RNZ news item, 12pm 9 Dec 2025: “Finance Minister Nicola Willis has challenged one of her predecessors Ruth Richardson to debate her on how to best manage the country’s finances. Our political reporter Anneke Smith has more: ‘The taxpayers union is poised to launch a pressure campaign targeting Nicola Willis in a campaign to convince the finance minister to cut spending and reduce debt. Ms Willis says it’s clear the campaign is being driven by Ms Richardson, chair of the Taxpayers Union; and she has a clear message for her, “Come and debate me face to face, come out of the shadows, I will argue toe for toe on the prescription that our government is following. I reject your approach, and instead of lurking in the shadows with secretly-funded ads in the paper, come and debate me right here in Parliament.” Ruth Richardson says that the Taxpayers Union is simply doing its job by challenging the government to address its finances. “We are seeking to hold the feet of the Minister of Finance to this fiscal fire. Her Treasury are shouting ‘Fire! Fire! we have a structural deficit, this cannot go on, it needs to be addressed.” Ms Richardson laughed when RNZ asked her if she would debate Ms Willis, saying it was up to the Minister of Finance to front government decisions.'”

The narratives on the classical right and the fuzzy right

Where are the libertarian right and the fuzzy right coming from? There must be more to their visions than ‘balancing the books’; in Victorian times, families might balance their books by selling their children.

What are the narratives which these actors are speaking to? Who are the defunct economists whose ideas are driving them? There are actually three narratives of the liberal conservative right. Present Minister of Finance Nicola Willis represents the fuzzy fudgy right. Ruth Richardson represents one purist branch of the classical right; the other is represented by former United Kingdom Prime Minister Liz Truss.

Note this oft-quoted (and, here, slightly massaged) passage from John Maynard Keynes’ General Theory (published 1936): Practical [wo]men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Keynes used the word ‘practical’ with irony. One intellectual ancestor who Ms Richardson may not be aware of was the prolific Mrs Marcet, (b.1769 London, d.1858 London) who was praised by Jean-Baptiste Say as “the only woman who had written on political economy and shown herself superior even to men”.

We note the context that the present recession (in terms of total fall of per capita GDP, and duration of fall) is now understood to be the second-worst in New Zealand since the Great Depression (1930 to 1935 in New Zealand). The worst since 1935 is unquestionably that which peaked in the early 1990s, and was very much associated with the fiscal governance of Ruth Richardson. We should note that a structural recession, also known as a balance-sheet recession, is an extended period of near-zero growth which typically follows an initial fall of economic output and income.

Dramatis personae

Four defunct economists feature in this story about Richardson, Willis, and Truss; all four associated with the first two decades of the nineteenth century: Jean-Baptiste Say, James Mill, David Ricardo, and Thomas Robert Malthus. In the chronologies relevant to most people alive today, these four men are all very much defunct (and pre-democratic in outlook), though their ideas are increasingly driving western economic policy today. They are the founding fathers of the classical school of economics. (Mrs [Jane] Marcet was the midwife.)

Today there is a curious kind of intellectual Benjamin Button process going on, with the most important post- industrial revolution contributions to economic policymaking (those of Alfred Marshall, 1890, and Keynes, 1936) having been unpeeled, with the most recently written (Keynes) having been unpeeled first. Intellectually, economics – or at least the loudest economic narrative – is moving backwards in time.

The unpeeling process has further to go. The mercantilist economics of DJT precedes the classical political economy which became fully formed in the 1810s’ decade; and it precede the partial demolition of mercantilist economics undertaken by Adam Smith in 1776 (The Wealth of Nations). And it precedes the scientific revolution most associated with the name of Isaac Newton. The heyday of mercantilist ‘thought’ was the first half of the seventeenth century. (The most mercantilist of organisations in history were the Dutch East India Company, which ‘discovered’ New Zealand in 1642 [and subsequently named it, along with New Holland to New Zealand’s west], and the Dutch West India Company, which founded New York in 1624; these companies’ narratives give the best possible insight into the strategic thought of the current United States president, a man of New York, and his acolytes.)

The paradigm of classical economics was formed from 1798 to 1823, mainly in England; formed during the peak years of the Industrial Revolution, but almost completely without reference to (and with minimal application to) the dramatic economic events (also mostly in England) of that quarter-century.

Aggregate spending as a driver of economic growth

The central issue in New Zealand’s economic politics today is about whether (and how) aggregate spending is a driver of economic growth. The Richardson supply-side version, which denies that aggregate spending has any role, falls directly in line with the doctrine of the godfather of classical economics, James Mill, and his mentee David Ricardo. The Truss version, however, follows Malthus in his later dispute with Ricardo, and represents what has been popularly known since the 1970s as trickle-down economics. Conservative and centrist western policymakers today mostly follow a fuzzy fudge version of classical economics, where they selectively allow for increased aggregate spending to facilitate economic growth while disavowing the role of central government as an autonomous spender.

The first principle of classical economics is called Say’s law (of markets); though it could have been called Mill’s Law, and its ongoing presence in liberal-conservative economic narrative is more due to Mill’s role in overseeing the classical economics’ project than to Say after whom the ‘law’ is named.

Say, in looking for an argument to show that a general glut (the term then used for a recession) is impossible, noted that aggregate income must be equal to aggregate output, and believed that all income must be spent (on that output) in one way or another. He understood an apparent glut (ie unsold goods) to be a simple mismatch between what goods people produced and what other goods they wanted to buy. In other words, Say argued that an apparent excess of output was equally matched by a less visible shortage somewhere else. (In subsequent neoclassical economics, most associated with the name of Alfred Marshall, it was the price mechanism of markets which would resolve such an apparent glut, by providing the information required to ‘signal’ to firms what they should be producing.)

In the days of Say and Mill, it was true that producers blindly supplied goods to the marketplace. Today’s world is very different, as most of us do understand. Today, the norm is to produce goods and services for the market; in other words, today’s producers directly and indirectly respond to market forces. Today, when people buy more, firms respond by producing more. The connection between prior spending and output has become so obvious; yet few push back when economic policymakers and liberal conservative commentators repudiate that connection by constantly promoting the supply-side mantra of ‘increasing productivity’. (In reality, firms most increase their productivity when they have more customers, not when they reduce their costs. Henry Ford raised rather than cut his employees’ wages!)

Say’s law is easily repudiated; just look at any basic Economic Principles textbook. We see that some income is saved rather than spent, and that some previously saved income is spent; there is no necessity that the two will cancel out. As a result, much spending is (necessarily) a result of lending, and there is no simple relationship between saving and lending. It turns out that banks and governments act as pumps and sumps. If they don’t pump enough, then there will be a ‘general glut’, a recession; there will not be enough spending to buy everything that people would like to produce, and maybe not enough to buy all that they have produced. Falling prices (deflation), a possible consequence of insufficient spending, acts as a further deterrent to spending; that’s what happened during the doom-loop we now know as the Great Depression. (Irving Fisher described a debt-deflation spiral; when debtors stopped spending in order to repay debts, there became too little aggregate spending, meaning that prices and incomes fell and debts increased relative to incomes.)

Ricardian economics – named after its most precise theorist, David Ricardo – includes Say’s law of markets as a core axiom. Another core axiom was Malthus’s theory of population; first published in 1798. The central idea was that wages could never permanently rise above the level of absolute subsistence, because whenever wages did increase to higher levels then fertility would increase leading soon enough to competition in the labour market sufficient to beat wages back down to subsistence levels.

A third premise was that profits fall as rents increase; rents would inexorably increase as rising populations forced capitalist tenant farmers to rent lands of decreasing quality, meaning that the better lands would command higher landlords’ rents. (Famers, the quintessential capitalists in the Ricardian system, could slow down this profit decline by increasing their productivity.) The argument depended on competition between tenant farmers, comparable to competition between wage workers.

The end result of classical economic growth would be a dismal stationary state in which only landlords (the one-percenters of ancien régime times) would have access to discretionary income. The sociology which accompanied that perspective on agricultural capitalism was that the early capitalists would seek to acquire land and become one-percenter landlords; in the classical system, farmers had displaced merchants as the archetypal capitalists.

(David Ricardo was a particularly successful specimen of capitalist, though neither farmer nor merchant; he was a financial capitalist and speculator, who made sufficient money to acquire for himself the Gatcombe Park estate, now the country residence of Princess Anne. War times generally provided better opportunities than peace times for speculators to make fortunes; the backdrop to classical economics was the Napoleonic Wars – effectively World War Zero – which featured the most glorious years of the British Navy.)

Malthus’ contribution to classical economics went well beyond his renowned theory of population; the theory which begat the concept of the tragedy of the commons. That tragedy is playing itself out today, through both escalating military conflicts and the barely restrained use of fossil fuels; nobody is making the news today by advocating ‘green warfare’.

Malthus became the first dissenter, among classical political economists, to Say’s law. He argued that general gluts were perfectly possible, and that aggregate spending did need to be topped-up under certain circumstances. Malthus favoured policies such as debt-relief and tax-relief to landlords, so that they could buy more luxury goods, thereby helping to keep servants and the like employed and fed.

None of the classical thinkers came close to understanding that, in a mature industrial economic system which focusses on the mass production of consumable commodities (later known as ‘wage goods’), wage workers would need to have a sufficient share of overall income to be able to buy the mass-produced goods which they made. They should have. The John the Baptist (ie precursor) of classical economics – Adam Smith – made a detailed description of a 1770s’ pin factory; Smith had more to say about mass production than did the founders of the classical school.

Malthus, by favouring a stimulus which directly favoured the rich, became the founding father of trickle-down, the variant of liberal conservative economics favoured by Liz Truss.

In the meantime, namely the 1970s and 1980s, new classical economists (including Robert Barro, a sometimes visitor to New Zealand in the 1980s and 1990s; who I and colleagues lunched with on one occasion in Auckland in the 1990s) rediscovered a more technical version of Say’s Law, and called itRicardian Equivalence in honour of David Ricardo.

The pure classical school to which Ruth Richardson adheres uses the Ricardian Equivalence argument to claim that, at best, extra government spending makes no difference to the rate of economic growth. She is of the school of Mill and Ricardo that supply always creates its own demand, and that – exempting a few essentials such as national defence and the law courts – government spending simply crowds out allegedly-superior private spending.

The fuzzy Willis fudge

While Prime Minister Luxon inclines towards the ‘making-money’ mercantilist economics of DJT – mining, exporting, and acquisition of resources through one-sided deal-making and military threats; Luxon clearly emphasises exporting – his Finance Minister Nicola Willis is much more in tune with Treasury’s liberal conservative macroeconomics.

While essentially schooled in the new classical macroeconomics of the 1980s, and increasingly sceptical of the market-corrective economics of Marshall and his disciple Arthur Pigou, Willis adopts an ambiguous attitude towards the general proposition that more spending generates higher levels of GDP (gross domestic product) than would otherwise occur.

This Treasury view values foreigner-spending; and business-investment spending, believing that firms should invest liberally in cost-cutting techniques even if consumer markets are weak and getting weaker. Generally, the Treasury view substantially underplays the ways that working-class consumer spending and government spending can revive a stagnating economy.

But Treasury points to monetary policy as a source of stimulus. In the old days monetary policy as a stimulus meant a stimulus to new business borrowing and the funding of consumer durables through hire-purchase. Nowadays, this ‘price effect’ of monetary policy is understated. Rather, the story we hear is that ‘mortgagors will spend more when they refix their home loans at lower rates’, and that new spending by relieved mortgagors on middle-class goods will prove to be a critical factor inducing economic revival. This is called an ‘income effect’; traditionally neoclassical economics has downplayed income effects while upplaying price effects. The change we see today represents part of the disavowal of neoclassical economics, and the Benjamin Button style return to its predecessor, classical economics.

The supposition is that rational mortgaged homeowners will spend more when their mortgage liabilities decrease (including when the equity in their homes is decreasing as a result of ‘softening’ house prices), because their disposable incomes have increased. Yet that same rationalist logic is almost never applied to governments. We should be hearing Nicola Willis saying, now that interest rates are much lower the government can and should borrow and spend much more. But we are not hearing that. It worked in the late 1930s – increased government spending was very popular with households and businesses, and annual economic growth reached double-digit percentages – but is not even being considered today.

Despite what Ruth Richardson says, Nicola Willis is an austere money-woman.

Richardson is obsessed with the fiscal deficit. But the deficit is the result of our present recession, not the cause of it. (Look at the section on automatic stabilisers in the economics textbook.) Ricardian equivalence, if it truthfully applies under any circumstances, certainly does not apply to an economy in the midst of a recession. Arguably monetary policy is enough to get an economy out of a normal recession (a ‘gumboot recession’?), but spending by government (or some other ‘countercyclical players’) is the only known method of getting an economy out of a structural recession. (The only known method, that is, other than waiting for an export recovery. We’ve had our export recovery since 2024; so far it has not been enough, and is unlikely to bring the New Zealand economy back to its counterfactual growth path.)

The political problem is that you cannot simultaneously repudiate Keynesian economics and implement it. Unless you fudge it, of course!

The Debate?

Will Richardson and Willis have a media debate this week? I’m guessing not. If it does happen, will Ruth Richardson talk about the merits of Ricardian Equivalence? Probably not; but if she is to be honest, she must tell us that it is the concept at the core of her macroeconomic belief system.

At least Willis is a pragmatist, of sorts. Richardson and Truss are classical dogmatists, standing on opposite sides of the Ricardo-Malthus controversy.

(If the money-women have time to swot-up on their defunct economists, a debate could probably be hosted at short notice by the New Zealand Society for the History of Macroeconomic Thought. Thursday-week at the site of Unitec’s Penman House; “feet to the fire” not compulsory, bring your own umbrella and hose. We could invite, from London, Liz Truss; and a descendant of Charles Dickens who could reflect on the political economy of high-density housing. Complimentary screening of Christmas Carol the musical if a power source can be arranged.)

By the way, the way to remove the fiscal deficit is to invest in economic growth. Governments, like businesses, have to spend money to make money. Say’s Law is old hat. What is your real agenda, Ruth?

*******

Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

In 2000, the Initial vote on Kiwibank in the Labour-Alliance government was 16 votes against from Labour, and four votes in favour from the Alliance.

I was there when this was reversed, and in 2001 the four insurgent Alliance Ministers – Jim Anderton, Sandra Lee, Laila Harre and Matt Robson- received our foundation Kiwibank cards in Jim’s office.

New Zealand once again had a popular publicly owned bank to aid its development and counter the strangling grip of the privately owned foreign banks.

Finance Minister Hon. Michael Cullen said, begrudgingly, that the bank, operating from New Zealand Post premises, would get an $ 80 million loan , but not one cent more. Helen Clark continued her opposition by announcing she would remain an Australian Big 4 customer.

Kiwibank had been a long journey.

So, why had Alliance members campaigned so long and hard for this goal?

