim appears to be on the basis that those charged are not involved in the party, or at least no longer are.

The individuals who were charged may well have been involved in the New Zealand First Foundation, but an agreed statement from the party and the SFO stated that those charged do not include any current NZ First MP, Minister, staffer, official or party member. As many have pointed out, the operative word here is “current”, with the suggestion that those charged might well have chosen to resign from the party.

The identities of the two individuals are currently suppressed by a court order. But this is now being challenged by two media organisations, RNZ and Stuff – see Thomas Manch’s Urgent hearing called over name suppression in NZ First Foundation donations case. According to these media outlets, “The voting public of New Zealand has a legitimate interest in knowing the defendants’ connections, if any, to the New Zealand First Party and in particular whether the New Zealand First media release, which is highly critical of the SFO, is fair and accurate.”

The idea that NZ First have been exonerated by the SFO decision has been derided by many commentators and journalists. Newsroom’s Sam Sachdeva summed up the announcement like this: “The news amounted to a validation of an investigation by Stuff journalist Matt Shand published last November, and subsequent reporting from RNZ’s Guyon Espiner, reporting that financial records showed donations to the foundation had been used to fund an array of campaign and political expenses, but with the donors’ identities not disclosed” – see: Winston Peters’ smoke and mirrors fails to hide the truth.

Sachdeva challenges Peters’ argument that the SFO should have held the announcement over until after the next government was formed: “doing so would have been morally reprehensible, depriving voters of information in the public interest at the time when it is most important they be fully informed”. He argues that if the SFO had delayed the news that they were bringing charges, then “Voters would have some justification for feeling hoodwinked, as would New Zealand First’s hypothetical coalition partners – both of whom may have benefited from knowing the party they backed had been at least partly funded by a foundation whose workings appear, in the minds of the SFO, to have breached the law.”

Electoral law expert Andrew Geddis points to attempts by the party to supress the announcement as suggesting they didn’t really regard the SFO decision as an exoneration – see: Nothing to do with the NZ First Party? Seriously laughable.

Geddis also says it would have been a bad look to hold on to the information, asking how the SFO could seriously do this: “And what was the SFO really meant to do once it had done so? Sit on the information even as people go out and vote, then tell them about it after the results are announced? How relaxed do you think the public would be about that happening – especially if NZ First was returned to parliament, much less holding the balance of political power?”

Peters’ attack on the SFO is, according to Geddis, “a classic attack-the-messenger tactic, with offence being the best form of defence and distraction being the name of the game.”

Geddis also commented on the case on RNZ’s Checkpoint last night, challenging Peters’ continued insistence that the fundraising Foundation is legally separate from the party: “I don’t care what technical legalities you may throw at it, if it walks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck” – see RNZ’s Winston Peters holds ‘important’ media conference as SFO releases NZ First Foundation investigation statement.

Whether the legal principle of sub judice should rule out debate on the issue is dismissed by Geddis: “in terms of discussing the outline of the case, discussing the background facts and so on, those are all on public record. Subjudice is something people throw around when they don’t want to talk about an issue, it doesn’t mean you can’t talk about anything to do with the case.”

Stuff’s political editor Luke Malpass sums up Peters’ representation of the SFO charges as “Bluster, bravado and bulls….” – see: Serious Fraud Office charges may be final blow for NZ First. He says no one thought Peters himself would be charged, and the fact that he hasn’t been shouldn’t be read as exoneration for the party.

Malpass highlights the involvement of Foundation officials the media are seeking further comment from: “The two trustees of the foundation were Peters’ personal lawyer and NZ First’s self-proclaimed ‘dark shadow’ Brian Henry, and former NZ First Party President and MP Doug Woolerton.”

Will the SFO decision be the final nail in NZ First’s coffin? Most commentators believe so. Richard Harman says “This has been a body blow to NZ First’s already stuttering campaign” – see: Campaign derailed.

