The advent of Judith Collins as leader of the National Party has, whatever else one may think about it, restored some semblance of normal order to New Zealand politics. The National party at last has a leader who relishes the job and who is happy and confident in taking it on.

However disappointed she may have been in her earlier quests for the job, Judith Collins has so far demonstrated that she is at last in her happy place. She has manifestly enjoyed the process of sorting out her front bench (perhaps taking the odd opportunity to settle an old score or two), she has looked comfortable in handling the press, and – while her policy statements have involved nothing more so far than reading out a speech on infrastructure written for Todd Muller – she has done so competently enough.

This means that the voter now has something approaching a real choice. The next election will no longer be a cake walk for Jacinda Ardern and the Labour Party. So how do the rivals shape up?

In purely personal terms, the advantage must surely lie with our current Prime Minister. She does not carry the baggage – in terms of Judith Collins’ image as a “crusher”, her past association wth “dirty politics”, and the occasional past misdemeanour as a minister – that are inevitably part of the burden that the new National leader must carry.

Jacinda Ardern, by contrast, has distinguished herself throughout her term as Prime Minister by virtue of her empathy, kindness and ability to unite and inspire us all in a great national campaign to defeat the coronavirus pandemic. So, in personal terms, advantage to Ardern.

But what about the policy front? It is here, surely, that Judith Collins will seek to establish an advantage. As her predecessors, Simon Bridges and Todd Muller both incessantly claimed, and indeed all National party leaders have always claimed, it is in managing the economy that National governments come into their own.

And Winston Peters, worried no doubt about NZ First’s poll ratings, has weighed in, claiming that National’s nine-year stint in government from 2008 to 2017 meant that they alone had the necessary experience.

But how well do these claims stand up to proper examination? Would a new National government, at this time of great economic risk, extend the legacy bequeathed to us by earlier National governments?

That legacy, let us remind ourselves, included a run-down health service, with underpaid nursing and midwifery staff, rotting hospital buildings, and struggling GPs. It included under-funded schools and underpaid teachers. And it included the deterioration of our environment, so that we can no longer swim safely in our rivers or trust our drinking water.

And, in macro-economic terms, it has included perennial trade deficits and record levels of debt. It has included selling off state houses and allowing overseas interests to buy up some of our most valuable assets, and allowing others to blackmail us by demanding continuing subsidies as the price for keeping their businesses going.

“Managing the economy” under National governments, in other words, has usually meant sacrificing everything for the sake of producing a government surplus, even if that has meant running down our essential public services and abusing our public servants by failing to pay them properly.

So, the contest between Ardern and Collins may not quite follow the usually expected course. It may not be quite as simple as Ardern’s personal qualities versus Collins’ hard-headed approach to running the economy.

Judith Collins will at least make a fight of it, but the balance of advantage may still weigh – in both personal and policy terms – in the Prime Minister’s favour. Game on.

Bryan Gould
23 July 2020

Having lost yet another leader in quick succession, the National party was clearly so desperate to find a successor that they turned to someone whose earlier bids to become leader they had already twice rejected.

It may not be clear why Judith Collins should suddenly have become National’s saviour after her earlier rejections; and it is hard to understand why the factors that counted against her in the past should suddenly have become of little account and have been overlooked on this occasion.  Perhaps National supporters hope that the voters will have short memories.

It is worth reminding ourselves, however, of just why she was thought to have disqualified herself from high office.   Her close links to Cameron Slater, he of the notorious Whale Oil blog, earned her a reputation as an enthusiastic practitioner of what came to be called “dirty politics” – Slater had, after all, praised her publicly as his “mentor” – and her approach to politics was well documented in Nicky Hager’s book entitled “Dirty Politics”.  Her philosophy was summed up in the advice she offered to Slater to the effect that if someone tried to hurt you, you should hit them back twice as hard, and that “if you can’t be loved, it’s best to be feared”.

This attitude was confirmed in the pleasure she seems to take in the nickname “Crusher” – something she is still keen to highlight, (though only three boy racer’s cars were ever actually crushed).

Of somewhat more substance is the episode when, as a member of John Key’s government, she was “stood down” by the then Prime Minister and stripped of the title “Honourable.”. He disciplined her for allowing a conflict of interest to develop when, on a ministerial visit to China at the taxpayer’s expense, she attended meetings concerned with her husband’s private business interests, and then sought to conceal that fact by giving a misleading account of the reason why she had undertaken a particular journey.

