New Zealand’s perfect political storm approaches – Bruce Cotterill

THE FACTS

• Education Minister Erica Stanford announced plans to scrap NCEA, replacing it with new certificates from 2028.
• The reforms aim to address “credit counting” by introducing foundational literacy and numeracy tests.
• Concerns include increased pressure on students and loss of flexibility in subject choices.

In Sebastian Junger’s excellent portrayal of the sinking of the fishing boat, the Andrea Gail, the author outlined what he termed “The Perfect Storm”. The phrase was used to describe a unique weather event whereby a high-pressure system, a low-pressure system and a hurricane collided to create a rare and deadly series of events.

A perfect storm of political proportions has gained momentum over the past week. In this case, the unbelievable negligence on the part of one MP, delusions of grandeur on the part of another group of our elected representatives, and a complete accountability failure of a separate coterie of past and present parliamentarians kept the commentators and the observers guessing throughout the week.

First, we learned that the Opposition’s education spokeswoman failed to respond to a number of invitations to participate in the Government’s review of the secondary school qualifications system. That review has resulted in the recommendation that NCEA is to be replaced by a new examination-based approach more suited to the needs of our future students.

Education is one of the big issues for New Zealand at the moment. It’s up there with the economy, the health system, policing, infrastructure and welfare. Our kids have been failing and the system has been failing our kids. Getting it right plays a major part in ensuring the quality and capability of our society in the future.

So I was pleasantly surprised to hear that Education Minister Erica Stanford was proactively consulting with the Opposition with a view to getting broad cross-party support for a new system. In doing so, she sought to engage Labour’s education spokeswoman Willow-Jean Prime in order to get that party involved in and supportive of the decision-making process and the proposed outcome.

Bipartisan support is a constructive and positive step towards ensuring that any future change of government doesn’t result in yet another change of educational policy.

Over recent years we’ve seen plenty of examples of governments swiftly changing the policies of their predecessors. The Ardern Government’s hastily arranged oil and gas ban is a case in point. Her “captain’s call” in April 2018, a decision made without consultation, stopped an industry and the Taranaki region, in its tracks. The current Government are in the process of repealing the previous ban and, under the leadership of Resources Minister Shane Jones, are in the process of reinvigorating the investment in oil and gas exploration.

Ardern’s successor, Chris Hipkins, has already said that he will reinstate the Ardern ban if re-elected.

And around and round we go!

To her credit, Stanford sought to avoid that sort of nonsense with her invitation to the Labour spokeswoman to participate in the education process. But, despite numerous efforts, there was “no reply”.

Let’s make something clear. Education policy needs long-term stability. It’s not something you muck around with. Cross-party support helps to ensure that stability. The Government’s attempt to garner long-term support was the right thing to do. The Opposition failure to respond was negligent.

Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick was ordered to leave the House twice this week, the second time after refusing to apologise. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Meanwhile, the Green Party were holding their national conference. Somehow, perhaps caught up in their own applause, they managed to come up with the suggestion that they should “lead the next Government”. They even went further, suggesting one of their co-leaders, despite no experience in finance, should be the next Finance Minister.

The last time I looked, the Green Party were logging in at about 10% in the One News poll and 9.8% in the Taxpayers’ Union version. They recorded 11.6% at the 2023 election. Willow-Jean Prime’s Labour Party were running at over 30% in both and under-fire Labour leader Chris Hipkins was challenging the PM in the “preferred Prime Minister” poll.

So what on earth has prompted the Green Party delegation to believe they are the “actual opposition”? Any hard-working, tax-paying Kiwi will know that these outliers of political policy have no place in the mainstream. Their self-importance and desire for a headline seems to know no bounds.

If you want to see where people like these end up, you need look no further than our most recently retired political leaders. And this week they hit the headlines again. Opposition leader Hipkins and former Health Minister Ayesha Verrall were joined by former head honchos Dame Jacinda Ardern and her finance man Grant Robertson in announcing their collective decision not to participate in the public hearings for the Covid-19 Royal Commission.

