Did Seymour play a card he's not been dealt?

Negotiation 101

ACT Party leader David Seymour has said he’d consider supporting National on confidence only, and not on supply. He wants to show he has options and isn’t Luxon’s lapdog. As the election hasn’t happened yet, however, he’s played a card that’s not been dealt. So, was it a Joker?

The people elect their representatives, not their government. After the election, the representatives form the next government, which may require negotiations if there’s uncertainty about who commands the confidence of the House.

Any party would want to go into those negotiations with a strong position. At best, they’d have two (or more) alternative coalition arrangements to explore, and be willing to walk away from any offer that’s too compromising. Above all, don’t look desperate. Having won seats in the House, it doesn’t kill them not to be in government. They can fight ‘from the cross-benches’ and aim to be in government on stronger terms in future.

In 2017, NZ First had the strongest hand and played it well. Not only did they choose which of two big parties would govern, they also controlled the process of negotiations. Winston Peters said he’d go fishing for two weeks while he awaited the final tally of election results. He kept all other parties on his hook. (Silly them!)

There’s less bargaining power, then, if you have only one option, especially if you’re a minor party that’s captive to one of the two big ones. That one option could quickly turn into none if the other side leads.

The Greens took that weaker captive position in 2017, but only because they couldn’t stomach the idea of talks (let alone signing a deal) with National. If they had opened talks with National, then Winston’s bargaining power would have been drastically reduced. His fishing holiday would have had to be cut short.

ACT is also a captive party: it has no one to work with but National, if we take their stated positions seriously. But it also has a lot of demands and many policy differences with National.

Seymour’s ‘confidence-but-not-supply’ idea suggests they’d vote against any motion of no-confidence in a National government, but ACT’s support for National’s annual supply bill (the Budget) would be conditional. This is a high-stakes bully-boy position, as the vote on the Budget is effectively a confidence vote. If a government can’t get its finance bill through the House, then it has to resign.

David Seymour has invented a novel constitutional principle that separates confidence from supply as if the two weren’t inextricably linked.

He wants National to feel the pain of ACT’s fiscal whip on each budget line, so as to cut public spending to the bone.

Seymour presumably wants voters to take his promises (or threats) about cutting ‘waste’ seriously. This could backfire, however, if voters dislike the arrogance of telling the larger party what to do before negotiations can even begin, and continuing to do so for the entire term of parliament.

And the catch is that National is free to look elsewhere. They could boost their negotiating power by exploring other options: not just National-ACT, but let’s suppose a National-Green deal.

Greens, I hear your groans! But think about it…

Any party is stronger if it has more than one option in negotiations. If National talks with the Greens, then Seymour will be more compliant, or left out. And the Greens would remind Labour not to take them for granted any longer.

The Greens may reason that, if National forms a government anyway, they’d rather it was with them in cabinet than ACT. The Greens could soften National with a more teal-coloured policy platform. National doesn’t want to repeal the Zero Carbon Act, for instance, but ACT does.

And, anyway, why would National sign up with ACT if Seymour threatens to be a wildcard by making the finance minister beg for approval? National could get a better deal elsewhere.

The above isn’t saying what will happen, let alone what should happen. It’s just that the parties don’t need to be limited by conventional left–right thinking as they negotiate.

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Is the election campaign getting too nasty?

And what are the bounds of acceptable political debate?

Last week was punctuated by attack ads issued by the NZ Council of Trade Unions (CTU) against National leader Christopher Luxon and some of his party’s policies. (See the Herald cover ad below.)

National’s campaign chairperson, Chris Bishop, described it as ‘nasty, personal, petty, vindictive politics’.

Labour’s Chris Hipkins wasted no time in displaying a number of personalised attack ads from the right that had targeted him and his team. At that stage, it was one all in the Chris vs Chris match. But Labour was pulled up over some instances of falsehoods about National’s policies. (And, for good measure, below I resurrect an attack by Mr Bishop on me!)

Was the CTU’s ad campaign out of bounds?

First, it targeted the leader of a political party, and the image was selected (and apparently edited) to look a bit ghoulish. While ad hominem argument (aimed at the person rather than the merits of their case) is generally frowned on by scholars like me, in the realm of politics the personal qualities (especially competence and trustworthiness) of those vying for leadership do matter, and hence they’re a valid target for critics. For instance, Donald Trump’s personal character and suitability for office can and should be questioned.

Second, surveys did reveal that only a minority regard Luxon as ‘in touch’ or as ‘trustworthy’. (See my earlier post on this.)

Third, the ads cited some National policies to which the CTU reasonably objects on behalf of working people.

