Kiwiblog

Tony Milne blogs:

I don’t expect to see much movement in Labour’s polling for at least another 12 months.  The question is, can Labour do enough in the next 28 months to increase its support by the 6% or so needed to form a coalition Government with other partners?  And will there be any partners?  That’s a topic for another post.

Here is Labour’s problem. If we take the last Roy Morgan poll,  then Nat/ACT has 54.5% and Lab/Gre 40.5%. I am assuming Anderton and Dunne retire.

Now let say Labour gains 6%, all at National’s expense. That has Nat/ACT at 48.5% and Lab/Gre at 46.5%. Assume Maori Party gets five seats (two overhang) and the seats are Nat/ACT 60, Lab/Gre 57 and Maori 5.

Now if Labour can not convince the Maori Party to support them, then 57 seats is not enough. They need 62.

So without the Maori Party a 6% improvement from 33% won’t get them there. They need a 10% improvement to 43% – a figure they have never achieved in an election under MMP.

It as you work this out, you realise the importance of what Duncan Garner blogged about Labour’s tactics working against their own interest.

Well John Key did it, he has 70 votes to 52 in Parliament, and has forged an agreement with the Maori Party that makes Labour’s chance of winning in 2011 a lot harder.

The agreement is here.

• Establish a group by 2010 to review constitutional issues, including Maori seats

Oh this will be fun. I love constitutional issues. There are so many – the Crown, the Treaty, the Bill of Rights, a written constitution, the Electoral Act etc etc.

• National not to remove the Maori seats without the consent of Maori, and the Maori Party not to seek to entrench them in the current term.

Absolutely predictable.

• Review the Foreshore & Seabed Act by end of 2009. If there is a repeal, All NZers will be guaranteed access to foreshore and seabed.

Labour’s legislation was wrong. I will not be surprised if the eventual agreement is to scrap it, but to legislate for access rights for all NZers.

• Pita Sharples to be Minister of Maori Affairs, and Associate Education and Corrections
• Tariana Turia to be Minister for the Community and Voluntary Sector, Associate Health, and Associate Social Development and Employment

I think Sharples will be a very good Maori Affairs Minister. There is some potential for conflict in Corrections between what National/ACT want to do, and what his instincts might say. But also areas of commonality such as the privately managed prison that had rave reviews from local Iwi.

• Maori Party to agree on Chairperson of Maori Affairs Select Committee, who will be a National MP.

If Georgina and Tau both make Cabinet, then I would guess this could be Hekia. But if one of the two existing Maori MPs misses out, then that one.

Incidentially there may be five Maori Ministers – Georgina, Tau, Paula, Pita and Tariana.

• All Maori MPs and MPs with an electorate larger than 20,000 sq kms to get a third Out of Parliament staff member

I would rather decisions like this are made through the Parliamentary Service Commission. But this was recommended by the Goulter review, and two offices are not enough for some of those large electorates.

Quote of the day goes to Hone Harawria:

“In three days, National offered us more than Labour did in three years,” said one of its MPs, Hone Harawira.

If Labour had gone with the Greens and the Maori Party in 2005, they wouldn’t have had to put up with effectively condoning Winston’s antics.

John Roughan in the Herald:

A week ago, when the votes were in and National didn’t need the Maori Party, a deal didn’t seem to me to be worth doing. How wrong I was.

If this deal can be done it will be the better because neither side needs to do it.

Exactly. It is more durable and genuine when it is unforced.

The Maori’s choice this week was National or nothing, which are both serious options. If National is offering next to nothing Maori might do better to wait. What’s another three years after 168? I bet that was said at all the hui held these past few days.

And I’ll bet something else: if National’s offer is accepted , the reasons that persuaded the hui will have little to do with the positions and portfolios agreed with John Key. The decisive reason will be the Maori leaders’ reading of National’s new attitude.

And more specifically John Key’s attitude. He has spent a long time building up a constructive relationship with the Maori Party, supported by his MPs.

It will have to be a radically new attitude for the National Party.

Roughan may be surprised by how keen rank and file activists are for a deal also.