Even National voters were inclined to regard this history, and these episodes and attitudes as enough to make her unelectable, and she was accordingly treated for a long time as electoral bad news and a hard sell to voters.  Perhaps National will hope she has mellowed and that the voters will see a more conciliatory politician; but, without her much-trumpeted “toughness”, what else does she have to offer?

Whether or not “Crusher” Collins is the real Judith Collins, can we really be convinced that more aggression and nastiness – whether real or manufactured – is what we need in our politics or in any other area of our national life?  I would suggest that more kindness is what is needed – and that, as between kindness and “toughness”, kindness wins out every time.

And if we feel that we have a need for leaders with courage and strength, haven’t we just had and seen the prime example of a leader who was ready and able to take the “tough” decisions and to provide the leadership to guide us successfully through a great national crisis? 

Electing Judith Collins as leader has to be, for National, a triumph of hope over experience.

Bryan Gould

16 July 2020

Simon Bridges must be the unluckiest person in New Zealand politics.

When he was elected as leader of the National party, he also became Leader of the Opposition – a position, he was entitled to assume, that would require him to “oppose”.

But the government he set out to oppose was not an ordinary government and was not an ordinary political opponent.  The advent of the Covid 19 pandemic changed the rules of the game.

By virtue of her clarity and firmness of purpose in fighting the pandemic, and her brilliance as a communicator, the Prime Minister transformed herself from just another party politician, and became instead the “captain” of a “team of five million”.

This transformation forced a change on the Opposition as well.  Conventional attacks on the government’s record – and that record was essentially about the pandemic – were no longer seen as acceptable and expected, but were regarded instead as unpatriotic and as a deliberate attempt to undermine a great collective national effort and campaign.

Notwithstanding the adverse reactions – not least from his own supporters – whenever he tried to damage the government’s credibility, it took Simon Bridges too long to wake up to this changed scenario.  By the time he had learned the lesson, it was too late; and it was that failure that cost him the leadership.

No one doubts that the changed situation would have been a difficult one for any leader of the Opposition.  To navigate a course that permitted Simon Bridge to maintain critical pressure on the government without offending that majority that wanted to see the government succeed in its campaign against the virus would have required political skills of the highest order – and, sadly for Simon Bridges, he was, perhaps not surprisingly, found wanting.

With that unhappy example in mind, it might have been thought that his successor, Todd Muller, would have avoided falling into the same trap.  But, not a bit of it – the new leader enthusiastically lobbed hand grenades at the government from day one, and whenever he could, and his relevant ministers, such as Michael Woodhouse, followed suit.

They were joined by the grande dame of the National party, Michelle Boag, and by ambitious back-benchers, such as Hamish Walker.  And, even worse, they weren’t too fussy about the charges they levelled or where they had come from.  Michael Woodhouse, for example, peddled a story about a homeless man joining the queue for free accommodation in managed isolation in a quarantine hotel –  a story he has never been able to stand up.

And Woodhouse was one of the two National MPs who were leaked the private details of Covid 19 sufferers by Michelle Boag – a “leak” which Todd Muller and his colleagues then made much of and used to attack the government.  Michelle Boag and Hamish Walker have now, after the deception was discovered and they have confessed to their culpability, both fallen on their swords.

But why did Todd Muller allow the story of “the leak” to run for so long without correcting it?  And why did he and Michael Woodhouse both sit on the information that Woodhouse had also received e-mails from Michelle Boag?  

Why did Michael Woodhouse, having received the e-mails from Michelle Boag, issue a statement that it was “unconscionable and unacceptable” that the private details had been leaked, wth its implication that this was a government bungle, when he knew perfectly well how the leak had arisen?   Did Todd Muller, in an attempt to deflect attention from himself and his Health spokesperson, decide that Hamish Walker was junior enough to be thrown to the wolves as the fall guy who would carry the can?  

Can Todd Muller and his senior lieutenants survive, in the voters’ eyes, having presided over such a disreputable and unprincipled manoeuvre?  As Marc Antony might have said, with Shakespearean irony, “For Todd Muller is an honourable man.  So are they all, all honourable men.”  Is Simon Bridges now permitting himself a quiet smile?   