Of course, the SFO announcement does allow Peters and his party to employ the populist messaging of NZ First being a victim of elite dark forces aligned against them. This is a point well made by Herald political editor Audrey Young: “Peters reached for his old playbook to portray himself as the victim of persecution or conspiracy by the Serious Fraud Office, calling it an ‘intervention in the election’. Coming from the Deputy Prime Minister, that is a stunning accusation. Peters as victim has been done countless times before to woo the support of hundreds and thousands of forgotten New Zealanders over many years” – see: Peters draws on his best defence against SFO, attack (paywalled).

Peters has been on the front foot giving media interviews today, strongly defending his party and attacking his enemies. One of the most interesting was a heated ten-minute interview with John Campbell on TVNZ’s Breakfast – see: Winston Peters claims NZ First unfairly targeted by SFO – ‘Why are we being singled out?’.

In this interview, Peters calls the SFO “a jackboot outfit” and raises the question of why other investigations into political finance aren’t being announced just before the election: “It’s unbelievable they should interpose right before this election this position when they’ve got the outstanding matter of Christchurch and Auckland mayoralties, the outstanding matter of the investigation into the Labour Party which they’ve started.”

Peters also went on RNZ’s Morning Report and argued the SFO is biased against NZ First, and the Foundation is “totally separate” to his party – see: Winston Peters claims Serious Fraud Office biased: ‘It’s just unfair’.

He argues the SFO’s bias is apparent in the fact that the original draft of their press statement didn’t contain any acknowledgement that current party members and so forth haven’t been charged: “We have the draft, please don’t think that we’re going blind here, and I think New Zealanders should know just what level of interference without exoneration the SFO was prepared to ram down the throats of New Zealand voters… When they wanted to bring it out last week they weren’t even saying that the ministers and the members have been exonerated. That was not in their press statement. We had to go to court to squeeze that out of them … we’ve got the draft and none of it had exonerated the party or the MPs or the members at all”

In terms of allegations that the NZ First Foundation helped channel donations for influence, Newsroom’s Jonathan Milne has covered this today, arguing: “Some big New Zealand First donors will be pleased that flagship government conservation measures have been stalled for the past three years” – see: Winston Peters puts his mouth where his money is (paywalled).

Milne asks “did the party’s supporters in the fishing and forestry industries get value for money?” He even rung up one of the fishing industry donors to NZ First, Peter Talley, who “refused to comment and hung up the phone.”

As to whether such donors have directly influenced Government policy, Green Party co-leader James Shaw told Milne that he couldn’t comment, but said this: “When you have a party taking large donations from, say, fisheries companies, and then issuing policy that is entirely aligned with those companies, the case for donations reform is pretty obvious”.

Some are defending NZ First. Gordon Campbell supports the party’s suspicion about the SFO announcement, saying the timing “seems extraordinary. It is difficult to imagine that the SFO would make a similar call with respect to either of the two major parties, at a similarly crucial tipping point in the election campaign” – see: On the SFO’s investigation of New Zealand First.

Campbell also ponders why only alleged misdemeanours involving NZ First create such a storm of debate about money and politics: “the media, political leaders and the general public are not currently engaged in a wide-ranging debate about the flawed nature of the laws governing political donations. We’re talking only about how these rules may or may not have been manipulated by New Zealand First. No wonder NZF leader Winston Peters feels aggrieved.”

Finally, the Government-aligned blogsite The Standard has come out with a strong defence of NZ First, with long-time Labour Party activist Lynn Prentice arguing that the junior coalition partner is a victim of “dirty politics”, especially because the Police and SFO took so long to investigate, and made the announcement just prior to the election. He calls it “political interference” – see: SFO exonerates NZ First. The Labour blogger says he’d like the complainants against NZ First to be charged “for deliberately wasting Electoral Commission, Police and SFO time and resources.”

01 AUGUST 2020 – Labour, as a party founded on the interests of all who labour for their living, should rule out before the election coalescing with New Zealand First (NZF). National has done that, for its own narrow interests, as NZF is not trusted by large sections of the public, and for good reasons.

But Labour should do now what it should have done in 2017- rule out this party which is a conduit for the most reactionary policies in New Zealand.