Grant Illingworth, KC, chairman of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Covid-19 pandemic response, is leading the investigation into how the Government managed the crisis. Photo / Covid 19 inquiry via RNZ

Hang on a minute. Really?

The whole idea of the commission is to learn from our mistakes. If there’s a next time, we want to do things better. We need to do things better!

And yet, the people who made the rules, who locked down the team of five million, who claimed to be the single source of the truth, the stars of 1pm television, have decided not to participate.

Our once-lauded leaders who stopped us from leaving the country or from returning home. Those who stole from us a final moment with a dying loved one, or a once-in-a-lifetime school prizegiving. They who encouraged us to take an unproven vaccination and who told us we would lose our jobs if we didn’t, have now decided they don’t want to share their version of events in our public review.

And so, it would seem, it doesn’t matter whether we got it right or wrong. Or whether lives were affected. Those people who were elected by us, who have owed their very livelihood to the public office they once occupied, an office to which they were democratically elected by us, funded by us and are supposedly to be held accountable to us, have decided not to appear in the review of the events shaped by the decisions they made.

These are former Government ministers, whom many of us believe messed up. They refuse to acknowledge or apologise for their mistakes. They then refuse to participate in an inquiry into their own decision-making. An inquiry set up to help us be better if such events ever occur again.

How is it even possible that democratically elected people can exert that level of control over the way we live and then fail to turn up for the performance review?

Two of them have moved on. One to global adulation, talk shows and a book deal. The other to a leadership role in a university, where 42% of the funding comes from government-provided tuition grants, otherwise known as the taxpayer.

The other two remain in Parliament, hoping to one day become a part of a Government again. A true democracy should vote them out. But our system allows them to stay for as long as they can convince their party of their worthiness. At Nos 1 and 6 respectively on the Labour Party list, they don’t have to convince the electorate. They need only persuade the Labour Party hierarchy.

The right to vote for political representatives is a core value across most Western civilisations, including ours. That vote typically includes the opportunity to replace elected officials who do not effectively represent or serve the people. Such rights are normally fundamental to a democracy.

But we don’t have that right anymore. Whoever compiles the party list decides who stays and who goes. The voter has no voice, no choice. Some say democracy without accountability is not democracy at all. That’s hard to argue with.

Our electoral system is part of the problem. Accountability sits more comfortably with those who have to hustle votes every three years. They’re our local representatives; our electorate MPs. But they’re just part of the picture. We have more than 50 list MPs whose presence on the political playing field is outside of our control.

Negligent. Delusional. Unaccountable.

Meanwhile, we heard news on Tuesday of two new political polls. Both suggest the incumbent Government, trying so hard to repair the damage done by their predecessors, is now just as popular as those who did all that damage just a few short years ago.

It’s the responsible versus the negligent. The change agents against the delusional. The repair crew alongside the unaccountable.

And yet, in an economy screaming out for a lucky break, almost half of us Kiwis are prepared to vote for those who ran up $66 billion of debt, drove tertiary education and the health system to a standstill, introduced racial imbalances and pushed homelessness and poverty to new levels.

New Zealand, you need to wake up!

You need to understand what has happened and more so what is important. The current Prime Minister might be boring, but that’s because he talks about trade and tourism and dairy prices instead of throwing handfuls of money at motel owners to hide the homeless.

We need to wake up. We need to understand what’s involved in getting back on track. We need to learn and think about our kids’ future. And then we need to vote for what we think is best for the country.

Because there’s another perfect storm on the horizon. It’s due to land in New Zealand in October 2026. What’s it going to be New Zealand? Negligent, delusional and unaccountable? Or responsible, informed and accountable.

The choice is ours. That’s democracy.

Bruce Cotterill is a professional director, speaker and adviser to business leaders. He is the author of the book, The Best Leaders Don’t Shout, and host of the podcast, Leaders Getting Coffee.