My guess is they will have made it very clear they are not content with a relationship in which they are given a couple of self-contained responsibilities in Maori Affairs and Social Welfare and left alone with them.

They are more likely to want an assurance of being treated as an equal partner in all major decisions the Government will make.

That does not mean a right of veto but it does mean they are brought into the discussion, their viewpoints are taken seriously, disagreements respected, and each side makes genuine and strenuous efforts to reach decisions that satisfy both.

I guess the combined Maori Caucus of 11 MPs could play a role also.

No agreed formula of words is sufficient to make that sort of arrangement secure. Its success will depend completely on the heart of the more powerful partner. Key and his Cabinet will have to genuinely want this partnership and even be excited by it.

They should be excited. They have on their table a historical opportunity such as no incoming government has been given. They could be the authors of a constitutional precedent that will do more for the social wellbeing and national identity of New Zealand than they can yet imagine.

Okay, now John’s getting a bit too excited.

But indeed it is a future with some promise.

From the NZ Herald:

Prime Minister-elect John Key has promised iwi a working relationship which they have welcomed as a new era for Maori-Crown relations.

It’s amazing how much one can achieve when you don’t call them haters and wreckers.

Colin Espiner is blogging regarding his words just before the election:

I’ll go further. I’ll say this: the Maori Party will not go into a coalition government with National. If I’m proved wrong after the election, I’ll print out this blog and eat it, live on webcam.

Note that I’m not saying the Maori Party won’t offer confidence and supply to National (although I think this, too, is highly unlikely) or that it wouldn’t consider abstaining to allow National to govern. But I believe a coalition is out of the question.

So will Colin be eating his words literally?

His first defence:

One, it’s extremely unlikely there will be a coalition between National and the Maori Party. If anything, it will be a confidence and supply arrangement with ministerial seats outside Cabinet. That, by the definition of the last Labour-led government, was not a coalition arrangement.

On that defence, I am not convinced. People can play around with the words you use to describe an arranagement, but if you get to have Ministers in the Government, that is an effective coalition. If ti looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck it is a duck.

His next defence:

Two, the context of the blog was that if the Maori Party was in a position to hold the balance of power, it would not go with National. This, of course, hasn’t happened; National doesn’t need the Maori Party but is seeking to do a deal anyway. That takes a great deal of the pressure off the Maori Party to make a choice that could alienate its supporters.

Colin is on stronger ground here. Certainly I understood his earlier blog piece to be talking about the scenario where the Maori Party get to choose. That was indeed the context for it. However, Colin did make a mistake by not making that context explicit.

So what is the outcome?

The point is, I have sufficient wriggle room to avoid having to eat my blog.

But this would make me no better than the MPs I criticise daily for the same flip-flops.

Therefore, in the interests of fair play and because I’m not afraid to admit I don’t get everything quite right, I will, if the Maori Party signs on the dotted line on Sunday, eat my blog as promised.

Here’s where you come in. Send me some suggestions about suitable accoutrements, sauces, recipes, etc, to make the experience a little more palatable for me.

I’m leaning towards shredding it and mixing it into an omelette, but I’m open to suggestions.

Give me your ideas, and if the deal is done I’ll whip something up in the press gallery kitchen early next week. I will, of course, video it and post it right here on my blog so you can all watch me eating my media lunch.

I presume Colin will only be eating the one offending page. He’ll get sick if he does much more than that. I think chocolate sauce would help – everything goes down better with chocolate sauce!

Audrey Young speculates:

The Herald understands one Maori Party MP could become an associate Maori Affairs minister in return for the party abstaining on confidence and supply votes.

To get a bigger role the party is likely to have to support National, rather than only not opposing it.

I’d have some problems with the notion that a Minister of the Crown could abstain on supply and confidence votes for the Government. That weakens the bonds of Government even more. Next you’ll have Ministers able to vote against the Government on confidence and supply.

Danyl has been busy, I do not know where to start.