Jim Anderton had spelt out the reason in 1988 as the Lange Labour government continued its crash sale of public assets by putting the Bank of New Zealand with its 20 percent share of the banking sector on the auction block. In a 1988 parliamentary speech that led to his expulsion from the Labour caucus Jim Anderton said:

“The sale of State Owned Enterprises transfers ownership, control, wealth and resources from the public sector to the private sector…Once it is sold the policy options available…are almost certainly removed…Even after the worst stock market crash in New Zealand’s history…the Bank of New Zealand made an operating profit of $182 million in the 1987-88 financial year… (it) is virtually a perpetual asset…(and) commands 20 percent of the current financial system.”

As a highly capitalised bank the BNZ, meeting its huge taxation and dividends obligations to the government and with its long history in the development of New Zealand as an arm of government, the BNZ limited the destructive side of  private banks and kept profits and investment capacity in New Zealand.

Within a short time, an expanding  Kiwibank kept local branches open, and rapidly attracted customers. It paid back the initial government capital within 3 years. It now has over one million customers, including over 40,000 businesses.

Michael Cullen, resiling from his initial hostility, was to praise Kiwibank in his autobiography as follows:

“But Kiwibank proved its real worth to New Zealand in the early stages of the global financial crisis. The Australian  banks withdrew substantially from the New Zealand mortgage Market. Kiwibank stepped  into the breach. Despite its very small size compared with the Aussies, it was for a year or two the largest provider of new mortgages…since Kiwibank was set up, the Australian banks have emphasised their New Zealand character…”

Michael Cullen, the former Finance Minister then warned, and Minister Willis would do well to heed,  about the true character of the private banks:

“…when the crunch comes , one should never be fooled  about where their primary accountability will lie.”

In his 1988 speech to Parliament, opposing his own public asset selling Labour Party,  Jim Anderton also outlined the vision which in 2002 was to underpin both the  Kiwibank and  a newly minted  ministry of economic and regional development, of the public bank playing an essential role in national economic development:

“…if it were decided to run an active regional development policy the geographical spread of the branches of the Bank of New Zealand makes the bank the only Government agency with the detailed knowledge required to act of the Government… of providing long-term development funds for viable projects in all the regions…sale of such an extensive economic power…may lead to the operation of the bank for purely financial commercial reasons…small borrowers , and even Governments, suffer when dominant banks  are run for short term financial reasons and profits.”

All of these advantages are now at risk as the government , using the excuse of the need to raise capital for the bank to take on the Big 4, sets out to gift an essential economic tool to the private sector.

The New Zealand Herald revealed the government’s intentions on 25 July:

“In a routine letter of expectation sent to Kiwibank’s board chairman David McLean in April, shareholding ministers suggested they were open-minded as to how Kiwibank grew… ( Minister of State Owned Enterprises ) Goldsmith said the Government had no plans to privatise state assets, but conceded a possible outcome of the purpose statement exercise could  be that it decided it no longer wanted to own an asset.”

Renationalisation Pledge

Warning bells should ring for Labour and the Greens. Labour members and voters triumphed over the initial opposition to Kiwibank of Helen Clark and Michael Cullen to Kiwibank. The Green Party has pledged to oppose asset sales. As Alliance MPs, Green Party founders Jeanette Fitzsimons and Rod Donald campaigned for Kiwibank . Labour and the Greens must form a united front in defence of Kiwibank.  A pledge to re-nationalise and expand through government financing ,there are multiple financing methods available , will deter the circling sharks which include the Australian bank competitors.

Governments of all stripes throughout the world recognise the crucial developmental role of a large state bank as an essential tool for long term investment and development. Labour and the Greens can unite to build on the vision of Jim Anderton and ensure that New Zealand is not, once again, deprived of its state-owned bank by a short-sighted government acting in the narrow interests of the private sector and not in the best interests of New Zealand.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Matt Robson and others are calling on the New Zealand Government to abandon any plans to privatise Kiwibank and to commit to keeping it in public ownership.

You can sign the petition here.

Many criticisms are being made of the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill, including by this writer. But as with everything in politics, every story has two sides, and both deserve attention. It’s important to understand what the Government is trying to achieve and its arguments for such a bold reform. As part of a new series providing scrutiny of the fast-track legislation (#FastTrackWatch), this first column rounds up the commentary and arguments in favour of what the Government is proposing.

Chris Bishop puts the case for getting things done

The architect of the overturn of RMA is Infrastructure and Housing Minister Chris Bishop. He has developed the new regime, with the central purpose of enabling the country to “get things done” – i.e. for development to occur. This goal comes in the context of widespread awareness and consensus that things have been moving too slowly in New Zealand, and major and important infrastructure and housing have been held back by structural and governmental regulation.

Much of this relates to the Resource Management Act 1991, which most politicians want replaced. Bishop’s answer is to essentially deregulate the sector and turbo-charge the ability of developers to get their projects off the ground. And in finding a way to do this, he’s picked up what the last Labour Government had already done with their own Covid-era fast-track processes and expanded that into a more permanent and extensive escalated process.

The new processes mean that three cabinet ministers (those responsible for transport, regional development, and infrastructure) can select a select number of development proposals to essentially get exemptions from normal resource consenting processes. An expert panel is also involved in advising the ministers and suggesting conditions to be placed on developers, but the three ministers have the ultimate say.

Bishop explained all of this in his column in the Herald yesterday, in which he paints a dark picture of the status quo, which justifies a new approach: “It’s too hard to get things done in New Zealand. Too hard to build new renewable energy, too hard to build roads and public transport, too hard to build houses and too hard to develop the sort of sensible economic development projects that provide jobs and growth” – see: Fast Track Approvals Bill – New Zealand has become an obstruction economy (paywalled)

To illustrate how the status quo needs radical change, Bishop is good at using anecdotes about the frustrations of a dysfunctional and bureaupathetic consents system: “I recently met a housing developer who had finally received consent after a three-year process only to have an official turn up on the very day earthworks were to begin and demand a Wildlife Act permit. That process took more than a year to complete. Such ineptitude would be funny if kids weren’t living in cars and a generation were not locked out of home ownership.”

Bishop has cleverly turned the tables on critics who has sought to tar the fast-track process as being about helping construction and mining companies to get their way. Instead, he sells his solution as being about improving housing availability, making roads safer, and decarbonising the economy to fight climate change.

He also puts forward a very clear explanation of how the new fast-track process will work as a streamlined “one-stop-shop” process for developers: “it doesn’t just deal with resource consents, it also deals with all the other things often needed for development, like conservation permits, heritage and so on. It makes sense to do all of that at the same time, rather than strung out over many years and with multiple different government agencies.”

Shane Jones’ populist approach

New Zealand First’s Shane Jones is the second biggest voice selling the fast-track proposal to the public. And although Bishop is the main architect of it, it’s been said that Jones, as Resources Minister, is the schemes’ “godfather”. Crucially, he was responsible for getting the scheme included in the coalition agreement between National and New Zealand First.

Jones’ sales pitch for the fast-track is less subtle than that of Bishop, and more populist, saying it’s about driving a metaphorical bulldozer through all the red- and green-tape to get things done for “the people”, especially in the neglected regions. He promises more jobs and economic growth as a result. It’s all very much in line with his “Make New Zealand Great Again” mode in which leaders need to break rules to get things done.

Jones takes delight in promising more consents for the extractive sector, including mining on conservation land, and appeals to New Zealanders, who he says are sick of environmental protections slowing down progress too much. In debating the new legislation in Parliament, Jones explained the new approach: “Gone are the days of the multicoloured skink, the kiwi, many other species that have been weaponised to deny regional New Zealand communities their right to a livelihood, their entitlement to live peacefully with their environment but derive an income to meet the costs of raising families in regional New Zealand.”

More famously, Jones has also referred to allowing land that is currently protected against mining to protect the Archey’s frog: “In those areas called the Department of Conservation estate, where it’s stewardship land, stewardship land is not DOC land, and if there is a mineral, if there is a mining opportunity and it’s impeded by a blind frog, goodbye, Freddy.”

Mike Hosking: The Most important thing the Govt is doing

The one person outside of government and industry circles who is almost a lone voice in championing the fast-track regime is Newstalk broadcaster Mike Hosking. He put forward his best defence of it this week, saying the proposal “might well be the most important thing this Government does” given that New Zealand’s has an infrastructure crisis and needs to get on with building and fixing things, which is what this bill is about – see: This Government was elected on change — embrace it

Hosking reminds us that the current Resource Management Act isn’t working, and so it’s important that we innovate to try new ways of getting on with creating economic growth and rebuilding the country. It’s a message that will resonate with a public that is impatient for change and transformation, especially given that this is a widespread feeling that “the country is broken” or in decline.

Hosking’s other key argument is to attack those that are questioning the fast-track proposal – he describes them as “incessant moaners” and “handwringers” who are holding back progress. Here’s his key point: “Submissions on the legislation closed last week and you can imagine who turned up. It’s the same people who believe not doing things is the preferred option. The same people who have held this country to ransom over their individual myopic view of what’s important to save, or treasure, or talk more about.”

The New Zealand Initiative: In favour of centralising power in Wellington

The pro-business lobby group and think tank the New Zealand Initiative has come out firmly in favour of the Fast Track Approvals Bill, saying that it’s “a necessary step to streamline decision-making for projects with significant economic benefits, and it should proceed.”

This group is normally an advocate for “localism”, devolution, and against the ethos of “Wellington knows best” – which means they might have been expected to rail against this concentration of power in the Beehive. But in this case, they support the Government taking back control so that they can push through development without cause for local participation and impediments in the decisions.

The Initiative’s main spokesperson on the issue, Nick Clark, has written a column for the Herald this month about how the bill might not be perfect, but it should be supported because it “represents an improvement on the status quo” – see: Fast-tracking for infrastructure fix is needed now (paywalled)

In talking about the concerning imperfections in the fast-tracking proposal, such as the increased likelihood of corruption, the Initiative concludes that these aren’t important enough to prevent the Bill from being implemented in its current form, especially given the urgency of New Zealand’s infrastructure deficit.

The Initiative therefore takes a highly pragmatic argument in favour of fast-tracking, pointing to, like Bishop, the many economic problems facing the country, which now means that a centralisation of powers is desirable in order to push through developments, even if they are opposed by locals.

Infrastructure Commission

Some fast-track supporters have used material produced by the Government’s Infrastructure Commission to show the need for the new reforms. Although the Commission doesn’t appear to have taken a stance on this major infrastructure issue, it has published a report on the problems with the existing resource management rules.

The report was prepared for the Commission by the Sapere consultancy company, and it shows that the current consenting process costs the economy about $1.3 billion per year. It also pointed out that over the last five years, the average time taken to get consent has doubled.

The Commission is also under pressure to come up with ways to speed up developments. A poll last year showed that 61 per cent of New Zealanders believe that not enough is being done to meet the country’s infrastructure needs. Priorities, according to survey respondents, were flood defences and new housing supply. For more on this, see Andrea Vance’s recent column, Why Nimbyism is the biggest risk to the Government’s fast-track regime (paywalled)

Business interests welcome fast-tracking

“Manna from heaven” is how the fast-track bill is being described by the chief executive of the mining lobby group Straterra, Josie Vidal. She says that “the country is in trouble. We need to get on and do some things”, and suggests that politicians have become too ponderous in their decision-making – see Brent Edwards’ NBR article, Opponents and supporters of fast-track bill want changes (paywalled)

As to the criticisms of the bill, Vidal writes this off: “There is a lot of fearmongering from environmental groups.”

Similarly, Newsroom’s editor Tim Murphy has said: “This Govt is certainly making some people happy. The mining, marine aquaculture, roading, energy and land developer industries must be wondering whether they’ve died and gone to heaven with the new fast-tracking law.”

Certainly, businesses and other lobby groups have reacted very positively to the fast-track bill. Press statements have been put out in its support by Infrastructure New Zealand, Transporting New Zealand, Energy Resources Aotearoa, and Civil Contractors NZ.

Some iwi are also supportive of the fast-track, as many have economic interests in aquaculture and energy industry. For example, Ngāi Tahu has been reported as hoping to use the new fast-track to finally get the greenlight for its previously-blocked proposal for a massive salmon farm off Stewart Island.

The public’s appeal for “getting things done”

The fast-track regime is likely to be very popular with the public. There’s a widespread frustration with how little government gets achieved, and how society is held back by regulations. This is especially the case in terms of building and resource management consents.

….This column continues. To access this, please follow this link to the  Democracy Project (https://democracyproject.nz) and subscribe: Upgrade to paid.

Analysis by Keith Rankin.

The new government is making a weak start to its tenure. On Morning Report (RNZ, 28 Nov 2023, Prime Minister Luxon to lead first cabinet meeting), Mr Luxon repeated a comment such as he has made several times before: “The number one job is to rebuild the economy so we can lower the cost of living so everyone can get ahead“. Three clichés in one short sentence!

First cliché. Is the economy destroyed, and therefore in need of rebuilding? Or is Mr Luxon planning to destroy the economy, so that it can be rebuilt? Or is he just speaking inane hyperbole?

Second cliché. Is Mr Luxon calling for deflation? Is he promising to lower the CPI (consumers price index)? That’s a literal interpretation of what he said.

Or did he mean to say: ‘lower the rate of inflation’? That is, did he mean to say that his aim is to slowdown the rate at which the cost of living is increasing? (We’ll ignore for now the fact that ‘inflation’ and ‘an increasing cost of living’ are technically and practically different things, although they are related through the concept of ‘rising prices’.)

For most of the 2010s, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand was waging a quixotic war against price deflation, on the basis that deflation is worse than inflation. Mr Luxon now seems to be saying that deflation is a desirable thing. Yet, as I understand it, the changes which he wants to make to the Policy Targets Agreement (the Government’s contract with the Reserve Bank) are to create a single mandate that makes inflation compulsory.

Third cliché. Can everyone get ahead? Ahead of who or what? The natural understanding of this aspiratorial cliché is the metaphor of a running race. In one sense everybody gets ahead if they all reach the finish line, because they will be ahead of the start line. But in another sense ‘getting ahead’ means ‘winning’ or at least ‘not losing’; in this sense its logically impossible for everyone to get ahead.

As I understand it, ‘getting ahead’ is an awkward cliché for ‘equality of opportunity’. ‘Equality of opportunity’ is a mantra for centrist liberalism which I suspect that the outgoing Chris and the incoming Christopher both subscribe to. The metaphor is that life is a running race (the human race?) and the starting point is at the ‘age of majority’; say, 18. The ideal is that every adult starts as equals. (The two variations are the Act liberal race, which is like Formula One motor racing, where the most likely winners have favourable starting positions; whereas the Labour liberal race is more like the Melbourne Cup, where the more-likely winners are subject to a handicap.)

This concept of centrist liberalism explains why we are so obsessed with ‘child poverty’ and so little concerned with adverse outcomes in adult life. As the story goes, adults are ‘free to choose’ and must ‘lie in the beds’ that we (as adults) make for ourselves. In this narrative, children are not free to choose; social policy is therefore all about ensuring an equitable (or acceptable) starting line for the race of life.

