THE Insiders tell Claire Trevett how the Labour - New Zealand First Coalition slowly fell apart UNRAVELLING
| Published date | 04 December 2020 |
| Date | 04 December 2020 |
| Publication title | New Zealand Herald, The (Auckland, New Zealand) |
Inside was a short letter from Peters’ chief of staff, Jon Johansson, on behalf of the New Zealand First caucus, advising the party would not support Labour’s proposal for a capital gains tax.
After a lengthy and expensive Tax Working Group report, and months of work by officials and ministers on policy development and negotiations, there was no phone call or meeting to advise of the outcome.
Just the letter.
Six days later, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced Labour had failed to get the tax over the line and took it off the table for the foreseeable future as well.
The CGT was one of a screed of Labour’s hopes and dreams that were stymied, delayed, or watered down by its coalition partner. NZ First claimed this as a “handbrake” role.
But the tax was also emblematic of some of the core problems in the relationship between the two parties.
Those who knew how NZ First operated were surprised Labour seriously believed NZ First would agree to a capital gains tax, given its longstanding opposition to the tax.
But those in Labour saw it as another case in which they believed NZ First had given false hope, only to later feel they had wasted time on an issue which NZ First had already made up its mind about.
“We felt quite let down,” Robertson said. He said at the time he was disappointed, and he says it again now. “I would not have put so much time into that if we didn’t think we had a chance of getting an outcome.”
Green Party co-leader James Shaw had the freedom to articulate what some Labour ministers privately felt, but did not have the freedom to say.
“An agent of chaos,” was how Shaw, before the election, described NZ First’s role in the Government.
But Peters too aired frustration, saying he had never faced a more difficult three-year period in Parliament, saying he was “surrounded by plain inexperience.”
It was perhaps a sign of her own frustration that led to Jacinda Ardern to urge voters, in the last week of the election campaign, to give Labour a strong mandate so it could make fast progress in the Covid-19 recovery.
It was effectively a slightly more diplomatic (and successful) repeat of former National Party leader Bill English’s line in 2017 to “cut out the middle man” – i.e: cut out NZ First.
THE PRICKLIEST ISSUESThe first stark lesson in the reality of the coalition arrangement was over Labour’s policy to repeal National and Act’s “three strikes” policy for sentencing serial offenders.
Then-Justice Minister Andrew Little had publicly announced plans to repeal the law after a conversation with Peters in which he believed Peters had given it the go-ahead.
It was about to go to Cabinet for the final sign-off, and Peters had assured him he would support it in the NZ First caucus.
Soon after that, caucus announced it would not support the repeal and the paper had to be withdrawn.
“That was frustrating,” says Little. “It was annoying, and ... wised me up to the fact that just because something has the apparent support of the leader of NZ First, it doesn’t mean it has the support of caucus.”
Peters and Johansson declined to be interviewed for this article.
Tracey Martin, a former NZ First minister in the coalition, said three strikes was a lesson for both parties.
She acknowledged the language being used by NZ First in discussions with Little was not clear enough.
“But also he wasn’t listening. They thought we had told him ‘no’, but we hadn’t told him ‘no’ clearly enough it would appear. And that’s how we ended up where we were.”
Labour learned two important lessons. The first was that there was a difference in how the two parties saw the coalition agreement.
Labour’s view was that the agreement set out what NZ First would get – but other than those policies that were specifically excluded, such as its plans for levying water use, Labour could go ahead with its manifesto.
Martin said that belief was behind a lot of the confusion.
“I realised about six months in that Labour thought we had just rubber-stamped their manifesto, and that was not our view at all.”
Peters, a man with a background in the law, saw the coalition deal as a contract. His interpretation was that only things specifically listed in it were guaranteed. Everything else had to be negotiated.
Those negotiations often proved to be protracted and difficult.
The second lesson was that, despite the public perception, Peters did not necessarily have the final say in NZ First – its caucus did.
Wiser ministers learned not to take apparently encouraging assurances from Peters or other NZ First MPs as Gospel until after an issue had gone to the 10 MPs in the caucus.
Those MPs also started briefing relevant backbench NZ First MPs before the caucus was due to meet on an issue. Success could depend on personal relationships as much as policy work and compromise.
Martin...
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