Labour has hypocritically used NZF in government for its disorderly retreat  on introducing genuine progressive tax measures  as a key tool to tackle the massive income inequality and  edging New Zealand closer and closer to the US military alliance aimed at its economic competitor China- a policy that predates Trump and was  enthusiastically backed by Obama- and oppressive policies on migration to name but a few of the retrograde steps under the coalition.

Labour continues to compete with NZF on which party will issue the least number of work visas.  It capitulated to NZF on the inhumane policy of denying spouses visitor visas to join their New Zealand partners.

No self- respecting socialist party, even if it takes the euphemistic name of centre -Left, should  govern with such a right-wing party if it is to maintain integrity.

Even a cursory review of NZF, its leader and its policies would have the any thoughtful Labour supporter come to that conclusion. The name of the party reveals its xenophobia.

“We are being dragged into the status of an Asian colony and it is time that New Zealanders were placed first in their own country,” said Winston Peters in 2005.

But there are hundreds of statements in this vein from Peters and other NZF MPs from the foundation of the party to the present.

And yet Jacinda Ardern in a Checkpoint interview with John Campbell just before the 2017 election could label Peters “progressive” and someone she could coalesce with. John Campbell was, quite rightly, staggered that she would mention the word ”progressive” and “Peters” in the same sentence.

Then Labour and NZF, pre-election, entered into an auction as to which party would grant the least number of work visas.

Labour issued its siren call to NZF to be its partner despite NZF’s anti migrant, anti-refugee (remember the vicious Peters’ campaign against Algerian MP Ahmed Zaoui even when he was exonerated?)  and anti-Muslim campaigns. Labour MPs fell over themselves to say what great friends they were with this bigot after election night 2017.

But given his mastery of hate speech and opposition to gun law reform no wonder Peters kept a low profile after the 2019 mosque massacre.

NZF’s low tax, social conservatism, pro US military alliance and law and order positions did not worry Labour MPs in 2017- it should have.

The cynical tactic shaped by Peters but borrowed from ”illustrious” demagogues of yore, of demonising the “other” and leading the gullible to believe that economic and social ills, whether unemployment, housing shortages or transport congestion will be solved with close to zero immigration and deportation of as many migrants as possible,  should be enough for  any self-respecting internationalist party to shun an electoral alliance with him.

But, unfortunately, Jacinda Ardern on the eve of this election is signalling that NZF is still a prospective coalition partner. In the NZ Herald of 01 August 2020, she is quoted as endorsing Peters: “Of course, I have a trusting relationship in order to work with the Deputy Prime Minister…”

The world awaits bold internationalist policies to tackle income equality, ecological disaster, racism, economic development post Covid and war.

NZF is not the suitable political partner for those tasks. No spoon is long enough to sup with that devil.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Hon Matt Robson currently specialises in immigration law, and is a former Minister in the Helen Clark Labour/Alliance Government 1999-2002. This is his first piece with EveningReport.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

With the New Zealand General Election campaign looming, parties in the Labour-led coalition government are openly parading their differences (rather than common-ground) before the voting public.

It’s a situation that can be interpreted as being typical of MMP politics. But it also causes voters to rethink its record-level support for its most favoured party Labour, and, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.

This week’s June 25 Colmar Brunton poll reveals what we suspected: New Zealand First has collapsed, down a further 1.1% to 1.8%, while Labour holds impressively above 50% support. National has rebounded from a bruising 29% in the May Colmar Brunton to 38% support. The Green Party is up 1.3% to 6%. ACT is up 0.9 to 3.1%, and, of the parties outside of Parliament, the Maori Party is on 0.9%.

It is clear, that battle for the political centre-ground shows New Zealand First has been squeezed out by National – this under the new leadership of social-conservative and traditional stakeholders’ choice, Todd Muller.

It also explains why New Zealand First leader Winston Peters this week began tactically to signal that his political mongrel is back. Peters’ has unleashed a determination to create distance between his party and those of his coalition partners Labour and the Greens.