The idea that everyone gets ahead seems very socialist to me. Under liberalism, some people do get behind. Necessarily.

Why do media interviewers meekly accept these clichés?

Two Other Clichés

I’ll mention two other common clichés, without much elaboration. These are most often heard by mainstream commentators. Refer to RNZ The Panel part 1, 27 November 2023.

The fourth cliché is that we should have a longer parliamentary term (than three years) because we waste the election year on politicking, and waste the year after elections in getting set-up. It’s an assertion repeated repeatedly; but rarely examined. Nobody mentions that the United States’ parliament (Congress) has a two-year term. And few mention the fact that most United Kingdom parliaments do not go full term.

The fifth cliché is that ‘there is only so much money’ to go around. This glib statement is patently false, yet almost always presumed to be true; money is a social technology, not some magical mined mineral. This cliché, subscribed to by the entire Aotearoan political class in 2023, has jammed New Zealand politics into a tight stalemate; into a nasty zero-sum game that ruined the 2023 election. As a result, the new government, in being required to abandon one oft-lampooned method (taxes on foreign buyers of luxury homes) of funding nominal tax cuts, has been required to find another source of funds. So, shock horror, they are choosing a policy that they claim will increase revenue from tobacco taxes. This may well be a bad health policy, though it’s not that clear. But the state of political discourse is so clichéd that the obvious solution – to budget for a slightly larger fiscal deficit – is ‘off the table’, politically speaking. ‘Unfunded’ (ie deficit) spending is a necessity in capitalism; somebody has to incur deficits (it might as well be the government); and as economies grow, total deficits must also grow.

A related cliché, which is less obviously untrue, is that ‘borrowed money has to be paid back’. In fact, borrowed money must be serviced. In public finance, the near-universal truth is that borrowed money is serviced, both through interest payments and rollovers of principal. (Otherwise, money is paid forward, not paid back; eg when I pay down a bank loan, the bank advances that money to someone else. Money literally paid back is money destroyed.) This version of the cliché is like believing that God requires the universe to be ‘paid back’.

*******

Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

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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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

As the National Party gets closer to government, lobbyists and business interests will be lining up for influence and to get policies adopted. It’s therefore in the public interest to have much more scrutiny and transparency about potential conflicts of interests that might arise.

One of the key individuals of influence in National is former Cabinet Minister and now businessman, Steven Joyce. His continued sway with National and various business interests is a useful case study in how New Zealand politics works.

Steven Joyce – Minister of Everything, and now Adviser on Everything?

Steven Joyce is a figure who continually comes up as key to much of National’s policy development. He has fingers in many pies, and is close to decision-makers in National. So, if you want to know what the new government is going to do, it’s instructive to keep an eye on Joyce’s business activities and lobbying.

Joyce, of course, has been a major figure in National for the last two decades. He led the restructuring of the party in the Don Brash years, and then ran National’s election campaigns from 2005 to 2017. Upon entering Parliament in 2008 he was instantly appointed as a Cabinet Minister, and eventually became Minister of Finance (as well as becoming known as The Minister of Everything and Mr Fixit).

His time in politics was not uncontroversial. Joyce was criticised for an approach that many saw amounted to cronyism – especially because of his deal with SkyCity to build Auckland’s convention centre – and was sometimes compared to Robert Muldoon in his pragmatism and style. Once John Key and Bill English departed, Joyce ran for the leadership but lost out to Simon Bridges, which led to his resignation from Parliament in 2018.

Joyce had been a businessman before entering politics, and returned to this in 2018, setting up Joyce Advisory, a company specialising in business strategy, consultancy, brand management and reputation. In addition to this, Joyce has been appointed to and employed by an array of businesses, from property development through to engineering. Some of these clients have developed close relationships with the National Party under leader Christopher Luxon.

Joyce has also stayed extremely close to his old party, and has obviously remained influential – especially in terms of policy development. According to some party insiders, National’s lack of policy development has made Joyce’s advice invaluable in helping fill the void.

Winton property developers

The most politically controversial business Joyce has joined is the major property developer Winton, a company that is currently locked in a legal battle with the Government. Winton claims Kāinga Ora is stymying its “Sunfield” development plans in South Auckland by not giving the company a fast-tracked development under the new Urban Development Act. In appointing Joyce, the company put out a press release to say that Joyce “has not been appointed for government relations or political lobbying.”

The company is associated with some big donations to the National Party. Back in May 2022 the party received $52,000 from a holding company called Speargrass, which is owned by Winton’s CEO Chris Meehan. This year Meehan has donated $103,260 to National and $50,000 to Act.

National and Act have both come out publicly this year in favour of Winton in their fight with Kāinga Ora, with the parties’ respective housing spokespeople Chris Bishop and Brooke van Velden issuing press releases pushing Winton’s case.

National had already received the first donation when Bishop went public with his support for Winton, but he failed to declare this. In fact, Bishop later told Newsroom that he wasn’t aware of the big donations and could not give further comments due to Winton’s court case. He also told Newsroom that there was no conflict of interest, and any question of whether the property developer would get a meeting with an incoming National prime minister was an issue for after the election campaign.

National’s foreign buyer tax policy

When National announced that its new tax policy would involve a partial abolition of Labour’s ban on house sales to foreign buyers, political commentator Matthew Hooton suggested in the Herald that, “incredibly”, the policy had been created “with the help of lobbyists” for “the property-development industries”.

Certainly, property companies would stand to benefit from National’s new policy as, if implemented, all properties worth over $2m could be sold to foreign buyers, increasing the market and demand for the houses being sold by property developers.

This week Hooton has expanded on his claim that National designed the policy with the help of property developers, pointing to Winton and its close relationship with National, and suggesting that property developers have been able to help shape National’s housing-tax policies. Hooton says, “It may well be that National has thought through its tax policy much more carefully than it has been given credit for.”

He points out that the new policy could raise a lot of tax revenue and profit: “If Winton, say, sold 5000 residences for $2m+ over four years to foreign buyers, that alone would raise half the $20b of houses and apartments National needs to make its books balance. And, of course, some would be worth more than $2m. Some of the properties Winton has in its pipeline are planned to be sold for $10m+.”

Hooton therefore suggests that with a change of government, and a new minister in charge of Kāinga Ora and housing, there might well be a law change and the green light given to property developers to proceed with high-end developments.

Waikato University’s work with National

National has also released its tertiary education policy, including the promise to create a new $300m medical training school at Waikato University. The party worked closely with the University, and particularly its vice-chancellor Neil Quigley, to come up with the policy. The University even helped pay for National’s announcement, and Quigley emailed Health Spokesperson Shane Reti to say the policy could be “a present” to a future National government.

RNZ’s Guyon Espiner has uncovered how closely the University and National Party worked together on the policy development, and how Steven Joyce’s consultancy company Joyce Advisory was paid nearly a million dollars for helping with “lobbying advice” on such issues. On top of this, one of Joyce’s former Beehive political advisors, Anna Lillis, was contracted to sell the policy.

Espiner notes that Labour-aligned lobbyist Neale Jones has previously been employed by Waikato University to try to get the Labour Government to pay for a new medical school. But Joyce essentially took over this work from Jones, helping get the policy adopted by National instead.

SkyCity’s deals with National

National’s latest tax policy included trying to squeeze tax out of the foreign gambling websites that sell their services to New Zealanders. National has been upfront in stating that the SkyCity Casino advised on this policy. A confidential report from SkyCity was used by National to pull together the figures suggesting that $176m per year could be raised in tax.

National’s tax policy would also benefit SkyCity, because a tax on foreign gambling sites would reduce the competitiveness of their opponents and, in some cases, it might mean those offshore websites will be blocked from operating in this country.

Of course, the National Party has a long-running association with SkyCity. The last National Government negotiated a deal with the casino operators to build a convention centre for Auckland in exchange for concessions on the tight regulations on the number of SkyCity casino tables and pokie machines. The deal was partly brokered by Steven Joyce when he was Minister of Economic Development.

Joyce’s influence in National and business

Steven Joyce has become a useful nexus between National and the business community, which means he is able to help advise on policy for the party that bolsters their credibility with captains of industry.

It helps that Joyce is still very close to many in National. Chris Bishop, for example, has always been a close ally of Joyce, starting as an adviser for Joyce when he was a Cabinet Minister. Now a senior member of the National caucus, Bishop is chairing National’s election campaign.

Joyce used to run National’s campaigns, and his right-hand person was another former Beehive adviser Jo de Joux, who was his campaign manager. She is now a lobbyist, but has come back to run the party’s campaign in 2023, and is said to still be very close to Joyce.

As well as giving “lobbying advice” to Waikato University, Joyce is now on the University’s Management School Business Advisory Board. Of course, this is also useful and unsurprising given he’s a former Minister for tertiary education. He also writes regularly for the media about tertiary education policy, adding to his influence in this area.

As well as becoming a director of the Winton property company, Joyce has joined other company boards – Icehouse Ventures (a venture capital fund manager), Hammerforce (a technology and IP company), and RCP (a property and construction project management consultancy).

Time for more scrutiny of National-Business relationships

The roles played by these businesses or individuals advising National are to be expected in a liberal capitalist democracy. And individuals such as Steven Joyce or National’s business donors should be allowed to pursue the agendas of their companies and political parties.

However, it is imperative that these relationships are heavily scrutinised. At the moment much of the election campaign is lightweight and hollowed out. More focus on the influences behind the policies and those who are set to benefit from them would be beneficial to public debate and an informed electorate.

This is especially the case for National, which looks almost certain to lead the next government. Matthew Hooton is well-placed to comment on some of this, having experience as a lobbyist as well as a National Party spin-doctor and insider. He wrote yesterday in his regular email newsletter on politics that “National promises a ‘full economic plan’ in the next day or so. It will likely consist of another set of random bullet points gathered together from lobbyists and industry associations, similar to the ‘business growth agenda’ brochures of the Key years.”

If National’s policies are being created by or with the help of vested interests, then the public would be advantaged by knowing about these details. Leaving this until after the election might be too late.

Political Roundup: Luxon’s “New National”

Back in the 1990s, Tony Blair rebranded The British Labour Party as “New Labour”, to try and draw a line under past failures. It’s as if Christopher Luxon is attempting to follow suit, and launch “New National” at the moment – a party that’s fresh-looking, has made some big breaks from the past, but is still recognisably conservative.

The National Party’s weekend conference – the first with Luxon as leader – was relatively successful in breaking with the past and modernising. But there were still plenty of recycled policies on show.

A successful, boring conference

There was nothing particularly interesting on show at National’s 2022 annual conference, but in a sense this is what the National Party wanted from the event – especially after a turbulent few years of extremely interesting and divisive conferences and caucuses.

National Party activist Liam Hehir put this well today, celebrating the fact that “No bold or exciting policies were announced”, explaining that “An exciting or even interesting conference is not something a political party should generally wish for. When a party’s annual meeting gets interesting the result is usually something of a disaster.” He points to the recent Green Party AGM, in which co-leader James Shaw was rolled, as an example of what should be avoided.

Other political journalists and commentators are in consensus that the fact that the conference went off without a hitch made it a success, and as a result National is looking the best it has for years. Political journalist Richard Harman went to the conference and noted that “National has come a long way in 12 months. It hasn’t seen such a cohesive and positive party conference since probably 2016.”

Harman also drew attention to the record 700 delegates at the conference and suggested that they left the weekend buoyed by a new unity and purpose: “you could almost hear their sighs of relief. After four years of turmoil over the leadership of the Caucus and the party organisation, National was finally able to present a settled face to the world.”

Similarly, the Herald’s Thomas Coughlan commented on the unity surrounding the new leader: “For the first time in years, National party faithful leave their annual conference assured their current leader will probably take them to the election. Luxon has clearly stamped his name on the party. Members might not always agree with him, but there seems to be a near-unanimous belief that he has a good chance of winning the 2023 election so they might as well get behind him until polling day at least.”

Coughlan also says that although he didn’t witness any Jacindamania-level enthusiasm for Luxon, the overall mood was positive, with higher levels of energy than usual.

Modernisation of the National Party

Party leaders are determined to show that National is under new management, and so new branding and slogans have been launched which reinforce this. The darker blue that Judith Collins used while leader has been replaced by a more subtle and traditional look.

RNZ political editor Jane Patterson comments: “The magenta wash shot through the true-blue National branding is one way Christopher Luxon is making his mark as party leader”. Likewise, Stuff political editor Luke Malpass says the “branding has changed, with a subtle bit of purple now in the mix, gently dialling down the very definite blue livery.” And Coughlan suggests a return to the past: “a light magenta that bleeds into deep blue. It’s a little closer to the lighter, brighter colour scheme of the Key years”.

The slogan of “Taking New Zealand Forward” might at first appear extremely bland and anodyne. But it’s something of a dog-whistle, making use of the word “New Zealand” to contrast with parties such as Labour and the Greens that have replaced or complemented that word with “Aotearoa”. A critique of attempts to change the country’s name is hinted at with this slogan, without launching a full “culture war” that might alienate potential voters. It speaks to a more careful approach under Luxon, compared to Collins’ time as leader.

Luxon is seeking to take on what some National voters see as Labour’s “woke” agenda, while also positioning the party as modern and liberal. In his keynote speech he was careful to talk about the Treaty and multiculturalism in a positive way but, on the other hand, promise “one standard of democracy, equal voting rights and no co-governance of public services.”

National and Luxon also made it clear in the weekend that the party was prioritising the need for diversity in the party. Harman reported: “A clear message seems to be circulating through the party ranks that more diversity is wanted, and there was a notable number of Indians, Chinese, Pasifika and even Maori at the conference.”

Getting rid of party president Peter Goodfellow was related to this, with insiders saying Luxon forced him to step down. In his place, is new party president Sylvia Wood – described by Harman as “a mild-mannered employment relations consultant”.

Harman suggests Luxon is responsible for much of the old guard in the party organisation also being pushed aside: “He seems to have now got the party organisation onside, in part because there has been a near-total cleanout at the party’s Pipitea Street headquarters.” Important new functionaries include William Durning as general manager, and Jo de Joux as campaign manager.

Luxon’s new welfare policy

Luxon’s keynote speech to the party conference was generally seen as doing the necessary rebranding, and gained good media coverage. He resurrected a traditional National policy, on a welfare issue that will resonate with many – youth on the unemployment benefit long-term at a time of severe labour shortages.

More conservative voters will appreciate the benefit-bashing element of the policy, and it’s very much a recycling of traditional true-blue values. And the fact that Luxon has launched the policy during a time of low unemployment will certainly bring condemnation from the left and opponents. And it’s hard to see how this is one of the biggest problems in the country at the moment.

From Luxon’s point of view, the number of 18-24 year olds on the Jobseeker benefit has increased significantly in Labour’s time in government, and so he’s providing a solution to a mystery problem. Others will suggest that this is actually a result of the Covid pandemic, and to focus specifically on this group as being to blame is to scapegoat them.