We have Maori Party split over Coalition Deal

The Maori Party have been offered entrenchment of the Maori seats and a review of the Foreshore and Seabed Act in exchange for fifty of their young every month for three years. …

It is understood that Sharples is deeply opposed to the proposed scheme while Tariana Turia is a strong advocate for Key’s right to hunt, kill and mount unemployed Maori youths, describing it as enhancing his rangatiratanga and sending a strong message to young Maori that if they study and work hard they will not be cut down in their prime by Key’s poison-tipped crossbow bolts or torn apart by his pack of savage dogs.

A resolution to the impasse was reached late last night, when the Maori party co-leaders met for a cup of tea to confront the problem. After a short, congenial discussion Dr Sharples drained his mug of Earl Grey and then slumped to the floor unconscious.

And Tizard dismisses ‘rogue election result’:

Outgoing Auckland Central electorate MP Judith Tizard has assured staff and family that she will not be stepping down as an MP in spite of her loss to National Party candidate Nicky Kaye in last weekends General Election.

‘I certainly never heard anything about any election,’ Tizard told the Dim-Post this morning. ‘And if there was something like that going on I like to think I’d be one of the first to know.’

Upon being informed of the results Tizard was quick to dismiss their significance.

‘I don’t think this represents the true wishes of the people of New Zealand or the people of Auckland Central,’ Tizard said. ‘This is clearly a rogue election result with no real impact that the media is beating up in order to sell more papers.’ …

Tizard has also confirmed that she will be maintaining her full contingent of staff and offices, rejecting the suggestion that she would now have to make her own dinner reservations and purchase her own plane tickets as ‘the worst kind of hate speech’.

Incoming National MP Nicky Kaye has advised she is negotiating a solution with Paliamentary Services, Tizard’s private secretary and an Armed Offenders unit.

Oh that was priceless.

The Herald reports:

Act leader Rodney Hide and United Future’s sole MP, Peter Dunne, are likely to get ministerial roles outside Cabinet – a deal structure pioneered by Helen Clark.

I’m not very keen on these sort of deals. My belief is that all but the most minor portfolios should be held by Ministers in Cabinet. Call me a traditionalist but the weakening of collective responsibility is a concern. Now to be fair to Key, he is not weakening it – Clark did. He is just not reversing it.

Peters was an example of how badly things can go – a Foreign Affairs Minister who campaigned against the Government’s free trade deal with China. Dunne however did show that you can make such an arrangement work.

While Mr Hide is making strong comments about the policies, he is also saying he has no bottom lines in the negotiations.

“We were clear in this campaign that we would support John Key as Prime Minister,” he said.

“We will honour that commitment. We’re not about to swing our toys out of the sandpit because we don’t get what we want.”

A very mature approach, and one which will probably please many of their voters who want stability.

Graeme Edgeler has calculated what Parliament would look like if there was no 5% threshold. It would be:

New Zealand National Party – 55 seats
New Zealand Labour Party – 41 seats
The Greens – 8 seats
New Zealand First Party – 5 seats
Māori Party – 5 seats
Act New Zealand – 4 seats
Jim Anderton’s Progressive – 1 seat
United Future New Zealand – 1 seat
The Kiwi Party – 1 seat
The Bill and Ben Party – 1 seat

Now you need 62 seats to be Government. So a centre-right group  would be:

National 55 + ACT 4 + United Future 1 + Kiwi Party 1 = 61/122 – not quite there

And centre-left could be:

Labour 41 + Greens 8 + NZ First 5 + Progressive 1 + Maori 5 = 60/122

So the Government would be decided by the Bill and Ben Party. They would either be the swing vote on every law in a centre-right Government, or they would force new elections by hanging the Parliament at 61 each.

This illustrates nicely why those who call for there to be no threshold needs to see a psychiatrist!

I actually support lowering the threshold to 4% as the Royal Commission recommended, but I don’t fancy a system where almost inevitably the balance of power is held by 1% fringe parties.

Curiablog has details of the two TV polls tonight. I epxect we will get tomorrow a Herald, Fairfax and Morgan poll also. The curiablog average has been updated for tonight’s polls but I will do a final update tomorrow morning.

Both polls show that National/ACT/United Future can form a Government, but that it is possible the Maori Party can hold the balance of power. The Greens are up strongly and in TV3 Labour dropped away a lot.