Peters exits the week openly antagonistic toward articles of the coalition Government’s legislative agenda – a move that’s caused Labour to file plans for its 2017 election promise (to build light rail in Auckland) and to further negotiate with New Zealand First points of its ‘fair commercial rent reductions and compulsory arbitration plan’. The latter is an important cog in the Government’s post-Covid stability plan. The former is simply a kick in the guts from New Zealand First – a party that Labour has often resisted irritating through this three year term.

But considering Muller’s and National’s rising fortunes (and it must be said, the collapse of New Zealand First) is it time for Labour to abandon Peters to the proverbial wolves? Is there political currency in calling a spade a spade – to admit to voters that New Zealand First is destabilising the coalition Government and that disloyalty must be dealt with before a largely supportive public gets fed up and votes accordingly on Polling Day?

IT’S ALL ABOUT THE STRATEGY

Normally, early in an election year, we would expect smaller parties in the Labour-Greens-New Zealand First coalition to begin speaking loudly to their base. But the Covid-19 lockdown poured water over that.

Now there’s desperation among the Greens and New Zealand First MPs. They will be well aware that political history involving MMP shows small parties in government often lose their political voice and, on election day, are bypassed by the voting public.

New Zealand First, in particular, is demanding to be heard. I spoke about this on Radio New Zealand today.

When you stand back and observe the coalition, its dynamic, its purpose, its stability (up until now…) it is clear, Peters’ actions are strategic while destabilising.

Winston Peters insists his party is principled with commonsense as the central premise. But the reality is, Peters is sending a signal to centre-voters (and conservatives who believe Labour is going to win the 2020 General Election) that he and New Zealand First will be their insurance policy. That he, post-election, will stop any non-centrist/conservative policies from getting off the ground.

His tactics soak up attention-time when explaining his party’s behaviour. His stance demands to be heard, to be relevant through the election campaign – despite the 2% poll showing. The goal is for Peters to re-emerge this September as a King or Queen maker in post-election negotiations.

But at this juncture, should Labour tolerate this destabilisation? Should it permit Peters to play his strategy out? Or, should Labour create outcasts of Peters and his MPs?

That strategy, as does Peters’, comes with risk. Labour could be seen to fail its post-Covid recovery plan and elongate the insecurities that election campaigns create.

New Zealand First risks being regarded as a destructive element in an otherwise popular Government – where some see Labour as having been kept back by New Zealand First and desiring of a government post-election where Jacinda Ardern can be a true natural-born leader without being shackled by coalition sensitivities.

The Greens, if they play their hand well, may counter New Zealand First by demonstrating its loyalty to Ardern’s style of leadership and campaign as a necessary and true friend of Labour’s.

When the cards fall, New Zealand First risks standing alone as a political irrelevance – but it’s a risk that Peters is prepared to take. Some will say, at 1.8% he has nothing to lose.

THE CAUSE AND EFFECT

The Green Party and New Zealand First came out of lockdown to realise Labour had become a political juggernaut.

Their respective voices were drowned out by the Labour machine. As we emerged from Alert Level 4:

• • Labour, was well on the way toward eliminating Covid-19 from our communities
  • Labour had delivered HUGE financial support to people and business
  • Labour had initiated fiscal stimulus programmes (many favourable to NZF)
  • Jacinda Ardern became the most popular Prime Minister in a generation.

BUT… as National slowly got its act together, after a series of well-documented stumbles, National’s new leadership team put its running shoes on and, suddenly, competition for New Zealand’s centre-votes intensified.

From June 17, National created in some measure the perfect storm (please see last week’s EveningReport editorial: Snakes and Mirrors which lays bare how National placed politics ahead of the public’s health).

Since then, it has continued to create a sense of chaos, insisting its old foe, the Labour-led Government had bungled its Covid-19 controls at the border and at isolation and quarantine facilities. In effect, National successfully politicised the handling of the pandemic – a certain danger that overseas experience shows is at odds with the public interest when fighting against Covid-19.

