NZ Politics Daily – 9 February 2024
Top “NZ Politics Daily” stories today
Below are some of the more interesting and insightful New Zealand politics items from the last 24 hours.
1) The President of Te Pati Māori, John Tamihere, is also the Chief Executive of West Auckland Māori health and social services provider Te Whānau o Waipareira, and for this he is paid an annual salary of $510,679. This is revealed today in the Herald’s feature on New Zealand’s highest paid charity executives revealed (paywalled) by investigative journalist Matt Nippert. He puts Tamihere at #1 in his list of the highest-paid charity workers. Nippert also comments that the high salary is “somewhat surprising” as the charity “has one of the smallest staff levels, asset bases and annual revenues of entities surveyed”. However, the annual salary used to be lower – Tamihere received a 77% pay increase last year, apparently due to “restructuring”.
The whole report on the not-for-profit sector is fascinating in terms of the wealth and income involved: “This exercise identified 326 charity executives at 31 organisations who were collectively paid $75m, an average of $246,697 each, over the most recent year for which accounts are available.” In total, these top charities have “$8b in combined annual revenues, manage more than $25b in assets, and employ 51,740 people”. As well as involving health and social services providers, the big not-for-profits include religious orders, childcare chains, cereal-maker Sanitarium, Māori and iwi groupings, and notably, all of the universities.
2) At the other end of the spectrum of income earners, those on the living wage have only been given a 2% increase this year by the new government. Advocates for the poor are rightly highlighting that this compares to an increase in living costs of 7%, which means that those on the minimum wage are getting much poorer. For the best of such analyses and advocacies, see today’s Herald column by Labour and CTU representative Craig Renney: Minimum wage increase ignores the reality of life on the breadline (paywalled)
Renney points out how difficult it is to live on the minimum wage, and that it just means the state often has to top up people’s housing costs: “MBIE data for the June 2023 quarter shows a minimum wage worker would need to pay 89 per cent of their take-home pay to cover the median rent, or 78 per cent for the cheapest 25 per cent of properties. Those earning the minimum wage would now work a little more than 29 hours a week just to pay the rent.” He advocates that the minimum wage be lifted to that of the union-NGO-determined Living Wage. But even the union-endorsed $26/hour is incredibly miserly. Could Craig Renney live on that?
3) The Government has cut funding for the controversial “cultural reports” used in court trials. Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith says they have turned into a “cottage industry” costing millions and doing “nothing for the victims of crime”. But the defunding doesn’t mean that cultural reports will no longer be used in trials, but just that only those who can afford them will benefit. Hence the New Zealand Law Society Te Kāhui Ture o Aotearoa says this will “significantly limit access to justice”. For a good explanation of the debate, see Catrin Owen’s Law Society condemns Government proposal as ‘significant breach of fundamental rights’
4) Get ready for power outages this winter, and increasingly over the next few years. Government-owned Transpower is warning of power cuts due to the lack of investment in infrastructure, and the problems that the agency is having in building new lines on farming land, because of resource management constraints. For the best examination of this, see Richard Harman’s Why the lights might go out this winter (paywalled)
Substantial upgrades to power infrastructure are required as New Zealand electrifies to meet its 2040 carbon commitment. Part of the problem, Harman outlines is due to slowness in getting agreements from landowners for infrastructure: “While National during the election campaign made much of what they claimed was the unduly protracted time it took to consent a windfarm, it seems there is as big, if not bigger problem, getting consents to run new grid power lines across farmland. Those lines will be needed to carry the extra electricity generated by new solar and wind generators. In some places, without new power lines, it might not be possible to connect new solar generators to the grid at all. And here, Transpower runs up against the rural equivalent of NIMBYism (not in my backyard).”
5) Reactions to the Supreme Court’s surprise decision to allow an environmental activist to sue seven big companies are still coming in. Lawyer and political commentator Liam Hehir writes today for Newstalk about how “activists have increasingly turned to the courts” to look for climate change solutions, and he questions whether this is a good trend – see: New Zealand's newest climate activist – The Supreme Court (paywalled)
Part of Hehir’s challenge is about whether it makes sense to find causation and legal redress from any particular company for climate change, when it’s really a political question needing a political response: “it is the government, not the courts, who are responsible for formulating climate change policy in New Zealand.” But it’s also an important constitution and democratic issue: “Parliament should make clear, in no uncertain terms, that it exclusively determines New Zealand’s response. The compromises and horse trading needed to respond to the challenge is something that elected representatives of the people, not judges, need to be in control of. It is well past time that Parliament made a statement about the separation of powers in New Zealand to ensure that each branch of government operates within its appropriate domain.”
