NZ Herald editorial: National does itself no favours with 6000 questions in month

Editorial

The National Party has had a month to get over the disappointment of winning the election but losing the partners it needed to continue governing. It is in an unprecedented position in New Zealand's post-war politics — having more seats in Parliament than the party leading the Government. This outcome poses new challenges for the Opposition as much as for the Government.

For the moment, the Opposition's challenge is harder. The Government has things it promised to do and can get on with doing them, knowing the public will suspend judgment until a new Government has had a chance to show its character and its competence by making some decisions.

An Opposition, though, has not much to do except wait for any weaknesses in the Government to be found. This normally suits the party in Opposition well enough since it has normally suffered electoral rejection after a period in power and needs the time to lick its wounds and regroup.

That is not National's situation now. It has come back to Parliament with a much higher popular vote than any other party in the House and many of those voters probably feel as cheated as National that they are no longer governed by the party that won the most seats. But as National has responsibly told them, that is the electoral system the country has chosen. It is too soon to say whether the system will be discredited by the coalition it has put in power.

In the meantime, National has to make an important tactical choice: should it act like a normal negative Opposition or does its unusual strength give it a better option. So far it is acting like a normal Opposition, gleefully catching the Government napping over the numbers it needed to elected Parliament's Speaker and deluging the new ministers with no fewer than 6000 written questions over the month.

That number of questions is absurd when the Government has hardly had a chance to get into gear. National MPs might have little else to do but ministers and their taxpayer-funded staff have much more important calls on their time than to be dealing with trivial questions that have to be answered under Parliament's rules.

With the largest proportion of seats in the House, National gets the chance to ask more oral questions than previous Oppositions could ask. It should be putting all its energy into those rather than filing queries as petty as what meetings the minister attended on a stated date.

Instead of behaving like a normal disgruntled Opposition, National in is the rare position of being able to act like a party of government. It has not been defeated in the usual sense, it has not been rejected by a critical mass of voters who had supported it previously.

Its former ministers now have watching briefs over their portfolio. They will know most of its work much better than the new minister does at this point. They should be talking positively about its problems and the programmes they had under way, which they expect to resume before too long.

If they become a petty, quibbling Opposition, they will probably be in the wilderness for a while.