HoS on Progressives
The Herald on Sunday notes (after we blogged it):
The public pays $164,000 a year to Jim Anderton’s Progressive Party – which sits with Labour, speaks with Labour, votes with Labour, and now campaigns for Labour.
Yep.
Dr Joe Atkinson, a politics lecturer at Auckland University, said the Progressive Party funding was “an anomaly of MMP” as Anderton operated as a Labour MP. Anderton, the sole Progressive MP, sits on the front bench of the debating chamber among Labour MPs, and is the Labour opposition’s spokesman on agriculture.
Associate Professor Andrew Geddis, a constitutional law expert at Otago University, called the Progressive Party as “a convenient fiction”.
That is a great term – a “convenient fiction”. Superb. Anderton is good at these – in 2002 he remained in the House as an Alliance MP even though he had left the party months earlier.
The Progressive Party is allocated $100,000 a year plus $64,320 for electorate funding. And, as an MP and party leader, Anderton receives a salary of $144,500 a year. Anderton was defiant: “What’s the big deal?” he asked.
What is the big deal says Jim? Well Whale responds by quoting Jim:
NZ Herald, May 27 1999, by Vernon Small
News of the extra funding for the list MP and Mana Wahine Party leader provoked outrage yesterday among Opposition MPs, who alleged it was a jackup.
“In my view this action suggests someone who has no chance of being elected as dog-catcher … has been granted over $77,000 on an annual basis for helping to keep the Government of the day in power,” said Alliance leader Jim Anderton, from whose party Mrs Kopu defected.
Mr Anderton said he would seek a review of the funding decision, which follows official parliamentary recognition of Mana Wahine and grants the one-MP party $77,186 for research and office expenses.
…..But Mr Anderton said the funding brought the political process further into disrepute, and he would investigate ways, including a judicial review, to overturn it.
My goodness – back then it was a big deal when it was another MP in a convenient fiction party. Arguably Kopu’s party was more legitimate as it actually contested the ensuing elections.
And further:
The Press, 27 May 1999, Edition 1, on Page 1
Alliance leader Jim Anderton said the payment of extra money to Mrs Kopu was an outrage. He will write to the Parliamentary Services Commission seeking an urgent review of its decision.
He said the action of giving Mrs Kopu the money, and the way the rules had been changed to allow it to happen, “comes as close to being fairly described as corruption” as anything he had seen in his 35-year political career.
So when Jim does it, it is no big deal. When Mrs Kopu did it, it was close to corruption.
June 8th, 2009 at 11:15 am
To be fair to Jim, he won his seat at the last election. That is quite a big difference.
June 8th, 2009 at 11:34 am
Its a little different Kopu was an Alliance list MP, she split with the Alliance and got funding for Mana Wahine. Gordon Copeland was in a similar position, He split with United Future as a list MP and became co leader of the Kiwi Party but did not get extra funding as the rules were changed post Kopu so he he declared himself an independant MP. Of course Anderton also won his seat, which is material.
June 8th, 2009 at 11:50 am
As vibenna and dave say above, there’s actually quite a big difference between what Jim Anderton was criticising and his contemporary political party.
I also think there needs to be some caution in pronouncing that a party is a “fiction” and should not be regarded as a real party by law or Parliament. While there are lots of important issues and questions to be raised about Jim Anderton’s Progressive party, it’s a slippery slope if lawyers etc start saying that it doesn’t deserve to be recognised. What about other political parties that have been elected? Was Jim Anderton’s NewLabour Party (elected to Parliament in 1990) a “real” party? It also only had one MP. What about the Alliance, with 2 MPs elected in 1993? There are other examples.
The slippery slope problem is that in many countries, this argument that parties are “fictions” or “undemocratic” or “bad” are reasons to ban them or refuse to recognise them. In Samoa, independent MPs recently declared that they were now members of a new party, and the Speaker kicked them out of Parliament!
The real issue with Jim Anderton’s Progressive party and Alamein Kopu’s Mana Wahine party is the fact that they get additional parliamentary funding just by virtue of calling themselves a political party. Essentially they get pro rata more funding than other parliamentary parties. The basic reason that this has come about is that these minor parties have been “bought off” by the parliamentary funding cartel. In designing the parliamentary funding system, the larger parties have thrown minor parties a few crumbs of extra funding so that these parties share in spoils of the backdoor state funding system. This is classic cartel behaviour.
It’s a bit silly to say some parties aren’t real parties, when really it’s the funding system in Parliament that’s the problem, and acts as an incentive for such small minor parties to start up and continue as supposedly separate entities.
Bryce
http://www.liberation.org.nz
June 8th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
And he destroyed the Vogel House front lawn
June 8th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
If this was a post-election creation, like the Progressive Party in 2002, then it would be a rort. But the guy has run as a party over the last 3 elections and won 2 seats at the first and then 1 seat ever since. I think that should count as a party.
June 8th, 2009 at 12:43 pm
Mr. Anderton is showing he is an old dog who knows the rules of politics. If/when he stands down as an MP do you think
The Progressive Party haas a SSIH of winning his – or any other for that matter – seat. He goes – the party is over.
His Party funding may not be illegal – but it IS immoral.
June 8th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
Two questions
1. What is the effect on his future Parliamentary Super payments because of this hypocritical rort? I am assuming he does leave Parliament one day.
2. Have the good people of Wigram been misled and think they are actually voting for a dog catcher every three years. At least with Kopu her electorate seemed to know the difference.
June 8th, 2009 at 1:48 pm
The Progressive banner is a very useful party to Labour, a party to the left of Labour a mirror to Act. In the next few electoral cycles it might well pick up more seats as swing flows leftward and Labour goes centrist.
It will become especially valuable if (in an admittedly unlikely scenario) the Greens adopt some sort of an enviromental policy instead of being hard left.
June 8th, 2009 at 2:04 pm
Jolly Jim with his snout in the trough…. It’s not the first time is it.
June 8th, 2009 at 3:35 pm
Bryce,
“I also think there needs to be some caution in pronouncing that a party is a “fiction” and should not be regarded as a real party by law or Parliament.”
Err … just who went from one claim to the other? The law recognises actually lots and lots of “convenient fictions” … see virtually any family trust arrangement, or the concept of innocent-until-proven-guilty. So saying Anderton’s party is “a convenient fiction” in fact (precisely because it allows for the retention of funding/speaking opportunities in the House/etc, while Anderton acts as a de facto Labour MP) says nothing at all about whether the law ought to regard it as being a “real” party.
June 8th, 2009 at 7:47 pm
The public pays $164,000 a year to Jim Anderton’s Progressive Party – which sits with Labour, speaks with Labour, votes with Labour, and now campaigns for Labour.
…fucken parasite…
June 8th, 2009 at 10:04 pm
Consider this:
It the Progressive Party had not contested the last election, but Anderton had stood as in independent, then Labour might well have picked up all those 21,241 votes – and won two more seats.
So the existence of the Progressive Party actually helps National.
June 8th, 2009 at 10:50 pm
How are the Progressives any different to UnitedFuture? Peter Dunne sits with the government, speaks for the government, votes with the government… I can’t recall Dunne voting differently to National on any measure since the election.
Both Dunne and Anderton were elected to electorate seats under the banners of their respective parties. That is a lot different to someone who jumps ship from the party they were elected to represent in parliament and gets extra funding in the process (as was the case with Kopu, and Tau Henare et al when they split from NZ First to prop up Shipley’s govt).