6) The health of New Zealand's political left is examined today by leftwing political commentator Gordon Campbell, who argues that it’s the political right who are increasingly attracting the votes of the working class. Part of the problem is that the contemporary politicians of the left are unwilling to take on New Zealand’s vested interests: “Basically, Labour frittered away the power and opportunity that voters gave it in 2020 to make decisive moves to the left and enact structural change in the NZ economy – by, for example, breaking up the predatory neo-monopolies and cartels that dominate our economic landscape. With hindsight, a small economy like New Zealand was probably the last place to rationally expect that unfettered market forces would deliver discipline, efficiency. and innovation. To no one’s surprise. this experiment has left sector after sector with forms of shareholder capitalism that are characterised by captive markets, rapacious price setting, and delays in investment and innovation” – see: On The Politics As A Morality Play
7) RNZ’s Mihi Forbes and her researcher Josh Drummond believe that they have discovered the Act Party’s undisclosed links to international libertarian groups. Forbes interviewed Act leader David Seymour for RNZ’s Waitangi Day coverage and asked him about links to the Atlas Network. You can watch her interview here: David Seymour at Waitangi
Her question was: “Do the ACT Party have any links or connections to the Atlas group?” And he replied “no”. Her researcher Joshua Drummond has written a blogpost in which he argues that Seymour “lied”, saying that although Act might not have any formal linkages, there are plenty of other looser connections – see: ACT leader David Seymour lies about his ties to the Atlas Network
8) In the Government’s ongoing problems dealing with Treaty debates, the Act Party is winning according to Stuff’s Tova O'Brien. She outlines the power plays going on, and advocates that Prime Minister Christopher Luxon should assert his authority more – see: PM may want to get his elbows out over Treaty Principles Bill
9) The man on our $50 notes, Sir Apirana Ngata, wrote some significant work on the Treaty of Waitangi back in 1922, including explaining how Māori chiefs had handed full sovereignty to the Crown in 1840. More than a million copies of his pamphlet on the Treaty have recently been republished and distributed in newspapers, with some Māori activists responding that his views amount to “misinformation”. Today, journalist Graham Adams defends Ngata and explains why his analysis is still highly valid in 2024 – see: The highly inconvenient Sir Apirana Ngata
10) How should the political left orientate to the Treaty debates? Chris Trotter argues that rather than shutting down or narrowing debate on this crucial issue, the left should be concerned with “emancipation” and this involves opening “up the space for a respectful, but open-ended, national debate on Te Tiriti”, but he suggests that many on the left are failing the test of “what it means to be a leftist”, which historically includes a strong commitment to democracy – see: Are You A Leftist?
11) Rightwing commentator Matthew Hooton is strongly opposed to Act’s Treaty Principles Bill, partly because he believes that the new government should instead be focusing “on bold economic and education reform and reducing crime” – he laments that Luxon “is already finding Crown-Māori relations and foreign policy take more time than expected”. He says: “Luxon can’t let Seymour’s bill dominate the agenda into 2025. Ideally, it should be culled by spring” – see: How Christopher Luxon can clean up the Treaty Principles Bill mess (paywalled)
Hooton’s opposition to the Bill is also because, like Richard Prebble, he thinks that in clarifying the Treaty Principles this would open up a can of worms: “if they became law, would be more destabilising than the status quo, since they’d give the courts a new mandate to begin interpreting the meaning of tino rangatiratanga.” Instead, the answer to deal with the problems that Seymour identifies with treaty issues, is instead to adopt the solution outlined earlier this week by Prebble, which is to strengthen the Bill of Rights Act 1990 instead – thereby confirming everyone’s equal rights. He also advocates that Paul Goldsmith could make good progress by settling, at least partly, Ngāpuhi’s Treaty claim against the Crown.
12) The Government is going to have a far more difficult time dealing with this issue, according to the Herald’s Thomas Coughlan, who paints a picture today of the whole issue paralleling the British Conservative Government’s Brexit quagmire – see his must-read column, Treaty of Waitangi: Christopher Luxon cannot stop voters having their say on Act’s bill (paywalled)
Coughlan’s column is worth quoting at length. Here are some of the key points:
“New Zealanders will vote on the bill - that was decided in coalition talks. The only power Luxon has now is to determine the manner in which they vote. This could be via an actual referendum, as Act wants, via a citizens-initiated referendum, which seems highly unlikely, or by Act turning the 2026 election into a de facto referendum on its bill.”