Leftwing commentator Gordon Campbell explains today: “It appears to have escaped National’s attention that the pandemic has demolished a lot of jobs in sectors – hospitality, tourism – that have traditionally hired lots of 18-24 year olds, even if only on the minimum wage and/or in part-time jobs that offer no career prospects. Currently, the recovery in those sectors remains tentative at best.”

Campbell suggests that Luxon’s weaponisation of moral concern about this group is “loathsome”, and many will agree. But it also has to be acknowledged that Luxon’s so-called “carrot and stick” approach is significantly more carrot than stick at the moment. This will make the policy much more attractive to many who voted Labour in 2020.

Under this policy, National would give more resources to help the long-term unemployed in this age group to find employment – in particular by paying for a “job coach” and individualised plan to help them into the work force. And once in a job for 12 months, these former Job Seekers get a $1000 incentive payment.

Luxon is selling this as a continuation of Bill English’s “social investment” approach, and therefore as a type of “compassionate conservativism”. Of course, there are many questions about the practicalities of the scheme. And it’s likely that there really isn’t any ability for a National government to truly sanction beneficiaries by taking away their benefits. Such a sanction causes more problems than National would be solving. And this is probably why Luxon failed to give any real details on this element of the policy.

Is National becoming the “nasty party”?

Critics will be keen to paint National as playing to their base, and being out of touch with ordinary voters – in effect shifting further to the right. And yet there were interesting elements in the weekend that contradict this.

For example, although Luxon is focusing much of his rhetoric on “Labour government wastage”, his party continues to talk about the things they will spend more on. For example, Gerry Brownlee was reported as arguing for more spending on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

In the big-spending area of health, National is also promising to spend more. Luxon had problems during the week with his confused position on whether the party would inflation-protect spending. But he ended up recommitting to spending billions more. And during the weekend, the party’s health spokesperson Shane Reti spoke about how the country’s health crisis meant that considerably more would need to be spent on health professionals.

Other parts of the welfare state might also be significantly bolstered by a National Government – especially in terms of early childhood education. Richard Harman reports: “delegates enthusiastically approved a remit calling for 20 hours of free Early Childhood Education hours for pre-schoolers.”

Despite some of these policies showing that National might not be the austere party of radical right that some critics want to believe that it is, there are still some policies that are starting to make National more distinctive under Luxon’s leadership. As political journalist Sam Sachdeva says today about National’s shifts: “It could be the start of an election campaign fought on sharp ideological contrasts”.

Similarly, Luke Malpass says National’s critiques of Labour are becoming clearer and stronger, and this is “setting the stage for the most sharply ideological election in a very long time. On many issues there are sharp differences: over tax, how centralised public services should be (three waters, health, polytechnics), immigration.”

Many of National’s policies seem under-developed, and it’s not clear how they will be paid for. But at the very least, the public should appreciate that with Luxon’s “New National” we are finally being offered a better contest of ideas than we’ve had for a long time.

Further reading on the National Party

Kirsty Johnston (Stuff): National MP Sam Uffindell ‘asked to leave’ prestigious King’s College after violent nighttime attack on younger boy
Herald: National MP Sam Uffindell asked to leave King’s College after violent attack on younger boy – report
Luke Malpass (Stuff): What we learnt from National’s first Christopher Luxon party conference
Liam Hehir (Spinoff): A deathly dull conference that National will be delighted with
Chris Trotter (Interest): Work, work, work
Thomas Coughlan (Herald): National’s feel-good moment as Christopher Luxon stamps name on party (paywalled)
Richard Harman: National breathes a sigh of relief (paywalled)
Luke Malpass (Stuff): Hundreds of National Party stalwarts gather for first annual conference with Luxon as leader
Sam Sachdeva (Newsroom): National back to basics, but Luxon questions remain
Luke Malpass (Stuff): National Party sees a chance but not a slam dunk just yet
Gordon Campbell: On National’s plan to privatise welfare delivery
Sam Sachdeva (Newsroom): Luxon seeks to move past National’s mistakes
Matthew Hooton (Herald): Peak Christopher Luxon now firmly in the past (paywalled)
Shane Te Pou (Herald): It’s increasingly evident National’s Christopher Luxon is not up to the job (paywalled)
Peter Dunne (Newsroom): Political perception is all and National can ill-afford to be associated with ‘dirty tricks’
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/political-perception-is-all-and-national-can-ill-afford-to-be-associated-with-dirty-tricks
Kerre Woodham (Newstalk): Some positivity in Nat’s youth unemployment policy
Mike Hosking (Newstalk): The political choices are becoming clearer, let’s see who wins
Thomas Coughlan (Herald): National leader Chris Luxon on unemployment and delivery
Jane Patterson (RNZ): National lays out plan for those on welfare longer than a year
Luke Malpass (Stuff): Christopher Luxon uses conference speech to promise end to ‘free ride’ for young beneficiaries
Martyn Bradbury (Daily Blog): Why this years National Conference seems so desperate
Thomas Coughlan (Herald): National touches base, recognises need for change
Thomas Coughlan (Herald): National to announce social investment policy on second day of party conference
Andrea Vance (Stuff): In Christopher Luxon, National has nothing to smile about
Brent Edwards (NBR): National’s plan to get more young people into work (paywalled)
Thomas Coughlan (Herald): National Party flocks to Christchurch for Christopher Luxon’s leadership test with members
Rachel Sadler (Newshub): National’s new welfare policy ‘completely out of touch’, shows ‘depressingly familiar side’, opposing politicians say
Rachel Sadler (Newshub): Christopher Luxon threatens ‘consequences’, ‘sanctions’ for young beneficiaries who don’t want to work
Herald: National Party grandees gather in Christchurch for Party Conference
William Hewett (Newshub): Fired-up Chris Bishop slams ‘useless, incompetent’ Labour, says National fully backs Christopher Luxon
Craig McCulloch (RNZ): ‘I’ve seen it all’: Peter Goodfellow looks back at 50 years as National member
Amelia Wade (Newshub): National’s promise of tax cuts raises questions over how it would afford them
Martyn Bradbury (Daily Blog): National Party Conference: Luxon doubles down on bashing beneficiaries by unveiling welfare privatisation agenda
Luke Malpass (Stuff): Sylvia Wood elected as new National Party president, spells out party recipe for 2023 general election
RNZ: National Party elects Sylvia Wood as new president
Newshub: Full speech: Christopher Luxon reveals the NZ he wants at National Party’s annual conference
Jane Patterson (RNZ): Christopher Luxon tries to win over his own party
Steve Braunias (Herald): The secret diary of Christopher Luxon (paywalled)
Kelvin McDonald (Māori TV): National to ‘break cycle’ and shift young people off welfare into work
Justin Hu (1News): Luxon targets youth ‘benefit dependency’ in new policy
Herald: On the Tiles: Big talking points of the National Party Conference 2022
John MacDonald (Herald): Two commentators, one message – Luxon is struggling
Thomas Coughlan (Herald): Christopher Luxon passes Wellington milestone, getting a Backbencher puppet

Other items of interest and importance today

PARLIAMENT AND GOVERNMENT
1News: Poll: ACT jumps and can form Govt with National, Ardern and Luxon slip
Henry Cooke (The Guardian): Can Jacinda Ardern turn her popularity abroad into domestic success before it’s too late?
David Farrar: The rise and fall of Jacinda Ardern
Graham Adams (The Platform): Ardern’s train-wreck Q&A interview
Ben Thomas (Stuff): Was what seemed like Ardern’s vision really just a dream?
Brent Edwards (NBR): Government’s reform agenda faltering as it still deals with Covid (paywalled)
Thomas Manch (Stuff): Labour’s majority to end: How Parliament could change at the 2023 election
Tracy Watkins (Stuff): A bad week for the National leader, a worse week for the Government
Michael Bassett: Jacinda’s mind
Oscar Jackson (Today FM): James Shaw ‘quietly confident’ he will win Green Party leadership back
Glenn McConnell (Stuff): No one stands against James Shaw for Green Party co-leader
Rachel Sadler (Newshub): James Shaw the only nomination received for vacant Green Party co-leader spot
RNZ: James Shaw only contender as Green co-leader nominations close
Hayley Jacobsen (Today FM): Green Party co-leadership election looks like a ‘shaw’ thing for James Shaw
James Perry (Māori TV): Te Pāti Māori getting cut through across the spectrum – Shane Te Pou

POLITICAL DONATIONS LAW AND HIGH COURT DONATIONS TRIALS
David Farrar: A terrible electoral law decision
Catrin Owen (Stuff): Jami-Lee Ross tells police he smelled ‘political danger’ so recorded Simon Bridges
Craig Kapitan (Herald): Labour and National donations trial: Andrew Little called to witness stand
Amy Williams (RNZ): Labour’s Andrew Little tells court he was distanced from donations in ‘sham donors’ trial
Catrin Owen (Stuff): Labour MP Michael Wood rang political donations trial defendants over paintings
Craig Kapitan (Herald): Labour and National donations trial: Andrew Little called to witness stand
Catrin Owen (Stuff): PM’s chief press secretary spoke to defendant in political donations trial
Craig Kapitan (Herald): Labour and National donations trial: Minister Michael Wood testifies
Logan Savory (Stuff): Southland Mayor Gary Tong to give evidence in political donations trial
Catrin Owen (Stuff): Political donations trial, week 2: MPs quizzed on involvement in ‘sham’ auction
Mike Smith (The Standard): Why stick more fingers in the donations dyke?
Greg Presland (The Standard): Political donations law needs reform
No Right Turn: A new standard for BORA consistency?

COST OF LIVING AND PAYMENTS
Heather du Plessis-Allan (Herald): Labour’s cost of living stuff-ups (paywalled)
Hayden Donnell (RNZ): A government in the gun over accidental generosity
Michael Neilson (Herald): Cost of living payment: PM Jacinda Ardern distances herself from campaign email
ODT: Editorial – Politics and the $350 payout
Brad Lewis (Today FM): Christopher Luxon slams Labour Government, describes party as political version of The Office
Tom Pullar-Strecker (Stuff): Cost of Living Payment paid to people on working holidays who have left NZ
Thomas Coughlan (Herald): Government admits cost-of-living payment went to dead people
RNZ: Christchurch City Mission receives cost of living payment donations
Liam Dann (Herald): Strong wage growth good news for workers – a headache for Reserve Bank (paywalled)

ECONOMY, INEQUALITY, AND IMMIGRATION
Susan St John (Newsroom): Poverty is not a partisan issue
Rebecca Macfie (Newsroom): Big wage rises: ‘It’s our turn now’
1News: Flat broke: New Zealand’s students struggle to survive
The Standard: Poverty is a political choice, why are Labour choosing it?
Demelza Jackson (Herald): Talent tug of war: Fears NZ lost out after immigration site glitch
Janet Wilson (Stuff): Immigrants framed as a problem rather than a potential solution
Steven Joyce (Herald): Hiding the welcome mat is making NZ poorer (paywalled)
Duncan Garner (NBR): Welcome to the hospo party (paywalled)
Jean Bell (RNZ): Firefighters’ smouldering anger erupts
Brian Easton (Pundit): Fighting past inflation battles

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
1News: John Key: Pelosi’s Taiwan trip ‘reckless, provocative and dangerous’
RNZ: Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan labelled ‘reckless’ by Sir John Key
Michael Neilson (Herald): US, China and Taiwan visit: PM Jacinda Ardern says ‘positive dialogue’ needed
Anna Fifield (Stuff): We must stand up for our values, we must stand up for Taiwan
Christine Rovoi (Stuff): NZ urged to ‘tread carefully’ with Pacific family over US-China crisis
Thomas Manch (Stuff): Mahuta to meet Chinese counterpart amid rising Taiwan tensions
Fran O’Sullivan (Herald): Nancy Pelosi’s poke at the panda out of order (paywalled)
Thomas Coughlan (Herald): Phil Twyford heads to New York with a goal of getting US and Russia to put down their bombs (paywalled)
Tova O’Brien (Today FM): At what point does NZ stop facilitating Russia’s backwards and brutal regime?
Tom Peters (World socialist website): New Zealand government nervous about US-China confrontation

LOCAL GOVERNMENT
Tina Law (Stuff): Class of 2019: Last three years difficult ones for the Christchurch City Council
RNZ: Shortage of council candidates in many areas ahead of elections
John Lewis (ODT): Candidate shortage for local elections
Michael Barnett (Stuff): We want our next Mayor to be an actionist, not an activist on a soap box spouting piffle
1News: What should happen to Auckland’s port? Mayoral candidates weigh in
Tina Law (Stuff): Time is running out for council candidates to put their names forward
Lincoln Tan (Herald): ‘Auckland at tipping point on crime and safety’: Mayoral candidates’ plans on law and order (paywalled)
Jonathan Leask (Local Democracy Reporting): Ashburton has a mayoral race
Whanganui Chronicle: One week left for those wanting to stand as candidates in local elections
RNZ: Chief ombudsman to investigate councils over concerns on closed door meetings
Mark Jennings (Newsroom): Leo Molloy loses another advisor
Damien Venuto (Herald): Auckland mayoralty: The Front Page – how dirty will election get?
Jess Berentson-Shaw (Newsroom): Away from ‘roads, rates and rubbish’ – love local (government)

What exactly is plaguing the National Party? And would another leadership change help? These are the big and enduring questions that have surrounded the opposition party since they lost power in 2017.

For the best answers to these questions, it’s well worth reading the latest piece by Matthew Hooton in the re-launched Metro magazine, which has just put his column online – see: The National Party death spiral.

The short answer, in this excellent column that covers much ground about the state of the National Party, is that Labour has stolen the conservative party’s identity by governing like a National Government. Hooton asks: “with first Clark and now Ardern having aped National’s traditional governing style, what’s a poor conservative party to do?” The argument is that middle New Zealand, and even rightwing voters, are actually quite well catered for by Jacinda Ardern and Grant Robertson’s moderate and conservative style, leaving National without any great reason to exist.

There’s more to it than that – Hooton’s column also focuses on the demise of National as a mass-membership party with organic roots in society. He says that Steven Joyce’s restructuring of the party in the early 2000s helped push National into functioning more like a corporate entity. As a result, its traditional strength of being democratically embedded in the community was lost.

This made the party more vulnerable to capture by out-of-touch elites, including the “Christian evangelical” or Trump kind. In Hooton’s view, National has lost the strength of its traditional “coalition of liberals and conservatives, of John Keys and Bill Englishes.”

This is similar to the argument made this week in the Herald by political scientist Jennifer Curtin in a review of Simon Bridges’ new book – see: The National Party’s identity crisis (paywalled). Curtin suggests that the publication illustrates how, although Bridges himself nicely encapsulates the liberal-conservative hybrid, his own party is struggling to unite these ideological tendencies.