But among the political noise, National did expose a relaxed culture among those officials, the gatekeepers, charged with ensuring our Covid-19 testing regime was robust. Politics aside, it was clear, the country and the Government had been let down. But National was able to juxtaposition Labour as the cause of the fiasco.

Despite the Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern immediately transferring management of isolation and quarantine facilities to the military – a move that was swift, decisive, and characteristically Ardern – the perfect political storm created uncertainty and fear among the population.

Remember, politics is a commodity and day after day for over a week, the public has heard calls from National that the Minister of Health David Clark should resign. Many media, scenting controversy and political blood, polished up their competitive-bias to seize the moment too. After all, political relevancy isn’t the only show in town.

That is the backdrop to New Zealand First’s advance.

HAS LABOUR HAD ENOUGH?

Labour, for its part, has decided enough’s enough.

This week, Labour revealed New Zealand First was opposing legislation destined to advance before The Parliament AFTER it had supported it through Cabinet. With New Zealand First acting contrary to its interests, Labour’s leadership has decided a passive-aggressive bare knuckle fight is necessary.

As the party with its political hand firmly on the Government’s tiller, Labour is now openly identifying legislation that can be filed until after the election while pushing legislation that SHOULD be addressed with urgency.

If Labour does believe New Zealand First has gone beyond the Rubicon, and it appears it is moving toward that position, then it will be in Labour’s and the nation’s interests to paint Winston Peters and his party as disruptive and disloyal to a handshake made in good faith.

If it does, it will likely be New Zealand First, not Labour, that will be further punished at the polls. And frankly, in the public’s interest, the General Election can’t come soon enough.

NZ First is facing the boot at this year’s election, especially as it’s now embroiled in an unfolding donations scandal, which comes on top of low poll ratings. But what effect will the scandal have on NZ First’s government coalition colleagues? And is Labour and the Greens’ hands-off stance appropriate, or are they ethically compromised?

Pressure is mounting on NZ First’s coalition partners – and especially Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern – to condemn the party over its political finance arrangements and orientation to media freedoms.

Critics argue some political actions are just too indefensible in a democracy, and by ignoring NZ First’s actions, Labour and the Greens are being hypocritical and allowing “dirty politics” and potential corruption to prosper. The counterargument is that Labour and the Greens have no responsibility for what their government partner does, and to admonish Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters would simply jeopardise the coalition government’s stability.

Veteran political journalist John Armstrong has expressed his views in the strongest terms, saying Ardern must grow a backbone and remind Peters who’s the boss. In his must-read column, Armstrong argues that Ardern’s refusal to comment on her coalition partner’s behaviour is “a major cop-out” and it is, in fact, “incumbent on the Prime Minister to be seen to be doing something that demonstrates she is treating the current and still unfolding affair with the utmost seriousness.” He believes Ardern should stand Peters aside as deputy PM, but leave him outside of Cabinet in his role as foreign minister.

Would this cause instability? Armstrong points to Peters’ weak position, especially with National ruling out his party for future government: “He is hardly in a position to pull down the Government. That makes Ardern’s failure to talk tough appear even more pathetic.” And he argues that the “the verdict of the Electoral Commission” was so damning “any other minister finding themselves on the receiving end of such a judgement would have been stood down forthwith.”

Stuff’s Henry Cooke says Ardern has slipped “into plain supplicancy” with Peters, and her arguments for not commenting on the scandal make no sense – see: Jacinda Ardern’s silence on Winston Peters is deafening.

Cooke goes through a variety of meaningful responses that Ardern could have made, which would have been useful for democracy and in the public interest. He points out that the recent publishing of photographs of journalists investigating the scandal, “clearly designed to intimidate journalists – is worth condemning, and you can bet that, if Ardern was in Opposition, she would manage it. Instead she’s not commenting”.

