OPINION
A Cabinet minister resigned his portfolio on a matter of principle last week - and almost every commentator called him dumb for doing it.
“Petulant”, “self-indulgent” and “jaw-dropping” were among the many insults thrown David Parker’s way when he gave up the Minister of Revenue job.
But hang on. Don’t we want our politicians to be principled? Imagine having a Parliament full of people who stood by what they believe in and refused to betray their values.
Sure, reality forces compromise, but don’t we want them at least to try? Arguably, a perceived lack of principles is at the very heart of what people think is wrong with politics.
Parker’s predicament came when his boss, Prime Minister Chris Hipkins, ruled out any form of wealth or capital gains tax. That effectively trashed the policy aspirations Parker and others in his party had spent years developing, with party support.
In his maiden speech to Parliament in 2002, Parker spoke of the “unjustifiably large gap between the earnings of low and high-paid workers”. That gap still exists, and several tax reforms have been proposed to address it. According to Treasury, the draft plan rejected by Hipkins would have made almost everyone better off, while raising $10.6 billion over four years from the wealthiest 0.5 per cent among us.
Fair enough to note that Parker’s resignation embarrassed his Government. And of course, it’s true that wielding political power always involves compromise. But none of that should mean we lose respect for a politician who refuses to abandon their own core beliefs.
Sometimes, we get this right. In 2004, Tariana Turia made the principled decision to leave Labour over the Foreshore and Seabed Bill, and was widely praised for it. Didn’t happen for Parker.
If we’re going to call something “jaw-dropping”, how about Hipkins’ claim that because people are doing it tough right now, structural reform of tax and benefits that would help almost everyone is “a distraction”? It should be front and centre.
Or how about National’s new transport policy? It proposes a return to the same plans of the mid-20th century that created the high carbon emissions, congestion and the danger on the roads we’re supposed to be fixing. That’s just preposterous.
Why is there such a reporting frenzy on the “optics” of what politicians do, and so much less about the substance of their ideas?
It used to be a political truism that MMP forces us to accept moderate governments. When parties go into coalition, the sharp edges get knocked off everyone’s policies.
The current Government has given the lie to that. Worried about scaring away the “middle ground” of voters, Labour has managed to knock the edges off its own ambitions without any help from anyone.
Imagine if the party had needed the votes of the Greens and/or Te Pāti Māori to form a Government in 2020. It would have got more done, not less. And that, in a rich irony, would almost certainly have made it more popular now.
Tax and benefit reforms would have led to fewer children living in poverty. Higher tax levels for the super-wealthy would have funded more health services and made tax relief possible for the vast majority of New Zealanders. The Greens’ new tax and benefits plan would materially help everyone earning less than $125,000 a year.
Strong Māori-Crown partnerships would have emerged in health, land management, housing, resource use and more. As the Waikato River Authority has been demonstrating for years, we would have learned that such partnerships do not need to be feared.
There would have been more substantial climate action, both in reducing emissions and making our cities and countryside more resilient to wild weather.
This election will not produce another majority Government too timid to act. It will be won by a large party with limited ambitions and one or more smaller parties that are very ambitious indeed.
Parties that know what they stand for and are keen to get results.
The National Party continues to suggest that on the centre-left, this would result in a “coaliton of chaos”. The Greens and Te Pāti Māori, they want us to think, will be too radical for Labour.
Weirdly, the Greens are also attacked for not having pushed the Labour Government hard enough, especially on climate action and poverty.
You can’t have it both ways. Either the Greens are a dangerous rabble or they’re committed to being part of a functional Government that gets things done. Even if you don’t like their policies, it’s pretty obvious they’ve spent the last six years trying to prove it’s the latter.
As for Te Pāti Māori, they’ve made it clear they want to support a Government committed to the principles of Te Tiriti. Why assume this means they will bring chaos to the table? It’s far more likely they will want to make real progress by instigating and supporting partnerships that work well, for everyone.
Chances are, if we do see a coalition of chaos after this election, it will be NZ First and Act trying to work together. They spit tacks about each other’s economic policies all the time.
Political principles and the lack of them are in play this election in other ways – most obviously around race.
Some joker with a false name on Twitter has been attacking me for supporting the name Te Huia, the inter-city train that connects Auckland and Hamilton. Apparently it’s confusing.
This is a profoundly bad-faith argument. It’s 61 years since NZ Railways introduced the first Cook Strait roll-on, roll-off ferry. They called it Aramoana and nobody thought it was confusing. Three years later they added the Aranui, and that wasn’t confusing either.
When I pointed this out to the fake-named Twitterer, he switched his argument to complain about the names of Government agencies like Waka Kotahi.
This is not a good-faith argument, either. Twenty-five years ago, the brand-new Te Papa opened on the Wellington waterfront. No one had ever heard the name before, and this time there was some debate. After all, Te Papa was the result of a merger between two organisations that already had names: the National Museum and the National Art Gallery.
But Te Papa it was. It quickly became one of the country’s most popular attractions, among locals and visitors from overseas. The grumpiness disappeared.
There is a generosity of spirit in this country. It’s what led to the naming of the Aramoana and Te Papa, the singing of E Ihowā Atua at rugby games, the reversion to Taranaki in place of Mt Egmont and, yes, the naming of Waka Kotahi and Oranga Tamariki.
While most people aren’t fazed by any of this, a small but very determined fringe is determined to make it into something big.
For the most part, they’re on the hard right of politics and they’re manufacturing outrage for one, or both, of two reasons. One is that they really do think Māori should be oppressed. But that’s the true fringe.
The other is that there are votes in it.
This is the one thing on which Act and NZ First do seem to agree. As I reported last week, NZ First says it’s on “a mission to save our country” and believes “freedom and democracy” is the number-one election issue.
Also last week, Act released results of a survey of what worries its supporters most. Top of their list, with 35 per cent, was “co-governance”. The cost of living, which is the number-one worry in surveys of the whole population, was only fifth, at 14 per cent.
It’s clear many people really are worried about Māori being given an unfair advantage or status. But it’s bad-faith politics to stoke that belief, because it isn’t true - it’s divisive and it’s dangerous.
Meanwhile, as the Northern Hemisphere reels from record heatwaves and wildfires, the Government and local councils here are inching towards agreement about who will pay for what damage from the catastrophic storms earlier this year.
Instead of telling voters to worry about the fake issue of Māori privilege, you’d think politicians with even a shred of principle would be rolling out plans to help us withstand the next climate catastrophes. They know – we all know – there is worse to come.
Simon Wilson is an award-winning senior writer covering politics, the climate crisis, transport, housing, urban design and social issues. He joined the Herald in 2018.
Reporter Martha and friends are in Minginui introducing us to their favourite four-legged neighbours, wild but friendly horses that have had free reign of the place since 1870.