Here’s one of Curtin’s key points in the review: “Bridges’ confessions suggest National’s identity as a consensus-based, responsive and unified party may be at risk and, if so, this presents two challenges. The first is what political commentator Colin James refers to as National’s continuous need to keep the liberal and conservative tendencies in balance. The leadership of Key and Bill English provided a moderate and durable balance that appealed to a significant proportion of voters, both men and women, and from a wide range of age groups.”

The second challenge, Curtin says, is that “major parties need political leaders whose ‘brand’ reaches across demographics and regions, and supports the re-election of candidates in marginal electorates while also boosting the party vote. Alongside this, leaders must be able to build relationships with smaller parties that are needed to form a government.”

There is also an ideological aspect to National’s current existential crisis. It’s hard to know what National stands for any more. For example, on the key political issue of the economy – an area that National has traditionally been viewed as strong on – the party is now rather confused and unclear. The Herald’s Thomas Coughlan has recently written about this, saying that National no longer even focuses on this key issue – see: National has forgotten the economy, it needs to remember (paywalled).

Coughlan argues that National “must both make the case for why Labour isn’t running the economy properly and then make the case for why they’d do it better. So far, National hasn’t made strong arguments in for either.”

The problem, Coughlan explains, is that rightwing parties around the world are grappling with a whole new macroeconomic environment in which governments are expected to have large deficit spending. He points out that the new consensus of big spending is even shared by the global ratings agencies. So, what does National do? Coughlan says they may have to go down the same path as rightwing parties elsewhere (Britain; Australia) and become big spending nation builders.

Yet more rumours of a leadership coup

With the publication of Bridges’ new book, there’s been some suggestion that the former party leader wants his old job back, and is organising the numbers in caucus to roll Judith Collins. The plausibility of such a leadership change has been bolstered by continued caucus division and ill-discipline, along with some controversial performances by Collins over the last fortnight.

The rumours of a leadership change heated up over the weekend. Herald political columnist Shane Te Pou, who is seen to be closely aligned to the Labour Party, published a number of tweets on Saturday: “Nat MPs doing the numbers folks the spill is on”; saying deputy leader Shane Reti had “turned against his leader”, and that “The deal is he goes as deputy but keeps health”. Te Pou also claimed that Chris Bishop was being given the finance portfolio and being made Shadow Leader of the House again. And he later tweeted: “you just wait… you won’t have to wait long”.

Te Pou’s tweets, and Collins’ reaction, can be found in Dan Satherley’s story for Newshub: Judith Collins blames latest leadership spill rumours on Labour ‘activists’.

A fellow communications advisor, David Cormack, also tweeted on Saturday that a coup was happening, and he claimed that a number of National MPs had informed him of this. He has since written: “This time I’m still fairly sure it is happening, just in slow motion. It seems Bridges is running the numbers.”

On Saturday the Herald published two influential analysis pieces which also conveyed that a leadership change is on its way. First, political editor Claire Trevett explained that Collins is running out of time, and the caucus might soon want to replace her with Bridges – see: Has Delta sped up the clock on Judith Collins’ leadership and what it will take for Simon Bridges to roll her (paywalled).

According to Trevett, Collins has recently displayed fatally low levels of political judgment – in reshuffling her caucus during a crisis (and creating internal enemies), fighting against the establishment of a virtual Parliament, and then a combative interview on TVNZ’s Breakfast. Trevett says these missteps have “turned vague mutterings about a leadership coup into something a little more serious.”

On top of this is continued poor polling: “They need someone who can get them back to at least the mid-30s and they need that someone before 2023. Collins has had 18 months and while Labour has fallen, National has not risen.”

In terms of polling, this is what Trevett says is likely to trigger a leadership change: “If National gets around 25 or 26 per cent in the next round of polls, MPs are muttering about whether it will spell the end of her leadership – even as soon as October. That will particularly be the case if Act continues to rise – and nudges toward the 20 per cent mark.”

Trevett says that Bridges is the only candidate to replace Collins, and he is especially viable if he can get the backing of the liberal faction led by the disgruntled Chris Bishop: “Not everybody will think Bridges is the best choice, but he may be the only Not Collins choice. Bridges could probably get the numbers he needed now; many of his old supporters are still in caucus. But he will not want to move unless he can get almost all MPs, bar Collins’ rusted-on supporters, to back the change. That will partly depend on the liberal wing – MPs such as Chris Bishop, Nicola Willis and Erica Stanford. The first two engineered his downfall in 2020. But political desperation can trump old grievances. In that respect, Collins may have done more to help secure Bridges his numbers than Bridges has done himself. Her reshuffle saw Bishop stripped of his treasured position of Shadow Leader of the House – a key strategic position.”

But does Bridges really want the job? And is he capable of winning public support? This is what Trevett says: “There also still remains the question whether he can convince the wider public he is the man for the job. That’s what he’s been beavering away at for the last 18 months, a one-man humanising mission on social media, the television shows, the book. Do not believe his schtick about his new book being ‘too honest’ to be a pitch for another go at the leadership.”

Fellow Herald journalist Fran O’Sullivan also wrote on Saturday about Collins losing her grip on the leadership position, saying that her “bombastic flailing about is just simply absurd” – see: Judith Collins is flailing closer to politics’ death zone (paywalled).

Like Trevett, O’Sullivan points to Collins’ recent ill-judged performances, but also suggests that she’s been overly authoritarian in her caucus management: “she is proving remarkably small-minded when it comes to practising free and open discussions within her own caucus, holding MPs to a ridiculously strong whip. Stripping Bishop of his shadow Leader of the House position simply looked vindictive. His sin was not to toe the party line when the caucus decided to vote against a ban on conversion therapy — something he injudiciously railed against in a conversation that later leaked.”

The argument is also made that Collins has allowed National to lose its liberal support: “The polls show that National’s support skews toward males. Collins herself polarises and does not attract a strong female vote. The leadership of the party is perceived as being increasingly out of touch with its liberal and youth wings.”

In terms of Collins’ likely replacement, O’Sullivan is less clear. She says that Christopher Luxon is not ready to lead. But she draws attention to the leadership potential of the two liberal National MPs Nicola Willis and Erica Stanford, and she suggests that the latter might be a good running partner for Bridges.

It’s the tension between the conservative and liberal factions that is producing problems for Collins and caucus harmony. The extent of the disunity in the National caucus has also been highlighted by Thomas Coughlan, who wrote recently about the severe tensions and aggression apparently playing out in the MPs’ meetings – see: Knives out in National, as caucus struggles to show unity despite obvious division (paywalled).

The big issue creating ongoing friction is National’s orientation to the vote against a ban on conversion therapy, with liberal MPs like Bishop, Willis and Stanford being unhappy about being forced to vote against the bill, which spilt over into the public eye during the recent annual party conference.

Coughlan reports on how Collins has recently reacted to their obvious unhappiness: “One source told the Herald that Collins ‘completely lost it’ at Bishop. Another source described her tirade as ‘f***ing ballistic’. It was said to be the most tense caucus meeting of Collins’ reign. Stanford was allegedly given an unsparing dressing down for being upset over the way the vote played out.”

This descent into division and ineffectiveness is something of a tragedy according to a recent Otago Daily Times editorial, which argues that the Opposition is “squandering its political legacy, and offering little to suggest National is a government in waiting. Politics is the poorer for that” – see: Gloom continues to hang over National.

Here’s the newspaper’s main point about the need for a strong Opposition: “Ultimately those who suffer the most from the ongoing implosion of the National Party, apart from its long-suffering loyalists, are the New Zealand public. The parliamentary system is predicated on the Opposition placing the governing party’s policies and actions under robust scrutiny, and in a country where the courts cannot strike down unconstitutional laws an effective opposition party is all the more important. To ensure good governance New Zealand needs alternative points of view, different and differing voices, and detailed analysis of policy.”

Finally, for recent satire about National’s leadership, see Victor Billot’s An ode for Judith Collins and Steve Braunias’ The Secret Diary of The Collins Gang (paywalled).

Running alongside Judith Collins’ “Demand the Debate” campaign in public is something of a “Demand Reform” mood within her party. There will be heightened demands for change to be made to the top of the party this weekend, when National branch delegates convene for their Annual General Meeting. The conference looks likely to be a significant one.

Collins’ own leadership is not on the line. Instead, the party organisational leadership and rules are set to be shaken up. There is widespread speculation that party president Peter Goodfellow will be ditched.

The mood for change in the party is explained today by Thomas Coughlan in his article, Judith Collins promises change at National conference (paywalled). In this, Collins is reported as front-footing the mood of members wanting a shakeup, apparently promising to “guarantee some significant changes to her party”.

Delegates to the conference will be voting on changes to the rules that govern the party. In particular, they’ll be changing the rules of the board who run it. For instance, they will be considering whether term limits should apply to all board members.

Coughlan reports on how party members will influence change at the conference: “Elections to the board are important. For delegates at the AGM, it is the only opportunity they get to have a say over who runs their party. Delegates at the conference don’t have a direct say over who is elected President. That role is elected by the board. But board elections, which delegates do have a vote in, are a way for the party’s members to send a message to the party about how they feel about its direction.”

Changes to the National Party board membership

Changes to the party organisational leadership are also occurring, according to Coughlan: “The board is getting the message that it might also be unpopular. The swathe of people choosing not to seek re-election is understood to reflect the popularity among party members of a rule change to introduce term limits for board members. Rather than face being voted down, those members are choosing to leave quietly.”

A clear-out of the old guard is expected by many commentators. Former National staffer Matthew Hooton says today: “This weekend’s expected purge of the party’s board should satisfy National activists’ immediate bloodlust and send the necessary message to voters that they accept last year’s verdict” – see: For Judith Collins, biggest danger is success (paywalled).

For details of who the ten candidates for the board are, see the brief profiles by David Farrar: National Party Board candidates.

National Party President to be toppled?

National Party members don’t get to vote for the party president – who is actually chosen by the board members. However, the membership delegates have the opportunity this weekend to vote for board members who they think will help push out the current president, Peter Goodfellow.

This explains why Coughlan singles out John Sunckell and Aryana Nafissi as being likely to be elected as new board members, as they would “most likely attempt to topple Goodfellow if they won election.” Other candidates for the board will be quizzed on whether they will help to depose Goodfellow.

On the question of whether Goodfellow should go, Coughlan says this: “It’s not clear whether Goodfellow privately retains Collins’ support. Some say it would be wise to keep him on to steady the ship while the party is in disarray. Others argue he’s totemic of the party’s recent issues: privileged, and detached from the day-to-day issues of New Zealanders.”

The rising discontent about Goodfellow’s presidency was also detailed in my earlier June column, Low standards in the National Party.

For a sense of why the party president is still being blamed for National’s current woes, see Henry Cooke’s National Party president could lose job as ‘frustrated’ members head to conference.

Cooke explains that while there might be discontent with Collins and her caucus,  “far more anger is currently directed at the party’s out-of-Parliament executive, particularly Goodfellow. He is widely seen as an excellent fundraiser, but his involvement with the all-important selection processes for National candidates has brought serious criticism.”

Former Speaker of the House David Carter is currently on the National Party board, and is seen as the likely new president. Cooke reports that “Carter was coy when speaking to Stuff, saying more than 100 members had rung him asking him to take the job”. He is reported as saying: “I’m going to keep an open mind. I’m prepared to consider it – it’s a decision of the board”. Carter then goes on to criticise Goodfellow’s involvement in local electorate candidate selection.

However, Cooke also reports: “Party member and political commentator Liam Hehir said he thought Goodfellow would keep his job, noting Goodfellow’s strength as a fundraiser.”

RNZ’s political editor Jane Patterson reports today that Goodfellow has replied to questions on whether he’s heard whispers of a challenge, saying: “I’m not hearing whispers, I’m having people tell me directly that there are a small number of people [who want me gone]” – see: Pressure at the top – National’s annual conference.

Patterson explains the decision-making sequence that will occur at the conference this weekend: “First there will be a vote on party rule changes; that outcome will dictate in part what the new board looks like, and in turn what support remains for Goodfellow.”

A long-time National Party conference attendee, Richard Harman, is picking Goodfellow to go, saying last week that his toppling is “highly likely to happen” and he explains that Goodfellow has become something of a lightning rod for discontent at the grassroots – see: Nats look to change president (paywalled).

Harman says the surprise departure of one of Goodfellow’s allies on the board is not a good sign for the president: “He got a clear signal last week when longtime Auckland board member Alastair Bell who was also selected in 2009, pulled out of the race. Bell has been a supporter of Goodfellow. His withdrawal is being seen as an indication that the mood of the membership is for change.”

Judith Collins’ leadership safe from debate

There have been many negative appraisals of Judith Collins leadership lately – especially when her one-year anniversary came up. See, for example, Luke Malpass’ Judith Collins: One year as National Party leader and nothing to show for it, Simon Wilson’s Judith Collins’ leadership is 1 year old and it’s time her party grows up (paywalled), and Tim Murphy’s One year on, what has Judith Collins achieved?.

And, of course, recent polling has shown that the public are not very enthusiastic either. The Newshub Reid Research poll out on Sunday saw her “preferred prime minister” rating up a few points, but well behind her rival on the right – see Tova O’Brien’s Act’s David Seymour overtakes National’s Judith Collins as preferred Prime Minister in Newshub-Reid Research Poll.

However, despite this, commentators seem united in their view that Collins’ leadership is safe for now. In her column on the conference, Jane Patterson says: “She’ll be as aware as anyone the caucus is biding its time, but there’s no immediate risk of her being rolled. It’s an unpredictable business though and political polls are always high on MPs’ minds; one said any dip below 25 percent could put her into the danger zone.”

Matthew Hooton’s column today focuses on this point. He argues that Collins is safe at the moment, but that, ironically, once her party’s poll ratings go up she will be likely to see a leadership challenge – probably by Christopher Luxon together with Nicola Willis: “Collins risks the same fate as poor old David Shearer. Only when Labour went up in the polls in 2013 and seemed to have a chance of ousting National and Key did David Cunliffe and his supporters finally make their move.”

Debate on National’s direction

It’s not clear how much internal debate will occur at this week’s conference about the policy and ideological direction of National. Newsroom political editor Jo Moir reports today that some activists are unhappy that they can’t challenge the party’s “Demand the Debate” campaign – see: Demand, but no debate, at National AGM.

She reports that party member Terry Dunleavy “wants to have a serious debate about the issues his party has been focused on in recent months”, and he specifies what he has a problem with: “Two issues that need addressing is the He Puapua nonsense, and the Treaty of Waitangi being a partnership nonsense”. However, the configurations of the AGM process mean it’s too late for policy remits and debates about these.

Henry Cooke reports in his column (cited above) that there’s some discontent with the “culture wars” orientation of the National leadership, and he reports one delegate’s dissenting view: “The delegate said she was keen to see the National leadership stop focusing on culture war issues – as it did this week with a suggestion of a referendum on the name ‘Aotearoa’.”

The NBR’s Brent Edwards interviewed Collins this week about the upcoming conference, and also put to her questions about whether in her focus on issues like the name Aotearoa she was being distracted from the “issues of substance” that she claims to be most concerned about – see: How does National win back supporters who deserted it? (paywalled).

