Subject: Re: The role of minor parties in a coalition Government: the tail that wags the dog

Crash wrote:

Interesting with the results of the Taxpayers Union poll showing a
hung Parliament, that no media are covering coalition alternatives.

If, after the 2023 election, National had said to both NZF and ACT
that only confidence-and-supply agreements were up for grabs, we would
still have a National-led Government. However National would not have
needed to make troublesome concessions such as the Treaty Principles
Bill and a bunch of other concessions. Both ACT and NZF would have
needed to take what was on offer or be consigned to be a toothless
minor opposition party.

Or we could have had another election.

Make no mistake about it, ACT wants to replace National as the biggest
party of the right. ACT will not achieve its goal by accepting a few
crumbs on offer from National. ACT will play hard.

NZF is, among other things, a vehicle for Winston to get payback from
National. You will remember that Winston used to be a National Party MP
until National told him he would not be renominated. Winston will not
get his payback by accepting a few crumbs on offer from National.

If National was not able to pull together a coalition which commanded a majority of the house, voters may have seen this as weak leadership.
There could have been another election, with some National voters
drifting to other parties.

Changes such as the repeal of the 3-waters
legislation would still have happened and anything that either NZF or
ACT failed to support would have been made clear.

National though would have been hamstrung on negotiating support for
all its initiatives. I don't think this would have been so tedious
for National as they think: they could blame ACT and NZF for failing
to get stuff they campaigned on over the line.

For Labour, if they are the biggest party in Parliament but cannot
command 'the confidence of the House' with the Greens, a confidence-and-supply agreement with the Maori Party would be far more preferable to a coalition agreement.

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Subject: Re: The role of minor parties in a coalition Government: the tail
that wags the dog

On 2025-08-12, Euall B. Tode <euser@mail.invalid> wrote:

Crash wrote:

Interesting with the results of the Taxpayers Union poll showing a
hung Parliament, that no media are covering coalition alternatives.

If, after the 2023 election, National had said to both NZF and ACT
that only confidence-and-supply agreements were up for grabs, we would
still have a National-led Government. However National would not have
needed to make troublesome concessions such as the Treaty Principles
Bill and a bunch of other concessions. Both ACT and NZF would have
needed to take what was on offer or be consigned to be a toothless
minor opposition party.

Or we could have had another election.

Make no mistake about it, ACT wants to replace National as the biggest
party of the right. ACT will not achieve its goal by accepting a few
crumbs on offer from National. ACT will play hard.

As one would expect. Any party wants to be the Government. The only thing stopping this is the other parties wanting to do the same.

NZF is, among other things, a vehicle for Winston to get payback from National. You will remember that Winston used to be a National Party MP
until National told him he would not be renominated. Winston will not
get his payback by accepting a few crumbs on offer from National.

If National was not able to pull together a coalition which commanded a majority of the house, voters may have seen this as weak leadership.
There could have been another election, with some National voters
drifting to other parties.

Changes such as the repeal of the 3-waters
legislation would still have happened and anything that either NZF or
ACT failed to support would have been made clear.

National though would have been hamstrung on negotiating support for
all its initiatives. I don't think this would have been so tedious
for National as they think: they could blame ACT and NZF for failing
to get stuff they campaigned on over the line.

For Labour, if they are the biggest party in Parliament but cannot
command 'the confidence of the House' with the Greens, a
confidence-and-supply agreement with the Maori Party would be far more
preferable to a coalition agreement.

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Subject: Re: The role of minor parties in a coalition Government: the tail
that wags the dog

On Tue, 12 Aug 2025 20:59:33 +1200, Euall B. Tode wrote:

If National was not able to pull together a coalition which commanded a majority of the house, voters may have seen this as weak leadership.

“Weak leadership” is not necessarily a bad thing; didn’t we have that after the 1993 election? The world didn’t exactly end then.

And “tail wagging the dog” doesn’t happen under our system. We’re not Israel, where extremist parties can take advantage of a weak but corrupt
major party leader to further their own fringe agendas.

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Subject: Re: The role of minor parties in a coalition Government: the tail that wags the dog

On Wed, 13 Aug 2025 06:00:54 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro
<ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On Tue, 12 Aug 2025 20:59:33 +1200, Euall B. Tode wrote:

If National was not able to pull together a coalition which commanded a
majority of the house, voters may have seen this as weak leadership.

�Weak leadership� is not necessarily a bad thing; didn�t we have that
after the 1993 election? The world didn�t exactly end then.

That was under FPP when we had Governments that won a Parliamentary
majority with a minority of the popular vote.

And �tail wagging the dog� doesn�t happen under our system.

So how else would you describe the policy concessions both ACT (with
8.64% of the party vote) and NZF (6.08%) got with the current
Government? The Treaty Principles Bill in particular is clearly a
case of the tail ( a tiny party) wagging the dog (National) in the
current Government.

We�re not
Israel, where extremist parties can take advantage of a weak but corrupt >major party leader to further their own fringe agendas.

Irrelevant.


--
Crash McBash

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