Parliament resumed this week, so ending the period of Opposition-free politics that has prevailed since the end of last year.
Parliament is usually regarded as primarily a forum for the Opposition. It is in Parliament where the Opposition can hold weak and incompetent Ministers to account, exposing their failings at Question Time, or in debate on legislation for which they are responsible.
Governments only need Parliament for the passage of the annual Budget and the granting of Supply. Most of the rest of the time they can get by without Parliament, relying on Statutory Regulations and Ministerial authority. They do need Parliament for the passage of new legislation, but even that can be retrospective if necessary.
For the Opposition, however, Parliament is its primary platform. The point was clearly demonstrated nearly a year ago in the early stages of Covid-19 when the Government suspended Parliament altogether and governed for several weeks as a tight triumvirate of key Ministers. The Opposition (and the rest of the Government, for that matter) were completely irrelevant during that time.
So, the return of Parliament for the year should mean that the voice of the Opposition, which has been almost lacking since last year’s election, can be heard again. However, in the current circumstances that is not necessarily the case for a couple of reasons.
First is the numerical weakness of the current Opposition National Party. It simply does not have the numbers in Parliament to command the number of questions available to it at Question Time, or the speaking slots in House debates, or the numbers on Select Committees as was the case previously. Moreover, almost a quarter of the total reduced questions, speaking slots, and places on committees allocated to the Opposition – significantly less than the overall total in the previous Parliament – will now have to be given up for the ten-times enlarged ACT Party, further diffusing any message from the National Party.
The second reason grows from the first. The numerical strength of the Labour Party in the current Parliament means it can dominate the Parliamentary agenda in a way unlike any other government so far under MMP, and arguably any government since 1990.
It tried a little bit of grumpy criticism from Simon Bridges in the early stages but quickly found that did not resonate with the public
That is why, for example, the Government was able to put the House into Urgency almost immediately upon its resumption to push through its important though hardly immediately urgent decisions from last week about Maori wards on local authorities. But it did mean that the Government was able to take control of the Parliamentary agenda from day one this year, and place National (whose position on Maori wards looks reactive and unclear) firmly on the back foot.
This highlights one of National’s major problems at present – finding the issues on which to credibly differentiate itself from Labour. With Labour still riding the Covid-19 wave, National has been struggling since early last year to work out how to respond.
It tried a little bit of grumpy criticism from Simon Bridges in the early stages but quickly found that did not resonate with the public, even if many of Bridges’ criticisms later proved to be correct.
Now it seems to have settled back into a form of tepid “me-tooism”, limply backing the Government’s approach, and offering only the mildest of criticisms. All that has done has entrench the Government and its position in the public mind.
Only the ACT Party has been a constant and vocal critic of the Government’s Covid-19 approach – it can afford to be – but this further complicates National’s position. Caught somewhere between full support for the Government’s position and the outright opposition of ACT, National risks looking increasingly stranded on this issue. It urgently needs to develop its own narrative – and stick to it – otherwise it will look no more than a weak echo-chamber for what Labour is doing.
ACT seems to have worked out more quickly than National that the key to success in Opposition is to have clearly defined positions which can be simply and constantly repeated
It is looking like the same situation all over again when it comes to the response to the Climate Commission’s recommendations on the steps New Zealand needs to take over the next ten to fifteen years to mitigate the adverse effects of climate change. National’s lukewarm response so far looks likely to be drowned out by the more critical noise from ACT.
This is not to imply support for ACT’s position on either Covid-19 or climate change but rather to make the point that ACT seems to have worked out more quickly than National that the key to success in Opposition is to have clearly defined positions which can be simply and constantly repeated.
National, on the other hand after more than three years in Opposition, still seems be operating in the more necessarily nuanced way a government does. Against the real Government – and one as powerful and popular as this one – it cannot hope to win on that basis.
So, if National wants to make an impact in Parliament this year, it needs to become sharply focused on and pursue relentlessly, to the exclusion of all others, one or two key issues where the Government is vulnerable. And it should completely ignore the Prime Minister and her small group of competent Ministers with the aim of depriving them of much of their Parliamentary oxygen and instead focus entirely on exposing the weak links.
National’s moves to seek a vote of no-confidence in the Speaker are a good start, but they need a little sharper focus to be successful. Although a vote of no-confidence in the Speaker for his recent egregious behaviour was always doomed to fail, that should be only the start of the campaign.
Objectionable as the Speaker’s conduct has been, Labour was never going to allow a no-confidence motion to come before the House because his protection of the Prime Minister in particular, and other Ministers in the House is too critical to their ongoing momentum, which they will not surrender easily.
Therefore, National now needs to move its focus on to why Labour is continues to back the Speaker when he has behaved so inappropriately, especially as the Prime Minister has said she expects the highest conduct from members of her Government. A consistent, prolonged, tightly focused attack of this type aimed at making the Government feel uncomfortable about its support of the Speaker will make it increasingly more difficult for the Government carry on backing him. Moreover, the Speaker himself spoke earlier of standing down during this term, and National’s focus should be on accelerating that process.
But there are other gifts likely to keep on giving for longer for National if it is willing to accept them – child poverty and inequality, housing, and mental health. All were policies that Labour highlighted at the start of its term as its key priorities. All were highlighted in the so-called “Wellness Budget” in 2019 but Labour has so far failed dismally to achieve progress on any of them.
National should be aiming to become the party with clear, precise, and workable responses to each of these issues. It needs to become the party that will build more affordable houses for young families, the party pushing practical steps to reduce inequality and child poverty, and the party that will improve health services.
Highlighting appalling situations like this week’s revelation that the modern new hospital block just opened at Christchurch Hospital lacks the funding to commission its new mental health facilities, despite the Wellness Budget’s provisions, should become National’s stock-in trade.
The focus for National this year must be on carving out identifiable spaces as its own. It currently lacks the Parliamentary numbers and consequently the credibility to attempt to cover the whole field as it might wish. The best it can hope for is a few strategic targets that it can hit and leave a mark upon, so that people start to take notice of it again.
The next few months will show the extent to which National is prepared to learn and adapt to this new reality or whether it will continue to flail around aimlessly, inadvertently flattering the Government as it does so.