Edwards reports that Collins’ conference speech on Sunday “would focus on the future for New Zealand. It would canvas the economy and healthcare, both areas where National thought there had been a significant government failure.

There will also be a major debate at the conference about whether to embed the Treaty of Waitangi within the party’s constitution. According to the party, “The Campaign Review recommended the addition of Te Tiriti o Waitangi or The Treaty into the Constitution to show National’s commitment to Māori”.

Finally, for satire on National’s “Demand the Debate” campaign, see Andrew Gunn’s Our campaign of relentless pessimism is working well.

At the end of another tumultuous week for National, two former senior staffers for Judith Collins have spoken out in savage terms about the state of the party. First Matthew Hooton argued that the party could be in mortal decline: “National has been in intensive care. It’s now moving to the hospice.” And today, former chief press secretary Janet Wilson has written a column complaining the party isn’t learning any lessons from its defeat last year, saying “there is a real possibility the National Party faces irrelevance – becoming just another minor opposition party under MMP.”

This all suggests that the party’s difficult scandals of this week aren’t simply random or minor irritations but are instead an indication that the party needs more than just some minor reforms and tinkering if it is to eventually make an electoral comeback.

Yesterday’s column by Matthew Hooton argues that National should be flourishing at the moment, given all the mistakes that the Labour Government is currently making, but is instead facing an “existential risk” because of their incompetence, incoherence and disunity – see: National goes from sickly to looking terminal (paywalled).

He explains that under MMP, the other parties on the right, Act and NZ First, are well positioned to compete for the votes that National is losing hold of: “Winston Peters and NZ First are currently speaking to conservative National voters far more clearly and coherently than anyone in Judith Collins’ mob, while David Seymour and Act are doing the same to liberal National voters.”

A big part of National’s problem, according to Hooton, is the breakdown of the traditional ideological alliance within the party: “National has always been a coalition of liberals and conservatives. It only succeeds when the two factions are in balance and treat one another with professional respect.”

Judith Collins’ former chief press secretary Janet Wilson has argued something similar in a column today: “The party that was once the famous broad church of urban liberals and rural conservatives has lost the former and become the party clinging to old power structures”, and “It had also better find that urban-liberal wing that has fled to Labour. That wing holds the key to the centrists and the supporters which swung across to John Key in 2008” – see: National rejects change, faces irrelevance.

Wilson argues that the party seems resistant to having the major overhaul that it desperate needs, because National is “saddled with endless entitleditis, confidently expecting that the big bus of representation will come around again next election.” So organisationally, the party is refusing to implement various recommendations from their own internal review, which “is proof (if you needed any) that zero, zilch, nada has been learnt from last year’s election drubbing. The change that’s sorely needed if the party is to be successful at the ballot box isn’t arriving any time soon.”

She is also savage about Collins’ leadership this week, saying that not only does the leader appear to have despatched Nick Smith in order to bring Harete Hipango, “her bestie”, into Parliament, she has now got rid of former leader Todd Muller. This, Wilson says, is about continuing “her Muldoonist strategy of getting rid of MPs deemed not loyal to her” which is driven not just by “her need for utter loyalty” but also by “paranoia”. This behaviour – together with Collins’ strong defence this week of Hipango over her alleged misuse of taxpayer funds – is labelled “madness”.

In terms of that scandal, see Ethan Griffiths’ article: National MP who faced allegations of inappropriate spending revealed as Harete Hipango. Here’s the key part: “Sources inside the National Party have told the Chronicle that a staff member of the MP flagged a concern in the last term of Parliament, alleging items of furniture were bought out of the MP’s taxpayer funds but did not appear in the office. The allegations surround a purchase of some furniture, including a new television, which allegedly were delivered and kept in Hipango’s own home. It is also understood the cost of a sofa the MP bought for the office at Parliament was also questioned, and the MP was told to return it.”

Todd Muller’s forced retirement

The biggest story of the week was the unusual announcement by Todd Muller that he was not going to stand again for election in 2023, with him citing a need to prioritise his health and family. It turned out that Muller had been pushed out by Collins, after he admitted to having badmouthed incoming new MP Hipango in a feature about her.

You can read the offending piece by Jo Moir, here: National Party all out of love for returning MP. According to this, “Several National MPs said she wasn’t particularly well-liked in the caucus and didn’t have a lot of friends” and she is seen by some as a “liability and not a team player”.

The article also details how Collins is said to be closest to Hipango, and how together they backed Muller’s leadership coup over Simon Bridges last year “to help clear a leadership path for Collins in the future.”

There’s also some interesting discussion about Hipango’s complaint about the lack of ethnic diversity in the caucus and leadership, but with the suggestion that her own actions actually made this much worse. Further details and speculation about the mysterious departure of Nick Smith are also put forward.

The article obviously caused Collins great displeasure, because on Tuesday she is said to have confronted Muller about whether he had spoken to the journalist, after another National MP Barbara Kuriger dobbed him in. Muller apparently admitted being one of the sources, which led Collins to ask him to resign, threatening that she would otherwise have him suspending from the caucus. This is all covered by Claire Trevett in her article: National MP Todd Muller retires: Who narked and the ‘brutal’ meeting with Judith Collins (paywalled).

Collins then called an emergency caucus meeting for 10pm that night to deal with the matter. This meeting, according to Trevett’s report, “had all the drama of a documentary on wild animals battling at the savannah water hole. Muller tried to hold his ground and stare down Collins – only to be taken down as the pack turned on him. There were allegations, betrayals, acts of revenge and cowards covering their own butts.”

In the meeting Muller’s former ally convinced him to go, apparently arguing that it was “for the good of the party” that he announced his departure “to avoid the added scandal and drama of kicking an MP out of the party, a drama the party did not need.” And Trevett reports that some in the party were worried that Muller would turn rogue, turning on the party.

Trevett suggests that Collins has subsequently had “a triumphal air” about Muller’s forced departure. On radio she explained that “Sometimes you have to break a few eggs to make the omelette”. In response to this, Trevett warns: “The trouble with making omelettes is that they can easily turn into scrambled eggs.”

National disunity and consequences

There are certainly some divisions in caucus over Muller’s forced departure. Following the announcement of his retirement over his speaking to the media, Simon Bridges posted a photo on social media of him talking to journalists, with the line: “Speaking with the press is a normal but important part of being in politics. For me it’s an opportunity to speak not only to journalists, but to all New Zealanders.”

In her article above, Trevett outlines the significance of Bridges’ post: “On any day, it would have been an innocuous post but given the timing some have interpreted it as either a small sign of solidarity with Muller’s plight – or a message that a leader can only go so far in gagging MPs.”

She has also commented that Muller’s crime is hardly that extreme, for which he has paid a very high price: “It seemed a very tough penalty for what amounts to a low-grade offence. It is not unknown for MPs to brief media, or pass an opinion on someone or something on the quiet. But that falls short of a genuine leak. This was not a leak of information, or of confidential caucus discussions, or even comments critical of the leader.” But she explains: “Many of the MPs will be well aware that Muller is simply the fall guy: the one man taking the fall for something a fair few of themselves have done over recent years. Leaks had plagued National for years, and Collins wanted to make an example of someone.”

Trevett has also written about the Muller debacle again today. She argues that Collins has simply front footed the need to finally deal with all the disunity and ill-discipline in her caucus that continues to plague National, especially the leaking: “So when Collins was handed evidence of one, she went for the crackdown – turning her policy of crushing the cars of boy racers into a policy of crushing her own MPs who whisper to media. In terms of making that message clear and being seen to flex leadership muscle, Collins will not be totally unhappy that the real reason for Muller’s resignation has made it into the public eye” – see: National Party leader Judith Collins’ ousting of Todd Muller will have a cost (paywalled).

The problem, according to Trevett, is that although this crackdown might be successful in silencing MPs who are talking out of turn, it might also undermine trust without fixing the actual problems in the party. What’s more, it might be seen by others as somewhat hypocritical: “she was widely regarded by the other MPs as having leaked, briefed media, and undermined leaders. There was already suspicion among many MPs that Collins effectively pushed Nick Smith out by telling him a media outlet was about to broadcast a story about an investigation into a ‘verbal altercation’ Smith had with a staffer. No media outlet had that story at the time.”

Now there is “a climate of fear and disquiet within caucus” and Trevett argues that “There is only so long a caucus can limp along in that state.” Other MPs will also be worried: “There is already speculation doing the rounds about who might be next on Collins’ hit list – Collins does not disguise her views of enemies well.”

Also writing on the issue today, press gallery journalist Henry Cooke is amazed that an MP talking about their party has been so strongly censured: “The thing is, it is normal. Talking to the media is a huge portion of contemporary politics. MPs, particularly ones in Opposition, talk to journalists constantly, trying to get them to write certain stories or convince them to see the world the way they do. Occasionally those conversations will involve frank views about colleagues, especially when the party is in a bit of trouble” – see: The only thing worse than a leak is talking about a leak.

Cooke says that the article “wasn’t exactly earth-shattering” and so it’s telling that “Collins decided to go thermo-nuclear”. He argues that it is actually futile and counterproductive for politicians to deal with “leaks” as strongly as Collins has: “It’s like trying to put out a small bushfire with kerosene: it just gets larger and more dramatic.”

Instead, Cooke advocates the approach that the Labour Government takes with the many leaks that it endures: it simply ignores them, which denies the story further “oxygen”. And, given that further stories have now come out about the disciplining of Muller for talking to the media, he asks of Collins: “Is she now going to hunt down whichever MPs shared the news of the caucus meeting?”

Newsroom’s Jo Moir has the same reaction: “If that is the new bar for resigning, then presumably National is on a witch hunt today for whichever MPs promptly fed the details of the late-night meeting to media. The imagery of National MPs, who happily and regularly talk out of turn to journalists, sat in that meeting with their pitchforks crying ‘Shame, Shame, Shame” at Muller is irony at its absolute best. Not to mention those who left the meeting and immediately hit ‘press gallery’ on their speed dial” – see: National’s two-year ticking time bomb.

Moir says that Muller is possibly now a bigger problem for National than before: “Muller now finds himself in a caucus that has 100 percent turned on him. He may well find a new gig and leave before the 2023 election, prompting a by-election in his seat. Until then, Collins has on the one hand shown her strength as a leader in getting the caucus to unite behind her, but on the other she’s lit a bomb that could potentially go off at any point.”

According to Moir, the latest episode merely shows how divided the National caucus is: “There’s clearly a group of MPs within the caucus who are still feeling very raw about the rolling of former leader Simon Bridges. No party, not even Labour with its majority, could function with one group still so angry with another so long after the fact.” She therefore wonders if the current National caucus is just too terminal: “With so many MPs holding individual agendas in that caucus, it might just take a mass exodus to wipe the slate clean and start again.”

This is also the orientation of broadcaster Peter Williams, who asks: “how can you take these guys seriously? Is it best that they just fade away and let the political right be filled by some more sensible people?” – see: National Party in disarray.

Finally, although the problems of the National Party in recent years have seemed to be all about leadership, perhaps it’s bigger than this, with the need for its leaders to have better cabals around them – that’s the argument recently made by Danyl Mclauchlan – see: What if National’s problem isn’t the leadership, but the cabal?.

The National Party has a major problem with standards, especially amongst its MPs and election candidates. The latest controversies involve the resignation of their longest-serving MP Nick Smith over an employment dispute, and allegations of abhorrent behaviour by election candidate Jake Bezzant.

The party has been beset by a series of scandals in recent times, including revelations that National had to get rid of their sitting MP Jian Yang who exited (alongside Labour’s Raymond Huo) after an intelligence agency briefing. And then, of course, last year the party was embroiled in scandals involving the downfall of MPs Andrew Falloon and Hamish Walker, alongside senior party figure Michelle Boag.

Does this mean the party is toxic? Or is it incompetence? Either way, who is responsible? And can the party clean up its candidate selection process to fix the problem?

Former National staffer Matthew Hooton has written about all this today in a must-read Herald column that argues the party’s current crisis is due to “poor candidate vetting and selection, and a lack of seriousness when allegations emerge, whether of spying, sexual harassment, bullying, fake CVs, poor business practice or just plain old not being up for the job” – see: National’s woes go right to the top (paywalled).

Hooton goes through a list of seven self-inflicted scandals in “four disastrous weeks” leading up to the 2020 election, involving Jian Yang, Hamish Walker, Michelle Boag, Todd Muller, Andrew Falloon, Nick Smith, Jake Bezzant, as well as the botched candidate selection to replace Nikki Kaye in Auckland Central.

Hooton lays the blame for all of this ultimately at the feet of party president Peter Goodfellow. Here’s his conclusion about the disastrous place National is now in: “That speaks to governance, identified as a serious problem in National’s still secret post-election review. Goodfellow has been party president since 2009. He has taken a close interest in all key candidate selections and all long-term strategic decisions, and would be responsible for them even had he not. After 12 years, whatever shape the party is in now is his legacy. In my opinion it is time for him to take responsibility and go, and for the party membership to elect a new board of competent people willing to deal with the current crisis – if they can find any. National will achieve no long-term operational success until its members demand accountability from those they elect to run the party’s affairs.”

The Jake Bezzant scandal

Goodfellow has been singled out as the person who allowed Jake Bezzant to stand for the party last year, despite a number of concerns being voiced about his character – see Jenna Lynch’s story from last night: National Party leadership wanted Jake Bezzant gone, but president Peter Goodfellow shut down concerns.

This story reports: “Newshub understands concerns were raised about Bezzant during last year’s election campaign when questions were swirling around embellishments on his CV. National’s campaign team came to the conclusion he should go.” This is all put to party leader Judith Collins, who directs attention to Goodfellow, saying “I think you’d need to take that back to the party president”.

Much more on this was published yesterday by Politik political journalist Richard Harman, who reports that “National did nothing for nearly 12 months about what they were told was a brewing scandal involving the North Harbour candidate” – see: Due diligence and leaked reports; the challenges of managing politicians (paywalled).

Harman outlines how last year he spoke to a number of Bezzant’s colleagues in a tech company who claimed “Bezzant was a fantasist who had run the company into the ground” and they “also raised questions about his private life”. Harman then put these allegations to the party organisation, which investigated and apparently cleared Bezzant. Harman says: “There the matter rested though there are suggestions that both leader, Judith Collins, and campaign chair Gerry Brownlee, were still concerned that Bezzant could be a liability.”

For Harman, “the whole affair has raised questions about how much due diligence National does when it selects candidates. That has apparently been discussed at some of the party’s regional conferences, with concerns about the Auckland Central selection being highlighted.”

