John Armstrong rips into the Greens this morning, accusing them of hypocrisy over the asset sales referendum. Under the heading Referendums past their sell-by date, Armstrong opines (with our emphasis added):
The time has surely arrived to dump New Zealand's failed two-decade-old experiment with American-style citizens-initiated referendums.
Anyone questioning that recommendation should look no further than some of the self-serving behaviour following last Monday's official authorisation of such a plebiscite on National's partial privatisation programme.
The will of the people - David Lange once observed - was a fickle beast. It could be an awful tyrant; it could be a terrible slave.
Someone should have told the Greens. They are happy to accept the will of the people when it comes to the results of the forthcoming referendum on asset sales. But not so when it came to the 2009 referendum on smacking. That is hypocrisy, pure and simple. If you accept the will of the people once, you have to accept it for good. And that is not a recipe for good government.
Ouch! But Armstrong is dead right; the Greens' hypocrisy is there for all to see, and he is dead right to have called them on it.
He's not done though; read on:
If you do accept it, you accept your Cabinet decisions are going to be proscribed by referendum. The Greens would not like that happening to them. So why impose such restraints on National.
There has been a lot of talk this week about the will of the people. The Greens and Labour argued that had been ignored by John Key following the referendum announcement.
The Prime Minister was accused of being anti-democratic in refusing to halt the upcoming floats of shares in Meridian Energy and Genesis Energy, plus the sale of shares in Air New Zealand, until the referendum has taken place. He was castigated for saying National would ignore the result of the referendum because it had a mandate for the sale of up to 49 per cent of those state-owned electricity generators courtesy of its stunning result at the 2011 election.
To top things off, Key then dismissed the referendum as an "utter waste of money".
That line got wide pick-up with editorial writers across the country asking why $9 million in taxpayers' money was being spent on a postal referendum solely so Labour and the Greens could make a political point that everybody already knew - that a lot more people oppose asset sales than support them.
Sensing they were on the wrong side of the argument regarding cost, the two major Opposition parties the next day offered to help pass legislation which would enable the referendum to be held at the same time as next year's general election - a move that would be cheaper than a postal ballot. That remained conditional, however, on National putting asset sales on hold until then.
That drew a scathing response from Acting Prime Minister Bill English, who said it was typical of Labour to offer something that was not within its power.
Suddenly it was apparent the referendum horse had bolted in the four months since the petition seeking a referendum initially failed for lack of sufficient valid signatures. The public's desire for a referendum has cooled substantially. Once again, John Key had outmanoeuvred his opponents and captured the high ground when they thought they held it.
John Armstrong is dead right; the asset sales horse has bolted. Mighty River Power shares were sold some months ago, and the sky hasn't fallen, unless people foolishly bought the shares hoping to make a fast buck. That was certainly not our intent when we bought MRP shares, and nor will it be when we buy Meridian shares; they are a long-term investment in New Zealand's future.And Armstrong gives us a bit of a political history lesson:The country's politicians should daily give thanks to Sir Douglas Graham, National's astute Justice Minister for much of the 1990s, for making the referendums non-binding.
He was obliged to implement a promise inserted in National's 1990 election manifesto following demands from the more reactionary elements in the National Party
When the law allowing voters recourse to these devices was passed by Parliament 20 years ago, Labour's Michael Cullen described the measure as "an ill-thought-out piece of political flummery" and predicted correctly that it would end up satisfying no one. He was too kind. Making it mandatory for governments to implement the results of referendums risks making good government nigh on impossible.
Making such referendums non-binding on governments, however, renders those referendums as next to useless.
Both John Armstrong, and (dare we say it?) Michael Cullen are/were dead right. There is nothing to be gained from this referendum. It is solely an exercise in political posturing and positioning with the 2014 General Election in mind. If the public dislikes asset sales sufficiently, it will vote National out next year. And if partial asset sales are not seen as particularly offensive or significant, National may well be re-elected.National campaigned on its Mixed Ownership Model policy, and formed a government under the conditions of the MMP system of democracy. That gave them a mandate to implement EVERY policy they had campaigned on. By contrast Labour, the Greens, NZ First and Mana all campaigned against asset sales, but did not win enough public support to form an MMP government.It's called democracy folks. It may not be perfect, but it sure beats the alternatives.
John Armstrong writes in this morning's Herald on the Government's response to the Fonterra contamination scare. His entire piece is worthy of reproduction, but we have chosen to add emphasis to the most quotable bits:
Unlike its management of some ongoing and by comparison trivial matters of state - such as the accessing of Peter Dunne's emails - the Government's handling of the Fonterra infant formula contamination scare is difficult to fault ... so far.
That assessment may yet change when the various official inquiries start examining the regulatory role of the Ministry of Primary Industries in the dairy industry.
For now, however, John Key, Tim Groser, Steven Joyce and other Cabinet ministers have provided a textbook example of how to handle a crisis. Their competence has been further highlighted by Fonterra's gaffes and atrocious public relations.
The Government immediately realised the gravity of the situation, identifying the priorities for action and showing no compunction about exercising what in other circumstances might be deemed heavy-handed intervention.