Chris Trotter on Alt TV this week said that on current polling a Labour/Green/Maori Party Government would be the most left-wing Government New Zealand has had for at least 70 years.

And he is correct. With the Greens at 10% they would not be a minor coalition partner but would pull the Government greatly towards the left and away from economic growth (which they don’t even like much). Of a Cabinet of 20, the Greens could expect five or six places, or in other words every current Green MP would become a Minister – including Keith Locke, Sue Kedgley, and Sue Bradford.

So it a clear choice for voters as we head into the election. As we face unprecedented economic challenges, it is a choice of a National-led Government that makes up 95% of the Government, or what Chris Trotter calls the most left-wing Government in 70 years.

Well done to the Greens for ruling out sitting around a Cabinet table with Winston. I am pleased. This isolates Helen Clark further as the only party leader still supporting Winston and saying he did nothing wrong and she would be happy to have him as a Minister again.

However there are a few things to note:

• The decision, while welcome, contradicts the reason that had been given previously for not ruling Winston out – that such decisions can only be made by the members in general meeting.
• They have not ruled out giving confidence and supply to a Government with Winston in it – they have just said they will not be Cabinet Ministers themselves in it.
• It is unclear whether they would refuse to serve in Cabinet if Peters is a Minister outside Cabinet
• They have said they would serve in Government with NZ First, so long as Peters personally is not a Minister. This is not was unequivocal as John Key’s position.

I also support the Greens on having a commission of inquiry into the allegations in the Meurant papers. I also support establishment of a permament anti-corruption commission that can police Ministers, government agencies and senior officals not just for breaches of the criminal law but for abuse of office for personal gain.

In an extraordinary and desperate flip-flop, One News reported tonight that Helen Clark said she now supports entrenching the Maori Seats, a policy the Maori Party has indicated may be a bottom line. Never mind she didn’t a few days ago – TVNZ amusingly showed her also saying that was not their policy in 2005, yet denying it was a flip-flop.

But what is really amusing is she has scored a massive own goal. How? Go back and read what Chapman Tripp said on entrenching the Maori Seats:

However, to add the Maori seats to the list of entrenched matters will require more than a majority vote in Parliament. When entrenching something new, the Standing Orders and our constitutional conventions come into play.

The Standing Orders state: “A proposal for entrenchment must itself be carried in a committee of the whole House by the majority that it would require for the amendment or repeal of the provision to be entrenched.” In other words, a proposal for entrenchment can only be passed by the super-majority it proposes – in this case, 75 per cent. …

On current polls, a 75 per cent vote in the next Parliament will require getting both National and Labour into the “ayes” lobby.

What this means for the Maori Party, even if it is in the position post-election to decide who gets to lead the next government, is it will have to somehow persuade both the suitor it is accepting and the suitor it is rejecting to support it.

Now think about how things play out now that Labour have said their policy is to support entrenchment and National has said its policy is not to.

If the Maori Party go with Labour, then they will not have a 75% majority. National will have no reason to change its policy and Labour/Maori Party will fail to entrench the seats. Labour can not deliver on entrenchment without National.

Now what happens if the Maori Party go with National, and as part of that they manage to negotiate that National support entrenchment in exchange for various concessions on other issues. Well they also will not have 75%, But here is the great thing – Helen has already announced that Labour’s policy is now to support entrenchment. Labour will have to vote to entrench the seats, even though they are not in Government, or risk a mighty backlash from Maoridom for having lied to them about supporting entrenchment.

In her desperation to get close to the Maori Party, she has massively blundered by giving away one of her major post-election negotiating items. She has actually given the Maori Party an increased incentive to go with National, as that is the only way to get the 75% needed to entrench the Maori seats.

Well done, Chief Political Strategist Clark.

Matt McCarten provides advice to left voters on tactical voting. Much of what he says is sensible, but his advocacy of a deliberate overhang strategy is dangerous and will destroy MMP and the Maori seats if he succeeds. His advice:

Centre-left voters

Staunch Labour voters will give their electorate and party vote to Labour. But the softer centre-left voters should give their party vote to the Greens.