For more on the allegations about Bezzant, see Derek Cheng’s National candidate Jake Bezzant cuts ties with party following explosive claims. Here’s the key part: “National candidate Jake Bezzant has parted ways with the political party following explosive claims that he impersonated his ex-partner online, shared explicit photos and even pretended to be her during cyber sex. Bezzant’s former partner, Tarryn Flintoft, has gone public with the claims in an hour-long podcast shared online this week. Bezzant, who unsuccessfully ran for the Upper Harbour seat last election, told the Herald there is no truth to the accusations. The National Party touted Bezzant as a promising part of its intake of fresh talent in 2019.”

The Nick Smith scandal

Nick Smith announced his resignation on Monday night, citing an employment investigation about him being carried out by Parliamentary Service, which he believed was about to be made public the following day. The media story never eventuated, and the details have been incredibly murky since then.

For the best overall account of what has happened with Smith, it’s well worth reading Jo Moir’s in-depth story published today on Newsroom, which outlines the whole saga – see: The warning that ended Nick Smith’s career. According to this account, back in mid-2020, “Smith lost his temper and had a yelling match with his young male staffer, which included swearing at him. Another National Party staffer, who didn’t work in Smith’s office, recorded the verbal altercation and reported the incident to Parliamentary Service (the employer of the National Party staffers).”

Moir reports that National insiders say Smith has a long history of volatility: “MPs and staff, both former and current, spoken to by Newsroom say Smith has a history of treating staff poorly, and it was well-known around Parliament. One former senior MP described Smith as having a ‘volatile personality’ and was often ‘outright rude to officials and staffers’. The former MP said Smith had entered politics at a very young age and had ‘never managed anyone and didn’t know how to deal with people’.”

This account is in line with how Hooton sums up the situation in his column today: “he had been behaving in roughly the same way he had been allowed to by successive leaders for 30 years.”

Newshub’s Jenna Lynch also uncovered a number of National insiders willing to speak out against Smith, albeit anonymously – see: National MP Nick Smith’s alleged ‘verbally abusive behaviour’: Former staffers open up about Parliament’s ‘worst-kept secret’.

For example, one stated: “Nick’s irrational and verbally abusive behaviour towards his staff was one of Parliament’s worst-kept secrets. Everyone from Ministerial Services, Parliamentary Services, the Prime Minister’s Office and the bullying inquiry knew about it yet Nick’s staff continued to be collateral damage.” In contrast, however, the article also quotes a number of current National MPs denying that the party has any problems with bullying.

So, was Smith pushed out? This is the focus of Richard Harman’s column on Wednesday: How Judith Collins forced Nick Smith to resign (paywalled).

Here’s the key part: “Collins told Smith last Friday a story would appear this Tuesday. Smith has said that it was his understanding that a story would appear which persuaded him to resign. But so far, no story has appeared other than those reacting to his resignation. It appears either by accident or intent that Collins forced Smith’s resignation because of her claims of the imminent publication of the story. It also seems likely that she had known about the incident that lies behind the resignation for nearly a year and not acted on that information.”

However, today Jo Moir reports Collins as stating: “Nick Smith is absolutely clear that at no stage was he ever told to leave Parliament”.

The Jian Yang scandal

The other scandal relating to National MP standards is Richard Harman’s revelation last month that both the National and Labour parties made an agreement to quietly get rid of their two China-born MPs, Jian Yang and Raymond Huo, “because of growing security concerns” – see: The cooling of relations with China: Why two MPs retired last year (paywalled). Harman says he “learned from multiple official and political sources” that the “almost simultaneous [retirement] announcements were orchestrated by the offices of Jacinda Ardern and Todd Muller working together”.

Matthew Hooton, who was working for then National leader Todd Muller at the time the two MPs resigned from Parliament, confirmed the report, writing his own account for the Herald, stating the “deal was based on briefings from the New Zealand intelligence agencies expressing concern about the two MPs’ relationships with the Chinese Government” – see: Chinese Government associates alleged to have infiltrated National and Labour (paywalled).

Hooton explained how he thought National had got into this situation: “Selection procedures in both main parties are well known to be lax, as evidenced by the quality of MPs we attract. Both main parties are keen for Chinese-born MPs, both for the votes from new immigrants they might bring, and also because of their fundraising abilities and political and commercial connections with New Zealand’s biggest export market. National Party President Peter Goodfellow, for example, is very proud of his fundraising abilities from the Chinese community.

RNZ confirmed the story, with reporter Craig McCulloch stating that “Another source also confirmed to RNZ that an agreement was reached during a meeting attended by the parties’ chiefs of staff” – see: Labour, National tight-lipped on former Kiwi-Chinese MPs’ departure.

Reforming the National Party

National is in a dysfunctional state, and it’s not clear that it can quickly or easily reform its culture and raise its standards enough to make it fit to govern anytime soon. As Hooton says today, National is “in a world of chaos and pain that not even Labour endured through the 2010s” and “is in worse shape than even Helen Clark’s Labour in 1995 or Bill English’s National in 2003.”

Heather du Plessis-Allan has also argued the party isn’t about to turn its fortunes around, given what the latest scandals say about its culture – see: National is the most toxic brand in Parliament.

Here’s her main point: “It always going to be tough-going for National to have a serious shot at the next election, but after two resignations in a week I’d say their odds just got that much longer. Simply because they are wasting valuable rebuild time on continuing to trash their own brand. Brands take a long time to build, and the clock starts again when you have something as repulsive as an alleged sex scandal and questions over whether the leader has engineered the resignation of veteran MP Nick Smith, who himself is facing bullying allegations.”

Jo Moir’s column today discusses the National Party’s new code of conduct, which sets out behavioural expectations for MPs, noting that Smith’s altercation “pre-dates this”.

Moir also explores the party’s “candidate college” process, used to vet prospective politicians, with the suggestion from both a former MP and a candidate that this is no longer fit for purpose. Moir reports the former MP saying: “Since about 2008 when the party decided it was invincible, the purpose of the College has fallen away”, and believing “the party no longer had any mechanisms operating that would vet the likes of Falloon and Bezzant.” Similarly, a former candidate is reported as being “surprised the vetting process wasn’t more comprehensive.”

This issue of quality assurance is also the focus of a column today by political commentator and National Party member Liam Hehir, who argues his party needs to raise standards, but also move away from looking for “stars”, especially “flashy and ambitious people claiming glittering careers in industries that themselves are known to have toxic cultures” – see: Reforming the National Party.

Hehir also has a number of other suggestions for improving candidate selection: “I believe some form of basic psychometric testing would be a good idea. That kind of thing is hardly foolproof since skilled manipulators are unsurprisingly good at manipulating testing. Still, it would weed out enough bad eggs to be a worthwhile exercise. Personal patronage is also something that ought to be discouraged. It is a serious barrier to renewal when existing party heavyweights do things like drive their champions to candidate selections. Informal practices like expectations around ranking existing members of caucus above newcomers on the party list ought to go.”

Finally, for satire on the state of National, see my blog post: Cartoons about the National Party since the election (updated).

Speculation about the National Party’s leadership has died down, after a fortnight of rumours and overt positioning by supposed challengers to Judith Collins. She lives on as leader for a bit longer, and Christopher Luxon and Simon Bridges have been put in their place. National now desperately needs to focus on the more substantial issues in rebuilding their party as an alternative to Labour.

Following on from my own column, Political Roundup: Rumours of Collins being rolled by Luxon and Bridges, the idea that Simon Bridges might be positioning himself for the top job again was brought to a head by The AM Show host Duncan Garner reporting that the former leader had told him off-air that “I’ll give her as much support as she gave me as the leader”, referring to Collins – see: National leader Judith Collins is a dead woman walking.

Garner declares that “the ‘dump the leader’ narrative has taken hold”, meaning that Collins’ downfall is now inevitable. However, he doesn’t see Bridges coming out on top: “I think the winner will be first-time MP and former Air New Zealand boss Chris Luxon.”

Similarly, long-time National loyalist and Bridges’ supporter Liam Hehir wrote on his Patreon blog that as a result of all the speculation, Luxon “has acquired an air of inevitability about him” – see: Christopher Luxon is almost inevitable now.

According to Hehir, all the speculation is self-fulfilling: “At a certain point in politics things, like leadership talk, take on a life of their own. There is nothing more valuable than becoming the expected outcome because it greatly reduces resistance on the part of those making the decision.” Furthermore, Luxon’s clear ascendancy will be scaring off any other possible contenders.

Bridges was also seen to foster the rumours when he was asked about his ambitions for the top job, and he said “It’s all just chatter, it’s all just rumour and speculation and I support Judith Collins at this time” – see Dan Satherley’s Judith Collins asks media to stop bugging Simon Bridges and Christopher Luxon about leadership ambitions. This article also reports: “Asked about his ambitions on Friday, Bridges didn’t immediately rule out another tilt.”

He did, however, follow this up by an attempt to be more definitive, declaring that he has no desire to take back “the worst job in New Zealand” and “I don’t want to be the leader of the National Party – I don’t know how many times I can say it” – see Dan Satherley’s Former National leader Simon Bridges insists he doesn’t want ‘worst job in New Zealand’ back.

Nonetheless, commentators have been very critical of the perceived ambition of Bridges and Luxon, with Heather du Plessis-Allan arguing that their openness is hurting their own party. She says that Collins needs to go before the next election, and Luxon should become leader, but this should happen cleanly and without the current intrigue – see: Judith Collins is right to tell Simon Bridges to pull his head in.

Here’s her key point: “They are cementing the impression that National is a cot case, a party with smell of disarray this strongly about it will not be elected to government. The best outcome for National is that Collins quietly hands over to Luxon at some stage, not during the disruption that the pair is causing. So Collins is right to tell them to pull in their heads: for their own sakes if they want to be successful when they have a go at an election.”

Du Plessis-Allan followed this column up on Sunday, saying that all the leadership rumours are overshadowing the few wins and solid work being done on issues like housing and MIQ deficiencies – see: The return of Simon Bridges (paywalled).

Once again, in this column the case is made that Collins will need to go, and there is logic in a Luxon/Bridges leadership combo: “It’d be a unity ticket. Luxon would be seen as a peacemaker, Bridges would bring his political instinct.” However, Bridges’ display of disloyalty and Luxon’s clear inexperience makes this all questionable.

Luxon’s lack of hits is especially notable for du Plessis-Allan: “He hasn’t scored any political wins of note. He doesn’t appear to have even asked a question in the House yet. It’s not as if he’s short of fodder. He’s got the local government portfolio, and councils around the country are in disarray, running out of money and running down their infrastructure.”

Fellow Newstalk ZB broadcaster Mike Hosking is even more dismissive of Luxon’s track record: “Luxon might be a genius – but we don’t know that, because he has barely unpacked his lunch box… Just turning up isn’t a qualification. If the Nats have decided it is, then they deserve everything that’s coming to them” – see: National need to cool their jets when it comes to the leadership. Hosking’s advice to National is “patience, my friends”, because “a few months after an election is not a time to panic and roll people”.

The ill-timing of a leadership change is also discussed by Ben Thomas, who says Luxon and Bridges will be wary of taking on the leadership too early: “Both men are ambitious, and aware of the dangers of getting what you’ve always wanted but at the wrong time. Would it be better to take a shot at the country’s most popular politician, Jacinda Ardern, in the 2023 election, or swoop into the leadership after a loss?” – see: Nats must seize opportunities as cracks show in Labour’s competence.

Thomas also stresses how “destabilising” the leadership change talk is for the party, and doubts that either of the supposed challenges are likely to be “a saviour”. Bridges is viewed as disloyal, while “Luxon has been dubbed ‘the new John Key’ but, with a CV of business accolades, adoration from the lay party membership and no record of political experience or achievement, at the moment he sounds more like the ‘last Todd Muller’.”

These leadership issues are clearly making the already fractious atmosphere in the National caucus even worse it seems. Newsroom’s Jo Moir has been talking to various unnamed National MPs, who have been pointing out just how poisonous things are at the moment – see: National’s six months in a leaky boat. The key quote from one MP, about the various leadership spills of last year, is: “When poison gets into the system it takes a while to get it out.”

Other interesting quotes include: nothing would change “until some in the caucus work out they’re not the leader and are never going to be again”, and “We won’t be in government in two-and-a-half years’ time if we carry on like this”. In terms of the timing of a leadership change, Moir reports “the consensus seems to be that it is too early for those sorts of conversations and a more suitable time would be later this year or next.”

National’s more substantive problems

Former National Party staffer Matthew Hooton has written a “letter to old friends” in the form of a column in the Herald that warns the party to focus less on the leadership question and more on what the party stands for. Of course, he also issues a necessary disclaimer, due to his own involvement in supporting the Todd Muller leadership change: “Having imprudently got myself involved in National’s leadership shenanigans last year, its supporters may doubt my judgment” – see: My message to National – and how to avoid another leadership fiasco (paywalled).

Hooton’s paywalled column is a must-read on the state of the National Party. There are scathing critiques of the current players, of course. Bridges’ recent statements are described as “vandalous” (if intentional) or “incompetent” (if accidental). Luxon’s attempts to be John Key 2.0 are lampooned as futile and pathetic, with the advice that he should develop “his own political brand and skills. And those will need to be as different from Key as Key was from Brash, or Jim Bolger from Robert Muldoon. Prime Ministers don’t get elected because they remind voters of their predecessors.”

Collins is subtlely painted as hollow (as she has turned out to have a “much less stable ideological framework and policy roadmap than assumed. It makes her not quite true to brand.”) But she should stay in the job for now, Hooton says, because to have Luxon take over “just six months after he entered Parliament would open National up to further ridicule, and risk another failed leadership”.

The problems are bigger than the fact that National lacks any obvious leader. Hooton argues the party is in a worse position than in other recent times: “The party is in much worse shape than in 1985 or 2003. Back then it had at least achieved outstanding intakes in 1981 and 1984, with more to follow in 1987. In 2002, three future leaders joined its team — Brash, Key and Collins — and more talent was on its way in 2005. At the same time, MPs had their heads down, thinking seriously about the sort of party National needed to become.”

He paints a picture of a party that is simply not up to the task of rebuilding and working out what it should stand for, contrasting the current MPs to those of the past who were capable of intellectual self-critique: “No such debate is possible in today’s National because, with some exceptions, the MPs the party sends to Wellington lack the life experience, background knowledge, intellectual resources, personal inclination and social networks to even have them. They have no idea what a post-Key National Party might look like, or even why that issue needs to be addressed. They are preoccupied with themselves and events in Parliament, oblivious that no one cares. They do not know how to think about a problem, spend the necessary months deeply engaging with those working on or affected by it, reviewing ideas about how to tackle it, and then designing an effective and hopefully popular way to fix it. Mostly, their policy gets bashed out a day or so before it is announced, or is just picked up from some Wellington industry group.”

None of this is likely to change, Hooton says, because of the inherent arrogance of those in the caucus: “They nevertheless remain very sure of their own cachet in society, especially in their local Koru Club. They are correct that Jacinda Ardern’s Government is comically incompetent, but inexplicably think they are equipped to do better.”

Hooton isn’t the only one saying that National needs to focus on the substance rather than the style. Peter Dunne has recently argued that National needs to sort out what it stands for before it thinks about leadership.