“The first question for National should be whether the party will allow the bill to have a second reading at all. The bill will be discussed ad nauseam this year. Act and National are now both talking about it being given two rounds of consultation, first via an exposure draft and then the actual bill itself. This will drag out discussion on the bill, much to Act’s benefit and much to the detriment of National, who would prefer to change the subject. When the bill is at select committee, National members will face the tough choice of whether to recommend the bill be passed, withdrawn or neither - and when the bill is reported back to the House, the three parties of Government must decide whether to actually bring it up for debate in the House.”
“The alternative is the Kermadec solution, named after the Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary Bill which has languished on the order paper since being reported back from select committee in 2016. This solution would require National to do nothing, neither voting the bill up or down. It would simply sit on the order paper, potentially forever or until someone brings it up for debate, in which case it would pass or fall.”
“This is not a hypothetical and is being actively considered in Wellington. All the parties of Government are aware of the possibility. It’s a less than ideal situation for Luxon, as it would mean he could never put the issue to rest - something he is desperate to do. Instead, it would hang, like the Referendum of Damocles, over his head for the rest of his Government. This suits Act well. It can turn the 2026 election into a de facto referendum on the bill, strengthening their hand in post-election talks to allow it to progress further. That is a dream scenario for the party. It will be good for the bill’s fortunes - and even better for Act’s. Even if the three parties of Government do bring the bill up for debate and either vote against it or abstain (in which case the opposition to the bill would win and the bill would fail), there is nothing to stop Act from campaigning on bringing the it back at the 2026 election.”
“The only poll we have so far on the bill shows it to be fairly popular. Far from being “divisive”, support is fairly steady across ages, geographies and political parties. The Taxpayers’ Union-Curia poll from last year showed 60 per cent of voters would say ‘yes’ to Seymour’s referendum question, as written in Act’s election policy (which is similar to the leaked draft published last month). Just 18 per cent would vote ‘not’… Most alarmingly for our political parties is the fact that all of the big four parties in the last Parliament - even the Greens (just) - have more supporters who back the bill than don’t.”
“Labour, much like its British counterpart, is also the loser here, with the issue clearly dividing its progressive and conservative wings. The party thinks it can weather the storm, but acknowledges that the bill will be a rare instance in which National unleashes a political force against itself that Labour is unable to benefit from.”
“The cost to National will be great, but that also means Luxon might be willing to pay a great price to get rid of the problem, bringing it to a vote early and dispatching it from Parliament well out from the 2026 election. Seymour might extract a mighty prize for this. Luxon may decide it’s a price worth paying.”
Dr Bryce Edwards
Political Analyst in Residence, Democracy Project, School of Government, Victoria University of Wellington
NZ Politics Daily – 9 February 2024
TREATY PRINCIPLES BILL
Thomas Coughlan (Herald): Treaty of Waitangi: Christopher Luxon cannot stop voters having their say on Act’s bill (paywalled)
Matthew Hooton (Herald): How Christopher Luxon can clean up the Treaty Principles Bill mess (paywalled)
Chris Trotter (Democracy Project): Are You A Leftist?
Tova O’Brien (Stuff): PM may want to get his elbows out over Treaty Principles Bill
Jenna Lynch (Newshub): Cracks begin to appear in Government as David Seymour suggests Christopher Luxon was spooked into ruling out Treaty Principles Bill
Jack Tame (1News): Uphill battle ahead for Treaty Principles Bill (paywalled)
William Hewett (Newshub): Christopher Luxon fires back after David Seymour's comments on controversial Treaty of Waitangi Principles Bill
William Hewett (Newshub): David Seymour says he doesn't 'believe' comment from Christopher Luxon on Treaty Principles Bill
1News: PM 'can't be clearer' on Treaty bill as Seymour calls him 'nervous'
Metiria Stanton Turei (ODT): Beautiful call for te Tiriti partners to unite on Waitangi Day (paywalled)
Graham Adams (The Platform): The highly inconvenient Sir Apirana Ngata
Chris Trotter (Newstalk ZB): Challenging Democracy (paywalled)
Mike Hosking (Newstalk ZB): Time for some facts on the Treaty Principles Bill
Greg Dixon (Listener): Leadership an alien notion at Waitangi (paywalled)
Bridie Witton (Stuff): Domestic issues follow Foreign Minister Winston Peters to the Pacific
1News: Treaty Principles Bill called 'a waste of time and resources'
Paid subscribers can access the full “NZ Politics Daily” from here. The following categories of news and analysis continue: PARLIAMENT; GOVERNMENT; TRANSPORT; JUSTICE, CORRECTIONS; ENVIRONMENT; BUSINESS; EMPLOYMENT; LOCAL GOVERNMENT; WATER; ENERGY, INFRASTRUCTURE; HOUSING; FOREIGN AFFAIRS, TRADE; HEALTH