Whatever the result on September 20, John Key will start the next term with diminished personal authority. Our democracy’s health is also diminished.
Key’s inch-by-inch retreat to the point where his imagined leftwing conspiracy turned into a rightwing one and he had to sack — sorry, accept the resignation of — Judith Collins has reflected a trading-floor culture, not the disciplined executive management required of a modern prime minister.
Can you fit “Collins” and “justice” comfortably in the same sentence? Will John Key want to if he gets to form the cabinet after September 20?
The Minister of Justice’s behaviour has been unbecoming of her portfolio and of a minister. Key is standing by her — for now. There is an election campaign on.
In politics friends can sometimes be as big a risk as enemies. John Key’s chats with Cameron Slater/Whale Oil reflect two aspects of him which might in time gnaw at his popularity.
One side is the cavalier. He got offside at the candidates meeting in his Helensville electorate by breaking the rules and talking of other parties’ policies. In Parliament’s question time he is an unstatesmanlike larrikin.
Here’s a quote from last week: “We cannot arrest our way out of crime.” Some handwringing leftie? Actually, Anne Tolley, National party Minister of Police.
Tolley was announcing, with John Key, new measures to deal with gangs, which she prefaced with those words.
They fell largely on deaf ears. The primary immediate media focus was on initiatives to contain the drugs trade, GPS-track some gang members and toughen up on guns. Opponents scoffed that it was law-and-order dog-whistle election campaigning.
Currency and bond traders are short-termers. Three weeks is medium-term. The Key government is the short-term government.
Policy wonks are medium-to-long-termers. Three to four years is medium-term. The English government is the medium-term government.
For project managers the job is the term. They push through, shove aside or shout down those in the way. The Joyce government is the project government.
Why must the Minister of Transport go through airport security? Do we seriously think he will storm the cockpit and knife the pilots? Will he blow the plane up?
It’s a matter of form. First, as the boss of air transport he requires the rest of us to quiver in fear of Al Qaeda, so shouldn’t he? Second, he is bound to set an example by scrupulously observing the laptops-out/pockets-emptied law, which doesn’t right now exempt ministers. Third, if he is, or appears to be, above the law, that undermines John Key’s one-of-us political persona.
The purpose of Parliament is to write laws and supervise those who administer them. The purpose of laws is to change behaviour. But do they change behaviour in the way intended?
The short answer: no one really knows. Last week’s example: what has been the cost-benefit of John Key’s idea to entice rich people to buy residency here?
Journalists’ ideal result for New Zealand First on September 20 is 5.01 per cent in the party vote on the night, with the balance of power, and 4.98 per cent in the final count two weeks later. If New Zealand First then requested a judicial recount, election uncertainty would make news well into October.
Two senior cabinet figures talked international affairs last Wednesday, one all crisp intellect, one a conversational amble. No prize for guessing which was Tim Groser and which John Key.
Both made the optimists’ trade case, Groser with a wide span at a conference on China where some weighty foreign academics spoke. Some of those experts were treated to Key’s later perambulation at the Institute for International Affairs (NZIIA).
A long shadow will encroach on the Labour party’s pre-election “congress” this weekend: a Green shadow. There will be shorter shadows, too.
The short shadows are a faltering leadership, bad polls and a spectre looming out of history and off the internet. They add up to a growing sense in the electorate that for a second election in a row Labour is not headed for office.