Here’s Dunne’s key point: “Is it a traditional liberal/conservative party as it was in its recent successful heyday, or is morphing into something else? A hard-line law and order party of religious and moral conservatives? Or just a paler version of the modern Labour Party? At the moment, National is showing at different times and to different audiences contradictory signs of trying to be all of these things, leaving its message looking confused, constrained, and half-baked.”

Earlier in the year, Dunne wrote something similar, focusing on National’s political history as “an awkward amalgam of rural conservatives and urban liberals”, suggesting that this winning combination has fallen apart – see: National needs to know what it stands for. Part of the problem is an influx of a new element: “Its liberals and conservatives are still there but have been joined in recent years by a new strain, the evangelical Christians, which is shaking the previous comfortable urban/rural, liberal/conservative partnership.”

Conservative political commentator Monique Poirier has also been pondering what the National Party now stands for, and is critical of National’s lack of policy or differentiation from Labour – see: National must prove it is ready to govern again. She says the answer is for the party to focus on creating new policy (a “blueprint”), because “without a plan, you don’t deserve to be in government.”

Plus, having a solid policy programme “would show the public that National was once again a credible alternative. Secondly, it would actually be able to reap the rewards (once elected) of seeing the results of major policy much earlier in its term.” However, she adds that the new programme “needs to be one that can withstand a leadership change. Policy shouldn’t be decided on a whim based on who is leader at the time”.

Finally, for a satirical overview of the recent history of a party searching for a way forward, see my new blog post, Cartoons about the National Party since the election.

The leaking has already begun from the National Party’s top-secret report on their disastrous 2020 election campaign. It’s a fraught issue, illustrating just how dysfunctional and divisive things still are inside National. Trust is low, and fingers are still being pointed – even by leader Judith Collins, who clearly doesn’t fully trust her caucus.

The official report into just what went so catastrophically wrong in the party in the lead up to National losing nearly half their MPs was delivered some time ago to president Peter Goodfellow and his board members who run the party organisation outside of Parliament. They have now decided to try to keep the report under lock and key, refusing to even allow MPs to receive a copy.

Top secrecy to keep the report from leaking

MP access to the report into their own party is colourfully described today by Claire Trevett in the Herald: “The National Party’s determination to keep the juicy bits of the review into its abysmal election result secret has led it to Harry Potter lengths. MPs can enter the Room of Secrets, in an undisclosed location in Parliament, to read the report. They cannot take phones or other communication devices into the room. Presumably the Obliviate (forgetfulness spell) is then cast upon them before they exit again. This is all done in a bid to prevent leaks of the contents of the report. The irony of the party being fearful of leaks of a report which has blamed leaks for the party’s woes is not missed” – see: National Party’s review a double-edged sword (paywalled).

Trevett likens the intrigue and secrecy to another colourful institution currently in turmoil: “there are some parallels between the Royal family and the National Party: not least that both are rather dysfunctional families.”

The problem is, Trevett reports in another article (National Party review points to ‘disunity, leaks and poor behaviour’), the review is said to be too “brutal” for MPs to handle: “The Herald was told that it was so unstinting that some did not want the caucus to see it – both because of the risk that it would be leaked and undermine the party’s attempts to rebuild as blame was apportioned… Another source said that nobody came out of it looking good, but it should be shown to party MPs or the lessons in it would not be learned.”

One way of dealing with potential leaks of the report, at a time when the party is trying to rebuild and project an image of unity, has been to produce two versions of the report – see Tova O’Brien’s National creates two versions of election review, one with ‘gory details taken out’.

O’Brien says there will be a “sanitised” version and “full report”. She colourfully relays the details: “The full report with all the gory details will be kept under lock and key and MPs will only be allowed to read it. The party won’t say under what circumstances – if MPs will be under surveillance, phones confiscated, or if the report will be in a steel briefcase handcuffed to leader Judith Collins’ wrist.”

Inside the party, there’s unhappiness with this process: “Newshub has been told the membership is frustrated with the closed process, that there is anger about how tightly held the report has been after everyone was asked to be open and share details during the actual review process.”

Collins defends the secrecy and points the finger

Judith Collins has defended not allowing MPs to receive copies of the report, saying on RNZ’s Morning Report that “We’re not going to have any of that sort of nonsense”, and explaining that the report is actually owned by the party’s board and not the MPs – see RNZ’s ‘A National Party board document’: Judith Collins trying to distance MPs from review.

In this interview, Collins says the party is being “very trusting” in allowing the MPs to read it, and that this is a “good concession by the board to the MPs”.

In other interviews the National leader has been rather provocative in continuing to point the finger at her colleagues about the review’s findings. Henry Cooke reports that she says some of the MPs guilty of “bad behaviour” are still in the caucus – see: Judith Collins says ‘confronting’ election review reveals bad behaviour of MPs still in her party.

In this interview Collins says “I also know that there is some bad behaviour that is called out in that report. That is going to be confronting for some people. And some of those people are not in caucus any more – some are. Maybe they are going to read that report and go ‘maybe that is me’.” In contrast to such bad behaviour, Collins says her mistakes were “honest”.

The leaks are already occurring

Writing on his subscriber-only website Liam Hehir jokes that National’s autopsy will remain confidential until it is leaked to Tova O’Brien (paywalled). The National-aligned commentator argues that, although it’s understandable party bosses want to keep the document away from opponents, this is unrealistic. He believes factional competition will ensure that at least some of it leaks: “the human propensity for intrigue will ensure that internal rivals ensure that some or all of the criticisms of their opponents become known.”

In fact, National insiders are already talking about the contents of the report. For example, one National MP who has seen the report summary has told journalist Richard Harman that the analysis in it “politically naïve” – see: National’s review is political dynamite (paywalled). Harman suggests this is down to a lack of experience in the review panel that wrote it. Stacked with figures from the corporate world, and with little obvious experience in the party, the report ignores some the key reasons for National’s failure.

The way National is dealing with the review is leading to anger and cynicism behind the scenes in the party according to Harman. There is a suspicion that “the board is doing this to protect itself and to keep its own role in the defeat hidden.” Harman argues that this enables the blame to be focused only the MPs rather than the party officials: “the draft of the review, which originally went to the party board, set the blame for the loss on both the caucus and the board. But in his public comments, Party President, has seemed to direct criticism only at the caucus.”

Other journalists also have access to leaks from National. Thomas Coughlan reports that a “radical shake-up” of the party organisation is being recommended – see: National Party promises to implement recommendations of secretive election review.

Here’s the key point: “sources familiar with the reports have told Stuff its recommendations include a shake-up of the party’s board, including the implementation of term limits. That could spell an end to the presidency of president Peter Goodfellow, who has held the post since 2009. It’s understood the recommendations also include a prohibition on board members holding another party office, like regional or electorate chair.”

There are also noises that National might change the way it selects its leader. In her article today, Claire Trevett discusses how National hasn’t gone down the path of allowing non-MPs, such as party members, to have a say in the leader, but “there has been some talk about at least involving the board in leadership decisions in National.”

Other explanations for National’s demise

Richard Harman also puts forward some other explanations for National’s catastrophe in 2020 that might be missing from the report: “MPs might add to that the fact that the campaign was underfunded. Because of that, they could not hire top-flight talent, like the social media experts Topham Guerin, and the changes in leadership left the party without a coherent message or clear strategy. This was also the first election since 2008 that the Australian political consultants Crosby Textor had not worked with National.”

Today’s New Zealand Herald editorial suggests another area that the report probably doesn’t properly explore – the party simply didn’t have a leader who could deal with the problems: “What was sorely lacking as the party lunged from blooper to bumble was leadership. A leader would have united the party, plugged the leaks and stamped out bad behaviour” – see: What the National Party review needs to see (paywalled).

It concludes: “Should National wish to avoid repeating the debacle of last year, then 2020 hindsight must focus on a leader who can unite a tight ship on which all behave.”

Leftwing blogger Martyn Bradbury has a different take, focusing on the ideological element of National’s demise, suggesting the party was too out of sync with the public mood in terms of policy and orientation – see: National Party Election Autopsy so bad, it has had to be censored. He argues that the party is now in terminal decline, with David Seymour’s Act Party set to benefit from a more polarised ideological landscape.

Finally, with a focus on the National Party’s organisational problems, it’s worth looking at the bigger picture, especially in terms of the last time National dealt with a big defeat and an organisational rebuild. Back in November, writing after National’s AGM, Chris Trotter argued that National has become a dysfunctional oligarchy which is resistant to new talent or proper membership participation – see: “Goodfellas”: The Neoliberal National Party shows its ugly face.

Rob Muldoon was a pugnacious and abrasive prime minister of New Zealand who was treated unkindly by commentators – and even historians – in the aftermath of his period in office (1975 to 1984). Hopefully, future historians will treat him in a much more objective way.

It is important to note here that Sir Robert Muldoon was in fact one of our strongest, most important, and most pragmatic political leaders. Ever. And Judith Collins reminds me of him, in personal and personality ways, in strength and mana, and in political philosophy.

Notwithstanding the relatively unimportant matter of biological sex – he was male, and she is female – both were/are of similar build, and both had/have distinctive facial mannerisms. Muldoon was brought up by two fiercely socialist women, and Collins, as a young woman in Matamata, became a Labour Party supporter. They had/have genuine empathy for working class people.

(Talking about mannerisms and political styles, the present President of the USA always reminds me of the 1920s’ and 1930s’ Italian leader. Both of those leaders drew much initial support from the much neglected working classes and small businesses.)

Rob Muldoon

Muldoon led – and kept New Zealand safe – through the most difficult decade in New Zealand’s history. (In the 1970s, four countries that we shared histories with – Australia, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay – had governments overthrown by coup d’états. At least the first two mentioned coups were stoked by the CIA.) The period from 1973 to 1985 was one of huge financial imbalances, double-digit inflation that became stagflation in many countries, the cutting of the economic umbilical cord with Great Britain, and very high crude oil prices.

Muldoon was a social liberal by the standards of his 1960s’ political peers – for example, he was strongly opposed to the death penalty, a big issue of that time. And he was more committed than any other political leader to the principles of the universal welfare state – more committed even than Michael Joseph Savage.

Rob Muldoon was most motivated by economic issues – and sat firmly in the political centre on matters of ideology and economic policy. He sparred equally with the activist political left (especially in the 1970s) and the activist political right (especially in the 1980s). Despite making plenty of enemies on both sides of politics, Muldoon followed a resolutely moderate economic course, for as long as he could keep his growing list of political enemies at bay. When his enemies on the left flipped, and joined his enemies to his right – setting the new socially liberal and economically conservative zeitgeist (neoliberalism) – Muldoon’s brand of centrist politics and Keynesian economics was doomed.

Nevertheless, New Zealand was a very different place in 1985 than it was in 1965, and for the better. There had been substantial economic and creative liberation in that period. The universal welfare state had been strengthened. And we had the 1982 Official Information Act, allowing for a much greater freedom of information.

Of great importance is the fact that Rob Muldoon was one of our greater leaders because he was not debt phobic. (Other leaders who were not debt phobic included Vogel, Ward and Savage.) Muldoon understood debt better than any other New Zealand politician, ever. And he knew that the indebtedness of New Zealand Inc to foreign interests was a much more consequential matter than the government debt that New Zealanders owed to themselves. In other words, he was more concerned – in globally depressed and unbalanced times – with the balance of payments’ current account deficits than he was with the government budget deficits. Hence his successful policy drive – dubbed ‘think big’ – to make New Zealand much more self-sufficient in energy. It was his initiative that led to the electrification of the North Island Main Trunk railway line.

I was never a Muldoon supporter until after he lost office in 1984, when I could see how the new political coalition of the right and the former left was mis-framing him, his centrist policies, and his legacy of achievement. Indeed, the only time I ever voted Labour – in 1978 I voted for Trevor de Cleene – I did so as an explicitly anti-Muldoon vote. (I also thought that Bill Rowling – Labour’s leader – was a much better politician in 1978 than he had been in 1975. The first act of New Zealand’s 1980s’ neoliberal coup was the 1982 deposition of Rowling – later Sir Wallace Rowling – as leader of Labour.)

Muldoon, as a National prime minister, could do things for the economy that he never could have done if he had been a Labour prime minister. A Labour leader with the mana of a Muldoon or Norman Kirk could have suffered the same fate as Gough Whitlam in Australia did in 1975.

Judith Collins

Judith Collins is at a similar stage of her political career to that of Rob Muldoon in 1972 to 1974. At that stage Muldoon was very disliked by the political left; and was the provisional darling of the financial right. Yet he went to the country in 1975 with an audacious (but historically attuned) centre-left policy; to restore universal superannuation by completing the vision that Savage enunciated in 1938.

Judith Collins will have an opportunity – from 2020 – to go to the New Zealand people in 2023 with a similarly necessary welfare reform. And she may be the only New Zealand politician with the ‘balls’ to integrate income tax with universal welfare, as Muldoon was wanting to do.

Like Muldoon, Collins knows how to ‘dog whistle’. She certainly needs a ‘Robs Mob’ from which to win votes. And she must dog whistle to her own patrons by making the usual noises about public debt. Yet, candidly, she has also stated that she ‘is not afraid of debt’. I was very encouraged to hear that. Further she does not want to ‘beggar the country’, which is what David Cameron did to the United Kingdom through his government’s ‘fiscal consolidation’ programme.

Muldoon always had enemies. So has Collins. She also has the political talent to lead, and to forge progression coalitions. Coalitions that are socially and economically centrist – indeed radically centrist (as Muldoon was). While she is socially liberal, I can see that – like Muldoon – she will most upset the neoliberals who espouse social liberalism and economic conservatism.

I think it’s unlikely that Judith Collins will be prime minister this October. But it’s not impossible. (In 2016 – using my knowledge of the American electoral system and the dire economic circumstances of rust-belt states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania – I won a wager over who would then become president of the United States. It was a wager that I would have been more than happy to lose. I also saw that the British rustbelt would vote for Brexit.) Rather, Collins may do a Mike Moore. This year, I expect she will keep her party’s vote at over 30 percent, and I expect she will oversee as big a swing of the electoral pendulum in 2023 as occurred in 1993. (For those not in the know, the swing in the popular vote from one side of politics to the other in 1993 was as big as it was in 1975.)

Public Finance and Welfare reforms should be the big issues from 2020 to 2023; that is, so long as the mainstream media gives oxygen to them. (Welfare reform needs to be on the lines of Universal Income Flat Tax. Public Finance reform should be broadly along the lines espoused by ‘modern monetary theory’, which I will write about on a future date.)

New Zealand desperately needs a courageous economic non-conservative political leader; a leader who can stare down those journalists who oppose everything intellectual, propose nothing, and love to wallow in scandal. New Zealand needs a leader who is not risk-averse, and who will promote reasoned solutions to the problems that have been shelved in the ‘too-hard basket’. The first issue to deal with is that of public debt phobia.