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Commentary
By making it a full term with New Zealand First without her own party suffering, Jacinda Ardern has succeeded where other prime ministers have failed, writes Liam Hehir.
What is Jacinda Ardern’s greatest achievement in the realm of party politics? Are you breaking the 60 percent barrier of support for parties in opinion polls? Are you ditching Bill English, Simon Bridges, and Todd Muller, while on your way to defeating Judith Collins?
No. The Prime Minister is ready to accomplish an even more unlikely feat. Defying New Zealand’s political history, Ardern has shared the government with New Zealand First and escaped unscathed.
Entering into a coalition with the party marked the end of the fourth national government. Unhappy with how things were going with his junior coalition partner, National Transportation Minister Jenny Shipley, he staged a coup against Prime Minister Jim Bolger. Winston Peters was fired from the cabinet shortly after.
In the 1999 election, New Zealand First received less than five percent of the vote and survived only as Peters won the Tauranga seat, National limped into the 1999 election with just over 30 percent of the vote. . Labor took the reins of power.
The second time, New Zealand First had joined Labor. This was quite surprising, in a way, because Helen Clark had ruled out working with Peters in 2002. However, there was a rapprochement around 2004 on the shoreline and seabed issue with the parties working together to extinguish potential rights. Maori territorial.
From that point on, New Zealand First came to be seen as a member of the family of center-left political parties in New Zealand. In 2005, he agreed to give confidence and supply to Labor. Peters became Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister of Racing.
You may recall, it all went wrong following questions about donations from figures like Owen Glenn, the Vela family, and Sir Bob Jones. Despite the Labor Party giving Peters all the protection it reasonably could, he ended up being censored by Parliament and resigning amid an investigation by the Serious Fraud Office (in which, it should be noted, he was later acquitted) .
The bitter taste of those issues was a factor in the final loss of trust voters had in the Clark administration. New Zealand’s first vote plunged once again and this time it left Parliament entirely. Nacional recaptured the Treasury banks.
The party returned in 2011. In subsequent years, it continued to grow closer to Labor. The convergence was clearer when Labor chose to scapegoat the Chinese for unaffordable housing costs and took on a variety of other questionable positions that we would normally associate with New Zealand First.
Then Ardern became leader. Campaigning as an inspiring liberal and progressive internationalist, the attack on immigrants had to stop and his legacy was quickly pushed down the memory hole. However, there was no repudiation of Peters, and after he chose to install Ardern as prime minister after the 2017 vote, they have enjoyed co-governance of these islands for the past three years.
The usual has happened, and New Zealand First and its partners have been a source of much embarrassment to the government. The party’s cabinet ministers have made reckless and sometimes xenophobic comments. Something called the First New Zealand Foundation was investigated by the Serious Fraud Office after documents describing its finances were deposited for journalists in a dumpster, and we learned last week that charges are being filed.
The government with New Zealand was once thought to be a Faustian deal first: they give you three years, but in the end you face destruction. However, it appears that this only applies to long-standing governments.
Amid all of this and the usual consequences of failing to deliver on key promises made in the last election, the party faces great odds of re-election. At this point, it would take a miracle. That is, of course, as expected.
And yet, somehow, despite everything, none of this has tarnished Ardern. He has made no move to effectively fire or discipline New Zealand’s first MPs in his cabinet. Peters, by all accounts, will serve a full parliamentary term as minister. The prime minister declined to criticize him in last week’s Newshub debate.
How has this happened? The government with New Zealand First was once thought to be a Faustian deal: they give you three years but you face destruction in the end. However, it seems that this only applies to long-standing governments.
When New Zealand First went with National in 1996 and Labor in 2005, it bailed out existing governments that were already exhausted. The patience of the voting public was already worn out and subsequent scandals only helped convince them that time was needed for a change.
Voters are, of course, much more willing to give first-term governments the benefit of the doubt. So while voters might be willing to let Ardern skate through current issues with New Zealand First, they may not be as patient if they continue to drag on into the next term and beyond. That assumes, of course, that the party is about to figure in the equation.
Which, the Prime Minister will be glad to have observed, is not a correct assumption.
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