The scare may not be in the same league as an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease. Instead, Fonterra is a case of foot-in-mouth disease, such has been its various accounts of what exactly has been going on and which products are affected.
No wonder Key dispatched Joyce, his Mr Fix-it, to bang management heads together at Fonterra's Auckland headquarters. In contrast, the relatively inexperienced Primary Industries Minister, Nathan Guy, has been confined to the fringes.
This particular crisis has occurred at the best possible time for National. It has shunted the palaver over legislation granting more powers to the Government Communications Security Bureau and the hullabaloo surrounding the trawling of a journalist's emails by parliamentary authorities into the background.
Labour has mounted a filibuster in Parliament to try to delay the GCSB bill being passed into law, a tactic that yesterday looked irrelevant given what else was happening.
When election day rolls around in November next year, National's ability to win enough seats to stay in power will hinge on voters' impressions of how it has handled the things that matter to the average punter - things like preserving our dairy export markets. Not Dunne's emails.
We could not agree more. Far more New Zealanders are likely to be affected by a prolonged embargo of New Zealand dairy exports that by the passage of the GCSB Bill. Far more New Zealanders are likely to be affected by economic issues that by the Dunne/Vance e-mail saga. And thus far, the Government's response to a potentially very serious issue has been urgent and focused, as it should be.
Labour's filibuster yesterday was nothing more than expensive political grand-standing; as Armstrong notes, it "looked irrelelvant", especially when Labour won a rare Urgent Debate on the Fonterra saga, quite rightly granted by Speaker David Carter. Sure; Labour has every right to filibuster within Standing Orders. However the voting public will make its own judgment on Labour's motives in due course, especially when it becomes apparent that all the Left's scaremongering over the GCSB Bill was just that; ill-informed political scaremongering.
John Armstrong is far from complimentary towards Parliamentary Services this morning. In a column entitled Violation speaks ill of our democracy he opines:
That someone working for Parliamentary Service could consider it okay to release the private phone records of a Press Gallery journalist to an inquiry sanctioned by the Prime Minister truly beggars belief.
It certainly gives new meaning to the word "service" in the bureaucracy which runs the parliamentary complex and looks after MPs' needs.
It also speaks of something very sick and rotten at the heart of the country's democracy. Whether the release was motivated by malice or ignorance, it adds up to a fundamental breach of press rights.
It is to be hoped that the book is thrown at the culprit or culprits - preferably the one written by Edmund Burke who spelled out the role of the Fourth Estate more than two centuries ago.
Sadly, though, what has happened does not come as a great shock. The Greens claim a culture has developed under John Key's prime ministership where rules and rights are treated as expendable. But a different kind of "culture" must take responsibility for this disgraceful episode - a culture which developed long before Key became Prime Minister.
John Armstrong is rightfully annoyed; the release of Andrea Vance's phone records simply should not have happened. It is a blunder with potentially serious consequences.Armstrong continues, suggesting that the relationship between the media and Parliamentary Services is already fraught:The truth is that the relationship between Parliamentary Service and Press Gallery journalists is not so much toxic as non-existent. All the gallery's dealings with the service are through the Speaker. There is little opportunity - and little effort made - to build trust and respect between the bureaucrats and journalists.
Journalists have long thought parliamentary authorities view the gallery as a nuisance that has to be tolerated rather than an essential part of the democratic fabric which should be given every assistance to do its job - and get it right.
The gallery's long but ultimately futile campaign to have the offices of its member news organisations located much closer to the parliamentary chamber is testimony to that. Those efforts to have the gallery returned to the second floor of Parliament Buildings - where it was before the complex was quake-strengthened in the early 1990s - have been blocked at every turn.
Combine that disdain for the gallery with the willingness of Parliamentary Service to bend over backwards to please its political masters and you long had the ingredients for an accident waiting to happen.
The Fourth Estate plays an important role in reporting on what our MP's are up to. At times we criticise them for the manner in which they do that, but nonetheless, the role is important to our parliamentary democracy. And Parliamentary Services has seriously compromised media independence by its actions with regard to Andrea Vance.All is not lost however, and Armstrong has the grace to acknowledge that some good may come from this as a result of Speaker David Carter's actions yesterday, following on from those of the Prime Minister:Some good may come of all this though. The Speaker, David Carter, has been hugely embarrassed, especially in having had to yesterday change his version of what occurred.
His referring to Parliament's privileges committee of the issues raised by the release of phone records and swipe-card movements of the Dominion Post's Andrea Vance around the complex is to be applauded. As is his forthright and very genuine apology.
Likewise the intervention by the Prime Minister by way of a letter to the Speaker. But Key realises what is at stake here.
The last thing he - or any politician for that matter - needs is the media really turning feral, especially when he has highly contentious spy laws to pass.
Love them or loathe them, members of the media are an important part of the democratic process. There has been a significant stuff-up here, and measures must be put in place to ensure that there is no repeat, regardless of which party is occupying the Treasury benches.