The Green Party, too, are criticised by Cooke: “Worse, this rot of silence has also infected the Green Party, which, as a confidence and supply partner, has plenty of legitimate room to criticise such tactics. You don’t need to tear the Government up or demand that Peters is fired – you can just say what the journalists’ union said on Friday, that Peters needs to explain himself and apologise. Instead the Greens just talk about how the law needs to be changed – which most people agree with, but isn’t the point. The topic at hand isn’t underhanded but lawful behaviour, it’s stuff that is potentially illegal – hence the police referral. The party should grow back its spine.”

Cooke does acknowledge that such criticisms of NZ First and Peters would take courage from Ardern: “He is not the kind of man to take a telling-off sitting down, and it would probably all get messier as Peters extracted some kind of utu for her daring to criticise him.”

National-aligned blogger David Farrar says the reason the Greens have been silent is “to protect their baubles of office” – see: The Government of kindness strikes again.

Here’s his main point: “Also worth noting the massive silence from the Greens. Let’s imagine the nightmare happened and NZ First had chosen to go with National, and all the revelations about secret donors, secret trusts, policies that benefit donors and finally the Deputy PM (or a proxy) having journalists tailed to expose their sources. The Greens would by at hysteria level 13 on a 0 – 10 scale. They would be calling it corrupt. Demanding resignations, court action. Calling for a general election. They’d be painting National as equally complicit and corrupt as NZ First for putting up with it.”

A similar point was made yesterday by Andrea Vance, who says Labour and the Greens used to be strong on these issues: “They now risk being accused of hypocrisy. Both parties were staunch critics of National’s ‘dirty politics’ tactics in 2014, but have remained quiet about Peters’ latest antics” – see: Snooping on journalists is an attempt to silence and shut them down.

Vance makes a plea for the governing parties to better protect the media freedoms involved in this controversy: “good journalism and a free press is an essential part of a functioning democracy. This attack on Shand and Espiner’s privacy is an attack on the public’s right to know about who is secretly funding their Government partner. Both Labour and the Greens must acknowledge that and condemn it, if we are to believe their exhortations New Zealand politics should be transparent and fair.”

The Greens have finally made a statement, with co-leader James Shaw expressing his concern – see Derek Cheng’s NZ First Foundation saga: Greens break silence on ‘chilling’ photos of journalists.

Leftwing blogger No Right Turn points out it was “obviously unsustainable” for the Greens to continue their conspicuous silence, which was turning into an “example of how getting along with their government partners was eroding their values and their own reputation” – see: Finally.

However, No Right Turn disputes the PM’s argument for avoiding taking responsibility for what her Cabinet ministers do: “She’s the Prime Minister, and wholly responsible for the ethical standards of her Cabinet. Pretending otherwise is simply a coward’s way of saying that she’s perfectly fine with corruption and dirty politics when it’s done by her allies, or at least willing to look the other way. But while this denial of responsibility gives her formal deniability, the problem is that this stench is not going to go away, and some of it is going to stick to her. And if it costs her a second term, she will have only herself to blame).”

The Prime Minister has gone on various media this morning to answer questions about her silence over the NZ First scandal. For example, on RNZ’s Morning Report she again denied that Cabinet ministers are answerable to her in terms of following the law on political fundraising, or their ethical dealings with media – see RNZ’s PM Jacinda Ardern washes hands of NZ First Foundation photos saga.

Ardern responded to questions, saying: “These aren’t matters that I have any responsibility for. I’m the leader of the Labour Party, I had nothing to do with this and I’m not going to stand here and explain it or defend it because it’s not for me… I cannot run both a government and three political parties.”

Similarly, reporting on her appearance on Newstalk ZB, Jason Walls says “Ardern has let NZ First leader and Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters off the hook for admitting – then denying – having secret photos of journalists taken” – see: PM Jacinda Ardern again fails to pull Winston Peters into line over controversial photos.

According to this report, “Ardern wouldn’t directly comment” as to whether “Peters was upholding the highest ethical standards, as outlined in the Cabinet manual”. Although elsewhere she has argued the question isn’t relevant.

