In the animal kingdom, many parasites die with their host. Act and NZ First should remember this – Liam Hehir
Different beasts of the animal kingdom will sometimes work together to achieve different but compatible goals. A fish the size of a remora would normally flee a large shark, and a large shark would normally like to eat the remora. But by working together, the remora gets a free ride through the ocean and a ready supply of scraps from the shark’s meals. The shark, for its part, benefits from the remora feeding on parasites and dead skin.
Then there are the small birds brave enough to land in the open jaws of a Nile crocodile. The crocodile could easily eat the bird, but instead lets it pick at scraps from between its teeth. Neither party to the transaction has the same motivation, but both derive the benefits of working together.
In theory, this is how a coalition Government should work. The various parties have different views and priorities and are, to an extent, natural rivals. But because they can hammer out compromises based on what they value most, all benefit compared with the alternative of not enjoying the fruits of government.
It’s not the only model, however. The relationship between larger and smaller animals is more commonly adversarial. And it is not always the larger creature that prevails.
Certain species of tropical wasps will sting another insect, subdue it and manipulate its nervous system so it can be led to some safe place. There, the wasp lays an egg on or inside its victim. When the egg hatches, the larva begins eating its host from the inside out.
The host remains alive for some time after. It struggles along as best it can while the unwanted passenger slowly saps it of its vitality as it consumes it. The vital organs are left until last, of course, since that allows the parasite to draw maximum sustenance.
It sometimes feels that the current coalition Government most resembles this latter model of interspecies interaction.
National, Act and New Zealand First have different constituencies and different priorities, but all three have an interest in keeping Labour and the Greens out of office. After the vote three years ago, none could govern alone, and each would have been in opposition without an entanglement between all three.
But it was never a coalition of equals. National was the large creature ultimately responsible for making the whole thing work. Act and NZ First have retained considerable freedom to distinguish themselves from the Government they are part of, to claim credit for decisions popular with their own constituencies and to distance themselves from those they do not support.
National, as the chief party of Government, has not had that luxury. This is just one of several reasons why it has not enjoyed the first-term bounce New Zealand Governments have customarily enjoyed. In fact, the opposite has happened, with the smaller parties sapping the strength of the larger party by imposing contentious but futile stances on it while also attacking it at leisure.
You might ask why Act and NZ First should care about the wellbeing of the National Party. They are separate political parties, after all. And voters who just want a more right-wing Government might also question why they should care about National if they can push the coalition more to the right on this or that issue.
It’s not an irrational position.
It is shortsighted, though. If your objective is to avoid Labour Governments (and Labour-Green Governments especially), then the libertarian, populist and conservative right all need to be healthy. Making the largest of those elements progressively weaker is not conducive to the goal of keeping their common foe out of office.
A vote transferred from National to Act or NZ First is not necessarily a vote lost to the right. Neither is it a vote gained, though. The relevant question is whether the smaller parties are bringing new voters into the coalition’s orbit or simply dividing the existing constituency into smaller and smaller pieces while hampering National’s ability to retain centrist voters.
And that brings us to the proposed overhang strategy.
For those unfamiliar, a party that wins more electorate seats than its party vote would otherwise entitle it to keep those electorate seats. The size of Parliament increases to accommodate the “overhanging” members. This allows a party to secure a parliamentary presence disproportionate to its share of the party vote.
There has been an element on the right pushing for this for some time now, on the basis that Te Pāti Māori are already doing it and because National has so many electorate seats, it’s possible to beat TPM at its own game. Depending on how the ball bounces, it could keep the coalition in office even if the three coalition parties don’t merit it on the basis of the party vote.
After months of mixed messaging, both NZ First and Act seem to have given their blessing to the strategy. Both seem to have granted permission to advertisements promoting votes being split to achieve this. Showing how much this is motivated by self-interest rather than commitment to the strategy, however, Act’s consent was conditional on the same group running a contradictory message urging electorate votes for its own seats.
NZ First seems to have endorsed Chris Bishop for Hutt South but hasn’t issued any kind of general instruction to its voters to maximise National’s electorate vote.
In other words, both smaller parties simply want National to transfer its own electoral strength to themselves for no countervailing benefit to the broader right.
National has resisted the campaign, and quite determinedly. There may be an element of principle in this, but there’s also much at stake in terms of self-interest too. It has a wider responsibility than keeping the present coalition in office, because it also has to remain a viable political institution capable of leading future Governments.
The minute it starts licensing defection to its co-belligerents, it forfeits its claim to be the natural home of centre-right voters. It tells its own supporters that National is merely a vehicle for electing local MPs while placing the fate of the country in the hands of others. And it then has no basis to go to the country giving non-aligned voters the assurances they need about stable and accountable Government.
Which means the right is much more likely to lose in the subsequent election. And to then go on losing, as the right did for 14 years between 1935 and 1949.
The remora and the shark both prosper because the relationship does not require the shark to become progressively weaker. Act and NZ First may be behaving like wasp larvae, but their real position is closer to that of a tapeworm. A tapeworm can take a great deal from its host, but it cannot survive without one. If the host dies, the tapeworm dies with it.
That is the lesson of coalition politics. A relationship that benefits small parties at the expense of the larger works for a time. Once the host is done for, however, the parasite’s success looks rather short-lived.
National should have no interest in helping to bring about that result.
Liam Hehir is a Palmerston North-based lawyer and a National Party member and former activist.
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