John Armstrong joins the chorus of those totally dismissive of Labour's proposed Man-Ban:
Labour seems to be doing its best to oblige. When you are in a hole, you can rely on Labour to dig itself into an even deeper one beside you - as it did this week with its shoot-yourself-in-both-feet potential change to party rules to allow women-only candidate selections.
This was not solely political correctness gone stark-raving bonkers. Apart from alienating one group of voters who have drifted away from Labour in recent years - men - such a rule change would be just as insulting to women in insinuating they could not win selection on their own merits.
The proposal should have been kiboshed by the leader the moment he saw it. That he didn't - or felt he couldn't - points to deep schisms in the party.
The message voters will take from Labour's warped priorities is that of a party which cannot get its act together in the snoozy backwaters of Opposition, let alone in the blazing sun of Government.
From right across the political spectrum, Labour has been given a right good kicking this week, and justifiably so. The Man-Ban is political correctness on steroids; just the sort of thinking that saw Labour kicked out on its ear in 2008.
John Armstrong notes that Labour has again been out-foxed by Prime Minister John Key ( with our emphasis added):With yesterday's confirmation of a tunnel as the second harbour crossing plus sundry motorway extensions and developments, Key has mapped out National's vision for Auckland transport and, perhaps more importantly, laid out the stages by which that vision will be achieved.
In one swoop, he has taken the steam out of what, after housing affordability, is the thorniest issue in the country's biggest city - traffic congestion - and one on which, according to opinion polls, National's management has less than impressed the public.
In particular, Key has now marginalised Labour and the Greens in the one aspect of public policy where those parties thought they safely had it all over National - public transport.
They have been left querying the 2020 start-date for the City Rail Link project, saying it should be much earlier.
Key, however, argues that the later date will see the work completed when patronage will be high enough to justify its construction. But he has left room to bring it forward if it becomes clear that Auckland's CBD employment and rail patronage growth hit thresholds faster than current rates suggest.
Apart from shoring up National's support in Auckland, the go-ahead is intended to remind the rest of New Zealand that National - unlike its opponents - looks at the big picture and gets things done whereas they are consumed by the relatively trivial, such as the fate of Peter Dunne and his parliamentary allowances.
For Labour - already wallowing in the Slough of Despond in the wake of its poor showing in the latest Herald-DigiPoll Survey - the tick for the City Rail Link was another reminder of how difficult it is to second-guess Key.
The irony is that Labour had a head start. The whole transport package was due to be released yesterday. However, Labour's Te Atatu MP, Phil Twyford, got wind of National's switch in thinking on the City Rail Link and tipped off some media organisations. In hindsight, he and David Shearer might have been better advised to have called a press conference and challenged Key to confirm National's sudden conversion to the wish-list of Auckland Mayor Len Brown.
Shearer would have looked proactive rather than reactive. He would have looked as if he had got one over Key.
But missed opportunities and tactical ineptitude are currently bedevilling Labour.
Labour "wallowing in the Slough of Despond"; it's the second time that Armstrong has pulled that line out, and it looks as though it might stick. And his comment about "tactical ineptitude" is right on the money. Is Trevor Mallard still Labour's strategic genius?
Today's quote comes from Herald political commentator John Armstrong:
What were they thinking? Why did four of Labour's most politically astute MPs - Phil Goff, Annette King, Clayton Cosgrove and Kris Faafoi - not foresee how awful it would look for senior party figures to be seen hobnobbing with SkyCity executives in the company's corporate box at Eden Park last Saturday night?
Those MPs have since tried to rationalise their acceptance of SkyCity's hospitality by saying they had used the invitation to remind their hosts of Labour's trenchant opposition to last month's deal between the gaming company and John Key's Government.
In debating the merits or otherwise of the construction of a world-class convention centre in Auckland in return for SkyCity getting more pokies and a lengthy extension of its casino licence, the MPs may have persuaded themselves that they were simply mixing business with pleasure.
No one else is going to buy that line, however.
Whatever argument the MPs might have mounted would have been completely undermined by their "supping from the gambler's cup" - as National's Tony Ryall delicately put it while twisting the knife in Parliament on Wednesday.
The consequent perception is that Labour says one thing and does another. And, as oft-stated, perception is everything in politics.
Armstrong is absolutely correct here. Labour should have had the political initiative this week but has instead ended the week on the back foot because of the perception that some of its senior MP's words and actions are not always in synch.Worse for Labour is that this issue has raised fresh questions over David Shearer's leadership. Shearer's management of this issue has been woeful, and if he can't manage a caucus of just 33 MP's (himself included), you'd have to question whether he has the skills to run a government.But wait; there's more! The rest of Armstrong's lengthy column is worth a read too as he suggests that Labour might have to climb down from its SkyCity high horse due to simple realities like jobs noting that "Labour's stance on the convention centre runs counter to one of the three fundamental policy themes the party intends to hammer going into election year - namely helping to create jobs.". It's a good read on a bleak Saturday morning, and should provide Mr Shearer with plenty of food for thought, and perhaps have him reaching for the antacids.
