Localism: The common thread in New Zealand’s emerging coalition - Oliver Hartwich

Prime Minister-elect Christopher Luxon. Photo / Raphael Franks

OPINION

New Zealand politics is in limbo right now. Special votes are being counted. Many MPs are taking a break after a long campaign. Official coalition negotiations have not even begun.

On the plus side, that gives us time to ponder how well the three parties most likely to form the new Government suit each other.

I do not mean whether National, Act and New Zealand First overlap in the specific policies they campaigned on. And I certainly do not mean whether there is good chemistry between their leaders.

No, I wonder whether these three parties’ underlying philosophies have much in common.

You might object that many politicians do not care too much for abstract guiding principles. And yes, most political speeches do not sound as if they came out of a seminar in political philosophy.

However, ideas and philosophies do matter. Or, as John Maynard Keynes once put it: “Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.”

Perhaps that was wishful thinking on Keynes’ part. After all, he was an economist, and he is very much defunct now.

More seriously, there is a strand of thinking that appears in Christopher Luxon’s speeches, David Seymour’s statements and Winston Peters’ policies. And before I keep you guessing for too long, that strand is a commitment to bottom-up policy-making.

There are some technical terms for this as well. You could call it decentralisation, meaning Wellington should no longer be in the driver’s seat for everything.

You could also call it localism, which means the same but stresses the role of local communities.

Call it subsidiarity if you want to show off your command of Latin. That means that issues should be dealt with as close to the people affected as possible.

That latter term, especially, sounds a bit academic. But really, it is just common sense. If the rubbish collection can be organised locally, there is no need for a national minister for rubbish collection. Just keep it local, thank you very much.

Whatever you want to call it - decentralisation, localism or subsidiarity - there is plenty of it in our emerging three-party coalition. They all want to shift responsibility from Wellington to local communities.

Incidentally, this also sets them apart from Labour and the Greens.

Over the past six years, the outgoing Government has centralised anything that moves and much that doesn’t: local water infrastructure became Three Waters. The polytechs became Te Pūkenga. The District Health Boards became Te Whatu Ora Health New Zealand and the Māori Health Authority.

This is not the place to revisit the success (or otherwise) of those centralisations in detail. Suffice it to say, over the past six years, New Zealand tested the idea of efficiency gains through centralisation to the point of destruction. Almost literally.

Instead of improving public services, Labour’s centralisation agenda has made matters much worse. It destroyed a few functional polytechs to create a dysfunctional mega-bureaucracy. It has shifted resources from the frontline to feed an ever-burgeoning public service in Wellington.

This is where the potential new National-Act-New Zealand First coalition could make a real difference. They witnessed the failure of Labour’s centralisation drive. They also know that it happened in a country where public service provision was already amongst the most centralised in the world.

Against this centralising mentality, New Zealand First has always regarded itself as the party of regional New Zealand. When it was last in government, Shane Jones wanted to be known as the “champion of the regions”. After all, he was the Minister for Regional Development.

In this year’s election campaign, New Zealand First’s manifesto emphasised the role of local communities. It called for transferring “half of Crown Minerals Royalties to the regions they came from.” And it specifically advocated for the “devolution of central government decision-making and resources to the regions to counter the ‘Wellington Knows-All’ approach”.

Meanwhile, Act is singing from the same hymn sheet on localism. In the last Parliament, deputy leader Brooke van Velden tabled a private members’ bill to share the GST revenue from new residential developments with councils.

Act would not only give councils more money to fund infrastructure for these projects. It would also give an incentive to communities to say “yes” to development.

Act’s policy to reintroduce charter schools is also localist. That is because these schools are run locally, not by the distant Ministry of Education.

So, both New Zealand First and Act are committed to bringing policies closer to the communities they are made for. In that, they are aligned with the vision of National and Prime Minister-elect Luxon.

Like no New Zealand politician before him, Luxon has made localism one of his defining themes. When he entered Parliament, local government was his first portfolio in Opposition. He made his mark by challenging New Zealand’s established centralist wisdom and countering it with his experience of localism elsewhere.

Luxon has often spoken glowingly about localism in Switzerland, partly inspired by travelling with The New Zealand Initiative to Zurich and Lucerne in 2017.

Over the past three years, Luxon has talked many times about the need to allow councils to benefit from the proceeds of economic growth. That would compensate them for the infrastructure spending they undertake and give them fiscal incentives to do the right thing for their communities.

Luxon’s vision is localism, pure and simple. And it is not just a novel concept in New Zealand politics. Luckily for him, it is also compatible with both his potential coalition partners.

Because all three parties of the emerging new coalition are dedicated to localism, what may emerge is New Zealand’s first-ever government committed to decentralising the state. Dedicated to move power away from Wellington. Resolved to empower local communities.

For three parties that, until recently, had little positive to say about each other in public, that would be a good foundation.

It would also be a solid foundation for the new Government.

Dr Oliver Hartwich is the Executive Director of The New Zealand Initiative.