On Friday, three parties respectively and finally signed agreements to gain a slim majority in parliament. What this means is that some time on Monday Governor General Dame Cindy Kiro will be able to swear in the new ministers of the Executive Council. The current ministers from Labour and the Greens will be able to shed their role as a caretaker government and to reprise their experienced role as members of the parliamentary opposition.
Parliament will be open for non-ceremonial business on December 5th as there are only three sitting days left in this month. At that time we will have a government, parliament majority, and the loyal opposition mostly in place and its constitutional muzzle removed. At that point the political phoney war will be over.
So we’re still going to be waiting a bit less than 2 weeks to see how Luxon (or possibly Peter’s) chaotic coalition will gel. After reading Tova O’Brien in her description of the formal announcement of the three frenemies making up the coalition in “The weird and wonderful first moments of our new government” who are already starting to jostle for their standing in the election in 2026 (or possibly earlier), it doesn’t look like that gelling process will be particularly neat.
There are only nine sitting days in December. Even if urgency is invoked and very long parliamentary ‘days’ are forced, this leaves little time for any substantive legislation that to pass this year. It won’t have time to get parliamentary legal support to change it from vaguely written wishes, get checked for conformance against the bill of rights and other existing acts. These would also have to compete for sitting days with any Nicola Willis face saving pre-xmas mini-budget.
But to be completely fair to our incoming Minister of Finance, the coalition agreements with NZ First luckily has gotten rid of her fantasy revenue from taxes on property sales to overseas buyers. Figuring how to plug that fiscal hole in National’s promised tax cuts with the limited economic growth already anticipated for next year will be tricky.
Plus National has also committed itself to refocusing the Reserve Bank remit target to inflation, probably dropping the current remit on Maximum Sustainable Employment (MSE). This can be done with a simple change of remit by the Minister of Finance to the Reserve Bank governor. When that promised change of focus eventually takes effect, it is likely drive growth and tax revenues even lower.
I’d expect more debt borrowing and more fantasy economics from Nicola Willis as she ineptly balances the impossible political promises with the attainable economics. Expect more of the fantastical sleight of hand that is such a feature of the New Zealand Initiative ideas rather than anything that deals with a economy that exists in in the real world.
So what we are likely to get between now and Christmas is a random selection of dick-waving political acts that are easiest to push through. In effect a flag waving exercise for a new government to their donors to show that they have a semblance of control. Repealing of legislation that hasn’t already taken effect or reversion to previous legislation that has been discarded by parliament are favourites.
Plus incoming ministers, after they have gotten into their offices and jumped through parliamentary services hoops to get the staff that they want, will also be able to see what they can do to generate some personal headlines with the easier regulation changes. The problem with that is that the news cycle tends to drift into somnolence in December. So I’d expect that will mainly come from excitable ministers who are newbies. Looking at the coalition, there are quite a few of them.
Substantive changes will be signalled when we get the sitting schedule for next year, and when Nicola Willis has had time to figure out how to plug her leaking fiscal policies..
In the meantime, I have to say that I think that it is refreshing for authors in a political blog to be back supporting the politics and the opposition. While politicians like being in government, it tends to be pretty boring for political bloggers.
It is way more fun pointing out the blindingly obvious flaws in a government when they put conservative and socially regressive dipshits into office, especially when it is usually clear that they usually don’t seem to have done much deep learning after they were weaned from their parents. There is so much to dislike with the incoherent and conflicting crony capitalism policies that are a feature of all three of the parties in the three-way governing coalition.
It is even more interesting when the National-led coalition has a majority of just 5 seats after they provide the speaker, and can’t afford to offend any of their coalition partners or even too many of National’s own MPs. It must be galling for current National MPs many of whom have spent decades blagging off Winston Peters and even Shane Jones to be dependent on their goodwill.
But they have to realise that when they lost the election in 2017, their 44.4% of party vote was quite significantly more than the 38.06% that they got this year winning the government benches. These failures of a slowly declining political party carry consequences. In this case the rise of a previously subservient Act party to a higher status, and dealing with Winston Peters on the government benches.
I think I will enjoy these next three years.
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