Agree this is sensible. Also softer centre-left voters can vote for the best candidate in their electorate while still voting centre-left on the party vote. You don’t have to put up with a bad or lazy MP just because of their party – this is why we have MMP.

Staunch left voters

… If these left-wingers instead gave their party vote to the Greens it would give them another two MPs they wouldn’t otherwise get.

Matt is correct here. A vote for RAM, Alliance etc is wasted and helps National more than it does Labour or the left. They should vote Greens. The same goes on the right – a vote for Family Party, Kiwi Party etc is a wasted vote and they should vote for one of National, ACT or United Future.

New Zealand First supporters

It will take a miracle now for NZ First to get over the 5 per cent threshold given what’s happened to Winston Peters. Any of NZ First’s soft supporters should now probably throw their party vote to Labour.

That would be sensible. Having NZ First get 4% and wasted vote will help push National over the line. But of course not all NZ First voters are centre-left.

The only glimmer of hope for NZ First would be if all the non-National party supporters in Tauranga threw their electorate votes behind him. If he won Tauranga the party votes for NZ First would not be wasted and any list MPs he was able to drag through on his coat tails would be added to a Labour-led government. But don’t hold your breath on this.

I suggest people watch TV tonight before deciding on that strategy.

Progressive Party supporters

Their sole MP, Jim Anderton, is a reliable Labour ally. He won’t win enough votes to bring in an extra MP, so his supporters should give their party vote to Labour to help them win an extra seat that may make the difference in Clark keeping her job.

Here Matt gets dangerous. He is implicitly suggesting a deliberate overhang strategy which means he is trying to engineer a non-proportional result to allow the left to govern despite getting less party vote than the right.

Maori Party supporters

These are the crucial voters. If you are enrolled on the Maori electoral roll, it’s a no-brainer. You give your electorate vote to the Maori Party candidate so it wins all seven seats. Ironically, Clark’s only hope of being returned to power is if her Labour candidates are defeated by the Maori Party.

Even if Labour lost all their Maori seats, it has no effect on the total number of MPs that Labour gets. The total number of MPs a party gets is determined by the number of party votes they get – not the number of electorate seats they win.

If the Maori Party wins all the seven electorates it will still need 6 per cent of the party vote to get an eighth MP from its party list. That won’t happen and in those circumstances their list votes are wasted.

Therefore it’s better for the centre-left if the Maori Party gets a smaller party vote total provided it wins more electorate MPs than it would be entitled to from their party list vote. This would create a “parliamentary overhang”.

Therefore, if the Maori Party won all seven seats but only won 2 per cent of the party vote, it would have five more MPs than its list allocation. This would result in 125 MPs in a new parliament, rather than the usual 120. Clark or Key would then need 63 MPs rather than 61 to have a majority.

It is one thing to have an accidential overhang as happens from time to time. But to try and deliberately engineer an overhang is quite simply wrong. It will result in a crisis of confidence in the Government, destory MMP and provoke a nasty backlash against the Maori Seats. Matt should think about the long-term game. Here is why he supports it short-term:

If National got 48 per cent of the party vote it would get 58 MPs. Assuming its allies Act and United Future got four MPs between them, that would give the centre-right combo 62 MPs, making a majority in a 120-seat parliament.

But if there was an overhang parliament of 125, Key would be one seat short. That would mean if the Maori Party supported Labour, Clark would win a fourth term.

So Matt is saying that even if National/ACT United get 51% to 52% of the vote, a deliberate overhang strategy could allow a Government of the left to be formed.

Now under FPP sometimes a Government did get elected with fewer votes than the main Opposition party. But FPP was not a proportional system, put in place primarily to stop such a situation happening. If the public has chosen to have a non-proportional system (such as FPP or SM) then it is quite in order that there will be non-proportional results. But if the public have chosen to have a proportional voting system, then a deliberate strategy to produce a non-proportional result should be condemned.

It isn’t smart politics – it is desperate politics. Years ago people advocated National should do the same – have a rural party that contests rural electorates only and wins say 15 overhang seats, and a National Party that contest the party vote. People calculated this would give National a permament majority. And it would have. Until Labour did the same. Eventually you’d end up with both major parties splitting into list and electorate parties and a Parliament of 190 with 70 overhang seats!