The fact that a party in the Labour-led Government is utilising Cameron Slater’s blogsite to publish the photos of journalists is going to be bad for Ardern’s re-election campaign according to Heather du Plessis-Allan, who says Labour had hoped to run as the party on the side of positivity and truth – see: Winston Peters’ flirtations with internet bringing trouble to him and Ardern (paywalled).

Here’s her argument: “Labour was clearly hoping to run a Goodie v Baddie campaign, where they pitch themselves as squeaky clean while accusing National of resorting to ‘dirty politics’. Well, that’s going to be hard to do, isn’t it, when Labour’s bedmate is the party most flagrantly and apparently unapologetically engaging in dirty politics in cahoots with one of the central figures of Nicky Hager’s Dirty Politics book.”

Finally, could this scandal actually have bigger ramifications for our political system and party system? Danyl Mclauchlan argues today that NZ First and the Greens used to be the main parties to rail against corruption and anti-democratic behaviour in politics, but they’ve both been silenced – see his must-read column: The donations mess reveals a vacuum in our political system. Who will fill it? He ponders who will pick up the role of holding the powerful to account.

Does money buy policy in New Zealand politics and government? Based on the ongoing political finance scandal involving New Zealand First, which comes hot on the heels of the Serious Fraud Office charging four people in relation to donations to the National Party, New Zealanders have every reason to doubt the integrity of the electoral process. It’s no wonder there are growing calls for reform of a broken political finance system.

The ongoing leaks about the donations received by NZ First, and what look like attempts to at least circumvent political finance laws, saw the Electoral Commission refer the matter to the Police, who have now passed the scandal onto the Serious Fraud Office for investigation. At question is the role of the NZ First Foundation, which Winston Peters argues is separate from the party, but which appears to have been used to collect the donations in a highly questionable way.

This has the potential to damage to the reputation of not just NZ First , but the Government as a whole, and could have a significant influence on the election year.

Serious questions are now being asked about the influence that hitherto secret donations have had on various Government policies and decisions. The latest details about the donations were published yesterday by RNZ’s Guyon Espiner and Kate Newton – see: NZ First Foundation received tens of thousands of dollars from donors in horse racing industry.

This article details some of the many donations made by those in the racing industry that were given to the party in a way that meant they weren’t made publicly available. And although the article stresses that the law may not have been broken by these donations, it links them to policy decisions by this government.

Here’s the key part: “In this government’s first Budget in May 2018, Peters announced $4.8 million would be spent over four years for tax deductions to be claimed for the costs of acquiring ‘high quality’ breeding horses. Then in the 2019 Budget the government repealed the betting levy. That meant that a 4 percent levy on betting profits – which previously netted the Crown about $14 million a year – would not be paid to the government, but would be redirected to the racing and sports sectors. Peters signed off on the move despite the opposition of Treasury”.

Of course, this doesn’t necessarily mean that racing industry donors bought these policy decisions. But the lack of transparency, and the apparent attempts made to hide the donations, are enough to raise suspicions about the democratic process. The article quotes Otago University’s Andrew Geddis about the importance of the public knowing who funds parties: “Unless we’re able to see who was putting money into the system, and then see who’s getting benefits out of the system – you simply aren’t able to draw those connections and ask, you know, is there a problem?”

Geddis is also quoted in another article by RNZ’s Espiner and Newton, saying information about donations is “very important for the public to know” in a democracy “where we’re entrusting political parties and their representatives with a great deal of public power” – see: Wealthy and powerful NZ First Foundation donors revealed.

This article also provides further details of how the mysterious NZ First Foundation raised more than $300,000 in the 2017-19 period in the form of donations of around $15,000 or just under. The $15,000 figure is the threshold for when donations have to be made public. Espiner and Newton point out that “in some cases, multiple such donations were made by related entities or individuals during a year”. The possibility exists that larger donations might have been broken into smaller donations to evade the law.

Winston Peters hit back, doing a Facebook Live Q+A on Wednesday night in which he argued that “donors to the New Zealand First Foundation are entitled to keep identities secret” if the sums involved are under the threshold – see Derek Cheng’s Winston Peters says donors are entitled to anonymity. Peters added that such donations are necessary “if we don’t have such a system of public fundraising, taxpayers would have to pay and we’re diametrically opposed to that”.