Bryan Gould

11 July 2020

So now we know, beyond all doubt.  The National party has no interest in joining the “team of five million” in our fight against the pandemic but its priority is to take every opportunity it can to damage the government.

 The cynicism is breathtaking.  It was prepared to leak the private details of Covid 19 sufferers so that it could lambast the government for doing what it had just done itself.

Are we justified in blaming the National party itself or was this indefensible act just a piece of “private enterprise”?  Well, Hamish Walker is a National MP and no National insider is more inside than Michelle Boag – a former party President and still a significant eminence grise.

And how much did the party’s Health spokesperson know of the shameless manoeuvre?  Michael Woodlouse (oops, a bit of a typo there!) was quickly off the mark to put the knife into the government.

And this is Todd Muller’s National party.  Did Hamish Walker take his lead from his leader and pursue what he understood to be party strategy – that is, to attack the government at every opportunity, whether justified or not?

Is that whirring sound we can hear that of chickens coming home to roost?

In 1987, as a British Labour MP, I was elected to the Shadow Cabinet by my colleagues and was asked by the party leader to direct Labour’s campaign in the general election of that year.  The election was to take place at the height of Mrs Thatcher’s dominance and we were expected to do very badly.  We duly lost the election but ran a much better campaign than expected; I fronted on television screens throughout and attracted a good deal of attention.

For me personally, this ushered in a golden period.  I topped the Shadow Cabinet elections in the following year and was elected to the party’s National Executive Committee – I began to be talked about as a potential party leader.

But by the time the then leader, Neil Kinnock, had resigned, following a further election defeat in 1991, my star had waned.  Opponents and rivals in the parliamentary party had done their best to undermine me, and I was defeated in the contest for the leadership later in 1991.  And the winner, a Scot named John Smith, had had the support of what was then a powerful phalanx of Scottish Labour MPs in the House of Commons, whereas my own geographical support base was extremely limited – there weren’t too many Kiwis in the parliamentary Labour party.

I recount this personal experience of the political roller-coaster as a reflection on what we have seen in New Zealand politics over recent months when the roller-coaster has been well and truly in full operation.

We had, first, the “rolling” of Simon Bridges, elected as National leader only a couple of year earlier, and then his partial resurrection as Shadow Foreign Minister under his new leader, Todd Muller, who – unusually – came from nowhere and, as an unknown, put himself forward for the top job. 

Then we had the resignations and departures from politics of Paula Bennett and Anne Tolley.  The former, who had been Deputy Prime Minister, must at one point have envisaged still further heights.  And we are now faced with the publication of a new memoir by Judith Collins, a perennial contender in the public mind for the National leadership, (and perhaps again now), but never quite puling the trigger (though the book may be intended to serve that purpose).

Nor has the Labour party been immune from such ups and downs.  Their travails over their leadership until recently are still fresh in the memory.  It is their good luck (or rather, perhaps, good management) that the one stable element in the political landscape is undoubtedly Jacinda Ardern – she is a fixture, and unassailable.  But others, as David Clark will no doubt testify, can “suffer the slings and arrows”, while yet others will feel, perhaps, that a new day is dawning.  Chris Hipkins, for example, seems to be forging a reputation as a “Mr Fixit” and as having “a safe pair of hands”.  

The one thing we can be sure of, however, is that the political roller-coaster will continue to buck and roll – and that is not entirely or even substantially an unwelcome feature of democratic politics.

Public opinion is inherently fickle and can move around with surprising speed, and is all too likely to be pushed one way or that by media commentary.  From one viewpoint, that creates an inbuilt instability which many would see as an unfortunate and unwelcome backdrop to what one might hope would be effective government.

But, at another level, the volatility of public opinion might be seen as what keeps our politicians on their toes, and is an essential element in a functioning democracy; it is surely preferable to the manufactured and immoveable public support supposedly enjoyed by a Vladimir Putin or a Kim Jong Un.  And it provides an incentive to our politicians to be up front and straight with the voters and to “tell it like it is”.

And it makes all the more remarkable the sustained popular support enjoyed over a long period by our own Prime Minister.  She must be doing something right!

Bryan Gould

8 July 2020