The Herald on Sunday editorial calls for a clear mandate for a new Government, so they can cope with what might be the worst economic crisis in 70 years.

To have a real shot at cobbling together a majority, Labour would need the support of NZ First, an option unlikely to be available since the polls strongly point to extinction both of the party and its turbulent leader, Winston Peters. He cannot be ruled out entirely; history shows that if anyone can rise from a political deathbed he can. But if that happens, Helen Clark will have to ask herself whether she can – or should – work with him again.

Asked and answered. Yes, yes, and yes. She almost soudns enthusiastic about doing so.

For no matter how much Peters harrumphs and blusters, the donations fiasco has revealed him to be both a hypocrite and a man whose doubletalk has been hard to distinguish from calculated deceit. Clark would need to ask herself whether she should rely, like every administration in the MMP era, on such a perverse dissembler to keep her on the ninth floor of the Beehive. She may believe that she has a political mission to fulfil and that it is fair to resort to any expedient within the rules that allows her to do that. But a real leader knows when the prize is not worth the price.

A perverse dissembler. Now that’s a phrase I like.

It is almost sad to see Clark cling so tightly to Winston, even after the latest revelations.

In the end, Clark may not face that choice, since Peters will probably be consigned to the oblivion he so richly deserves. But she also faces the question of whether a minority Government she leads would have a legitimate claim to power. If Labour were to win significantly fewer party votes than National and yet assemble a ramshackle coalition with the Greens, the Maori Party and the Progressives, Clark could end up with a constitutional hold on power to which it had no moral entitlement. A Government so formed would risk being seen as cynically corrupting the intentions of MMP, which could lead to a regrettable backlash against proportional representation. And a Government whose very existence runs counter to the plainly expressed will of the people is not likely to go down very well in the country that invented the concept of the fair go.

Now there is no doubt that Labour has the legal and constitutional right to form a Government even if it gets less votes than National. I have never argued otherwise. But voter expectations of parties is another matter.

For example in Canada there is a strong convention that the largest party gets the chance to form a Government. This is, like in NZ, not a legal or constitutional requirement – it is a cultural or political expectation. You actually have the main opposition party (the Liberals) voting in favour of supply, to allow the Government to continue. They know they would be punlished by the electorate for causing the Government to dissolve, or not allowing it to form.

So while there is no question about the legal and constitutional position, there are cultural and political issues about how NZ would react to a party that came second, forming the Government. To my mind it depends on the exact situation.

If National beat Labour by only 2%, and Labour and Greens formed a majority Government I don’t think anyone would blink much.

If National beat Labour by say 14%, and Labour, Greens, NZ First and Maori Party and Progressive all combined to form a Government, then I think there would be some significant disgruntlement, regardless of the fact there is no legal barrier at all.

If National actually got over 50% of the vote, and didn’t get to form a Government due to overhang there would be very significant backlash I would say. And if the overhang was as a result of a deliberate strategy, then I would say things could get very messy.

The legal position is quite clear – any MP can be made Prime Minister and lead a Government so long as they can win confidence and supply in the House. But the political and cultural acceptability of those arrangements is not the same thing and will depend (if the biggest party does not form a Government) on how big the gap was.

And so, with a week to go, the polls suggest there is a mood for change. But the incoming Government needs to have a clear and unequivocal mandate. The crisis enveloping global financial systems will call for strong leadership from decision-makers untrammelled by the need to pander to the competing desires of coalition partners. The worst thing that voters could do on Saturday is to try to second-guess the main party leaders with so-called strategic voting.

We need a clear result to strengthen the hand on the tiller in the stormy seas ahead.

A clear result would be great. And it is worth remembering that National has said it will try and strike deals with ACT, United Future and the Maori Party even if it can govern without any or all of them. So you would have a Government able to govern with strong leadership when necessary, but one that voluntarily chooses to bring as many other parties as possible into Government – not to give them a veto and rule by committee, but to recognise talent and good ideas across the board.