In terms of the Government’s racing industry reforms, Peters said: “no one is buying any policy here” because as Minister of Racing he had simply implemented an independent racing policy. And he’s been backed up by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who says accusations on this are “not fair”. She has said: “Racing policy, decisions, bills, as with any decision we make, as a Government, goes through considerable scrutiny – no one policy is ever decided by one party, they go through all of us.”

National’s finance spokesperson Paul Goldsmith has called for some reassurance that money isn’t buying policy: “We have New Zealand First ministers making large decisions about large spending and all New Zealanders want to be assured about the integrity of the decision-making” – see Jo Moir’s Winston Peters on Foundation donations: ‘I did not receive any money’.

In this article, Shane Jones is reported as arguing that the controversy is just a witch hunt against the party, and denies racing or fisheries policy is for sale: “No, I think that’s really petty to talk to like that… I’ve been a recipient of Sealord’s and the Dalmatian leadership in terms of fisheries, and I resent any suggestion that decisions or statements I make about fisheries are driven because of donations.”

Some defence of the arrangements are also found in Barry Soper’s column yesterday – see: Winston Peters’ Trumpian moment. He relays Peters’ point about why he’s helping the racing industry: “he’s fought for the survival of the industry for the last 30 years, he told us. Significant changes to it last year came from a review of it by an overseas, independent advisor who said it needed urgent reform and would be irreparably damaged if it wasn’t carried out.”

Soper points out that other political parties also take donations from sectors that expect policy wins – for example, “the significant support of the trade union movement for Labour. And they don’t do that for nothing, neither does the racing industry for Winston Peters or big business for the National Party which gets the lion’s share of donations.” He concludes that party donations “should be seen for what they really are, paying for the sympathetic ear of a lawmaker.”

Jacinda Ardern has also defended NZ First’s connection to the racing industry on the basis that is “no secret to anyone in New Zealand that Winston Peters has a strong knowledge, understanding and long-standing connection to the racing industry”.

In response to this, National-aligned blogger David Farrar says: “Yes she is defending NZ First having massive secret donations from the racing industry and in return delivering huge financial windfalls to the racing industry with taxpayer money” – see: Has Jacinda read her own coalition agreement?

Farrar also makes the point that NZ First cared so strongly about their racing policies that they demanded them be installed as part of the coalition agreement: “Jacinda needs to read the Labour and NZ First Coalition agreement. It requires Labour to ‘Support New Zealand First’s Racing policy’. There is no other portfolio which has the agreement requiring the Government to support one party’s entire policy. This shows how massively important it was that NZ First could guarantee to its funders their policies would be implemented.”

Newsroom editor Bernard Hickey says the public should take these racing industry financial connections seriously: “Winston Peters is Racing Minister and has pushed through reforms to the NZ Racing Board and the industry that are expected to see the TAB sold off to Australian betting companies in a way that breeders and trainers want. He has also cut levies paid by the industry” – see: Winston Peters should stand down as Racing Minister.

He argues therefore that “Winston Peters should stand down as Racing Minister, at the very least, while those donations are being investigated by the Serious Fraud Office.” Furthermore, “the Government should put its Racing Industry Bill, which is in the select committee stage after its first reading in Parliament last month, on hold.”

Hickey is also interviewed on the whole connection between money and politics in another article, in which he says the lack of transparency that appears to exist in the current arrangements in political finance law means that “the scrum is screwed, if you like, by people who are wealthier than the rest of us and can ask for special favours, and have influence over a project larger than they would have if they were just another citizen who was voting in an election. One of the ways to protect yourself is to make sure everyone knows who’s donated what to whom” – see Alexia Russell’s New Zealand First in party donations furore.

Finally, for the best dissection of the NZ First leader’s eight-minute appearance on Facebook in which he promised to tell the “truth about the NZ First Foundation”, see Ben Thomas’ So many questions as Winston Peters goes live on Facebook.