Unlike David Seymour’s unfunny joke about blowing up a government department as a way of saving money, there’s no suggestion of violence in the CTU’s ad. I’m also aware of protests and counter-protests (on the left and the right) that have played with images of violence, or even descended into violence, and that’s where I’d draw a clear line.

So, the CTU ad is hard-hitting, but it’s within the bounds of free and fair democratic debate, as it’s founded on evidence and reasonable opinion, and the leader of any party can be held responsible for the party’s policies. It’s arguable, though, that the CTU’s campaign did National a favour by distracting attention from analysis of apparent anomalies in their tax policy, and maybe also by garnering some sympathy for Luxon.

We haven’t yet seen scandals like the Brethren campaign (2005), the teapot tape (2011) or the revelations in books by Nicky Hager (2002, 2014) that disrupted previous election campaigns and distracted a lot of media time away from ‘the issues that matter’.

But, in general, I have two reservations.

First, voters don’t like to see things descend into personalised invective or attacks and counter-attacks. They’re validly concerned about the personal qualities of leaders, but they can make their own judgements.

Voters don’t need politicians to point out one another’s flaws for them. And the party leaders are keeping it fair so far.

Second, by all reports, there is a heightened level of threat of political violence at the moment. It’s worse in other countries, but New Zealand isn’t immune. While this does come down to using judgement (as there’s no science to follow), the present environment does call for caution. Personalised attacks or sick jokes could potentially inspire someone to take things a step further and do something stupid. How things are said matters, aside from the substantive points.

Peace breaks out

A surprising moment of cross-party agreement occurred, however, during a meeting in Tamaki Makaurau from which it’s reported that National’s deputy leader Nicola Willis agreed to continue to build 1,000 state houses per year in the city. That’s a huge shift, as National, since 1991, has sold off housing stock, and Labour governments have been unable to build fast enough. So the country has about the same number now as it had 30 years ago, even though the population has increased by 50%. No wonder we have a problem… But at least the campaign isn’t all negative!

These reader polls are totally unrepresentative, but they invite you to share reactions. In last week’s poll on standards of conduct in the 53rd parliament, responses were evenly split between ‘well below the standard I’d expect’ and ‘in need of some improvement’. No one gave a positive or neutral rating. But I guess that those who’d read that far were mentally primed!

You can check out – or even pre-order – my next book here. Government and Political Trust: The Quest for Positive Public Administration. It’s about government globally, and how we could do it better. Due out in early 2024. That’s my third title with Routledge since 2018.

The previous book How to Rule? The Arts of Government from Antiquity to the Present is available here.

If you’re curious about any of the themes in the books, let me know, and I may be able to post summaries on here. And you can always ask your library to order them.

Once the election is over, we could use this substack to explore ideas about better government and to look at politics in more constructive ways.

Chris Bishop’s attack on me

See the tweet below. I was the academic who ‘knows nothing about actual politics’. This arose from my pointing out that, counter-intuitively, the withdrawal of Leo Molloy from the contest for Mayor of Auckland last year didn’t mean that all his supporters would necessarily line up behind Wayne Brown. Indeed, some (not all) of them might have shifted to Efeso Collins as their next choice. Both Molloy and Collins had some strong support in suburbs in West and South Auckland.

So beware, dear readers: according to Mr Bishop, I have no standing when it comes to comments on current events.

It was ironical to see him later complaining about an attack on his leader. But I guess that, when it comes to politics, we’re all a bit hypocritical.

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Has Waikato University become politically compromised?

The National Party proposes to build a new medical school in Hamilton. The aims are to boost the number of physicians, to create new entry criteria for students, and to send more graduates out into the regions. This could go down well with voters nationally, especially in provincial areas short of doctors, and of course in Hamilton’s two electorates.

Radio NZ, however, has revealed documents showing that the relationship between the university’s vice-chancellor and National’s health spokesperson got quite chummy.

As National was developing their policy to build a new medical school, it made sense for them to consult the university, to ensure it was acceptable and feasible. I don’t know whether they consulted other universities as well, especially the two that already have medical schools.

But, given the extent of the collaboration between Waikato University and the National Party on the pre-electoral policy announcement, it’s natural now to wonder whether the university’s management and council have staked their institution’s future on National winning the election – and hence compromised the university’s political independence.

But it’s become sadly quite common for universities to compromise their institutional credibility and academic freedom by pursuing politically charged projects. More on this another time.

For now, we have an election to think about. And I imagine that the coming week will be consumed by analysis and debate over the Treasury’s pre-election economic and fiscal update.