John Key on Sunrise said that he was confident that Rodney Hide would be in Government with National, and be a Minister in a National-led Government.

While in one sense this is not surprising, it is I think the first time John Key has explicitly said that Hide will be a Minister.

It is significant that Peter Dunne has not just indicated a preference for National, but ruled out supporting a Labour-led Government after the election. There are probably a variety of reasons for this:

1. Genuine horror at what a very left Government with up to 15 Green MPs would be like. He realised there would be no shift towards the centre if Labour gets re-elected but a big big shift to the left.
2. A realisation that he may have trouble attracting support from voters wanting to change the Government unless they knew for sure a vote for United Future would be a vote for change. Now one can say that a vote for National, ACT or United Future are all votes to change the Government.
3. An assumption that in a Government made up of Labour, Progressive, Greens, NZ First and the Maori Party there would be no room for him in a role of any significance.

I welcome United Future’s decision. There are some people who won’t be able to vote National, but would feel able to vote United Future, and now they can do so knowing it is a vote to change the Government.

Also Peter Dunne is a highly experienced and capable Minister, and Governments need those. Dunne’s tax policy of three rates – 10%, 20% and 30% is a very good policy, and I would be happy to have him push that along in Governmeent.

A hydra normally has seven heads, not five. Whale Oil has kindly provided this illustration.

There is a serious point to the talk about the five or seven headed Hydra.

We are in the midst of the most serious global financial crisis for 70 years. Getting through it with minimal harm will not be easy.

A Government of Labour, Winston, Anderton, the Greens and maybe Maori Party is not one likely to cope well. Half of them want to abolish the Reserve Bank Act. Half of them don’t care about government debt. All of them want huge amounts more spending. Do you think they could credibly exercise fiscal and monetary discipline? Do you think they could make hard, even unpopular calls, if deemed necessary for the NZ economy?

Colin Espiner has been talking to Pita Sharples and on the basis of that conversation says there is no chance of a Maori-National coalition – a gutsy call:

Sharples wants to improve the lot of Maori. He wants to do this from a position of power, believing, unlike the Greens, that the best way to do this is from government.

But Sharples is a man possessed. He’s possessed by the knowledge that no matter what the Maori says or does during its current courtship dance with the National Party, his followers know only one party – Labour. He’s frank about this, and when you push him, he admits that the chances of the Maori Party entering into any sort of coalition arrangement with National is extremely unlikely.

I’ll go further. I’ll say this: the Maori Party will not go into a coalition government with National. If I’m proved wrong after the election, I’ll print out this blog and eat it, live on webcam.

That in itself should be incentive enough for such a coalition

Note that I’m not saying the Maori Party won’t offer confidence and supply to National (although I think this, too, is highly unlikely) or that it wouldn’t consider abstaining to allow National to govern. But I believe a coalition is out of the question.

If Colin is right, then Helen Clark is going to be very happy.

At the end of our conversation today, Sharples conceded that it would be much easier for the Maori Party if Labour won the most votes on election day. He’d rather deal with Labour, too, I suspect. Even if Labour isn’t the major party, Sharples would look to a deal that included New Zealand First and the Greens first.

As a last resort, if the “other door” was completely shut, the Maori Party would talk with National, Sharples told me, but even then he was doubtful about whether the Maori Party’s supporters would back such a deal.

I am just imagining a Labour/Greens/Maori/NZ First Government trying to cope with the financial crisis and live within its means. More likely are huge tax increases.

So with two and half weeks of the campaign to go, it’s Labour, NZ First, the Greens, and almost certainly the Maori Party on one side. And National, ACT, and United Future on the other. ACT is probably good for four or even five seats, but United Future will be lucky to get more than one.

That means National needs to get very close to 50% of the party vote to have any hope of forming a government.

Or National has to agree to something that the Maori Party want – and that Labour won’t or can’t agree to. I’m thinking seabed and foreshore legislation here.

The maths is cruel, but there you have it. The polls mean very little against the reality of MMP. The only message National should be pushing now is this: If you want to change the government, you must party vote National. Virtually anything else (except ACT) will see Clark reinstalled in Premier House for a fourth term.

