It confirms Labour’s drift from being a policy-driven movement into a machine designed simply to win office.
As a tactic, having little policy to be attacked and no bottom lines may be clever politics.
But it comes at a price, not just for Labour, but for New Zealand.
National has never pretended to be anything more than a party of managerial competence.
Labour, by contrast, has historically been a party of ideas and reform.
The last Labour Government was the exception. It was elected on a wave of Jacinda-mania, an emotion, not a programme. In six years, is there a single reform that has endured?
This column warned Labour it would come to regret skipping the painful but necessary process of analysing its failure in government.
A proper review would have revealed that Labour’s failure stemmed from not doing, when in Opposition, the intellectually challenging task of policy development.
That mistake is now being repeated. Labour is trying to win office without first doing the work of being ready to govern.
Labour today has no practical solutions for the problems that will define the next decade: superannuation, health, productivity, education and an economy that cannot afford its promises.
A basic truth of MMP is that forming a government is a two-step process. First there is the election. Then there are the coalition negotiations.
I used to be Labour’s negotiator, from Treaty claims to doing a deal with Fiji over sugar. In negotiations, the side with a plan sets the agenda.
Unlike Labour, the Green Party has a plan.
If the left win post-election, negotiations will centre over the Greens’ programme.
Policy-light may win Labour office. In Government, it hands the agenda to the Greens.
What a contrast with former Prime Minister Helen Clark.
Voters always knew where Clark’s lines were. She never hid her contempt for the Greens, whom she regarded as “quixotic”.
In 2002 she told this newspaper she would rather govern as a minority than enter a coalition with the Greens. She cited their opposition to growth, trade and superannuation.
Today’s Greens are far more extreme, not only in tone, but in substance.
Former Green Party leaders Jeanette Fitzsimons and Rod Donald would never have claimed “white cis men” are responsible for violence.
They would never have chanted “from the river to the sea” and then claimed they did not know it was a phrase widely understood as calling for the end of Israel.
But it is the Greens’ policies that are even more concerning than their rhetoric.
Hipkins asks us to compare Labour’s relationship with the Greens with National’s relationship with New Zealand First over an India free trade agreement (FTA). Let us do that.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon campaigned on achieving an Indian FTA. I think Winston Peters’ opposition is populist, but New Zealand First has not promised to tear up the treaty if it is ratified.
In contrast, the Greens are campaigning to revoke mining licences granted under the fast-track regime, with no pledge to pay compensation.
To do so would violate investment treaties, trigger international arbitration, and almost certainly invite trade and diplomatic retaliation.
Peru cancelled mining licences and has been forced by international arbitration to pay tens of millions in compensation.
Clark ruled out the Greens for their stance on genetic engineering, which she conceded was, in the scheme of things, a minor issue.
Today Labour boasts about how well it works with a party that advocates policies that will destroy New Zealand’s reputation as a stable country governed by the rule of law.
Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson says “the Greens are a Tiriti party”. Among other things, this means constitutionally recognising Papatūānuku (Earth Mother). Lawyers and judges will have a field day.
Then there is tax.
The Greens want to use the tax system to engineer a transfer of wealth. The compounding effect of the proposed 1.5% annual tax on trust assets would devastate small business and the middle class.
There were over 400,000 trusts registered as of June 30, 2022, most established for reasons other than tax.
Accountants frequently advise that before starting a business, families should transfer their home into a trust.
Trusts often last decades. A 1.5% annual tax over 50 years would appropriate more than half the original asset.
The compounding effect of the proposed additional 2.5% wealth tax would be even greater.
Migration to Australia, where there is no wealth tax, would become a stampede.
A way to assess a person also works for a political party.
As the saying goes: “Show me your friends and I will show you your future.”
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