I agree that is the desired message.

I’ve added a new feature onto the party polls at curiablog. Under Coalition options I’ve listed the easiest (as in least number of parties in order of difficulty) scenarios for a National-led Government and Labour-led Government using the seat projection for a poll.

For example the latest TV3 poll had:

I find it very amusing to see so many on the left start to hug the Maori Party and claim that it is unthinkable for the Maori Party not to support Labour after the next election. Because some of them used to say the exact opposite.

Jordan Carter blogged in 2005 on how the Maori Party is *not* on the left:

It seems to me that the Maori Party’s ambition is to work back towards an illusory golden past of Maoridom, where individuality is subsumed under collective whanau, hapu and iwi identities. This is highlighted by the constant references to whanau, hapu and iwi in their speeches; by their hostility to the inevitable effects of modernity and the Enlightenment on Maori society; by their desire to see social services dominated by a Maori “Aristocracy” (also known as iwi-based service agencies) rather than the universal services provided by the welfare state.

A more conservative – in fact reactionary – approach to politics is hard to imagine. If a pakeha-based party was out campaigning for the restoration of the great landed estates as there were in England; supporting the putting of economic and social power back in the hands of the elites; undermining the national institutions of common citizenship that bind us together – that party would be laughed out of political existence within minutes.

And it gets better:

That party stands for the antithesis of left wing politics, and of liberal politics. It seeks to turn around Maori society and take it back to some non-existent glorious past, and in so doing create a new privileged elite that can exert the kind of social control of the past. These are not its policies – the policies are more middle of the road than this analysis allows; I am talking about the values and the direction they want to go.

It has nothing to do with the challenges that truly face Maori society in the 21st century. It has no answers to poverty or disadvantage or structural racism or the fight for social and economic equality. It has nothing to do with the left. On that basis, the miracle of Turia’s time in the Labour Party is that it lasted so long; not that she left. The stunning ineptitude of most of our media means that the party has been pained as Labour friendly, when it is the opposite.

And finally:

I know some wet urban liberals who are thinking of voting for the Maori Party. I just hope they realise that if they do, they are voting for a party of the conservative right, which would be much more comfortable in coalition with parties that shared its hostility to the State and to national collective institutions – National and ACT – than it would be dealing with the progressive elements in National and with the bulk of the Labour Party.

Sadly the realities of politics may mean that my party has to deal with these people post election, just as it may mean we have to deal with NZ First, but even NZ First is not as bad (from my point of view) as the Maori Party. At least they fall within a recognisably relevant set of issues – fear of cultural change, populism, economic and social nationalism and so on.

And more recently in 2007:

But when the rubber hits the road, in real hard edged policy debates, they always seem to end up siding with the right.

Anyone on the left who supports the party is simply making a National government more likely. I thank the Maori Party leadership for continuing to demonstrate that on a regular basis.

Now I’ve fairly consistently advocated the opposite – that in fact the Maori Party is more left leaning than right leaning. Their voting record backs up my assertion. Over time I believe the Maori Party will support Labour more often than National. But that is not to say they will back Labour every single time.

So having said that, I think anyone who states with certainty what the Maori Party will do post 2008 election is just jerking off. There will be multiple factors in play:

• What policy agreements can be reached
• How much vote each major party got (like NZF and UFNZ last time they may give first option to the largest party)
• Personal relationships between MPs
• What Cabinet positions are offered, if sought
• How many seats the Maori Party wins
• What they think their supporters will want
• What deal they think will be best for the Maori Party and for Maori

John Armstrong in the Herald reports on a faux pax by Pita Sharples though:

Commenting on National Radio on Sunday’s Marae-DigiPoll survey, the Maori Party co-leader initially said the findings made it “easy” for his party to go into some kind of governing arrangement with National after the election.

No sooner had he uttered the word “easy” than he had modified it to the much safer and less definite “easier”.

Labour have used this to attack the Maori Party by saying a vote for them is a vote for National. Not the most sensible tactics I would have thought as on current polls the Maori Party is Labour’s only hope of a 4th term.