NZ Alliance discusses coalition with Labour
By Zanny Begg
AUCKLAND — More than 350 people gathered at Massey University in Albany on August 8-9 for the Alliance national conference. The Alliance groups three parties: NewLabour, Mana Motuhake and the Democrats.
The conference was held against a backdrop of increasing political instability. Discussions over the weekend were dominated by the possibility of the Alliance forming a coalition with the Labour Party to contest the next election.
The next election is scheduled for October 1999. But National Party Prime Minister Jenny Shipley's coalition with New Zealand First's leader, Winston Peters, had become increasingly unstable, raising the possibility of an early election.
Three days after the Alliance conference, Peters and his fellow NZ First ministers walked out of the cabinet.
The immediate issue was the National Party's plans to sell Wellington Airport. Peters, whose popularity has crumbled since forming the coalition with the National Party, tried to block the sale as a means of boosting his support.
With recent polls showing both National and NZ First at a record low, neither partner wants to face the electorate before they have to. Shipley said she will try to continue in office at the head of a minority government.
The Alliance, on the other hand, welcomes the possibility of an early election. Its leader, Jim Anderton, opened the conference by saying, "Bring on the elections".
Recent polling has shown the Alliance at 9.7%. Labour is currently polling around 46%. If in coalition, this would give the centre-left a comfortable majority in parliament.
The Alliance's confidence has been boosted by a recent by-election result in the National stronghold of Taranaki-King Country. A strong campaign in the rural towns boosted the Alliance vote to just 1% below Labour; its vote eclipsed Labour in a few towns.
These factors led Anderton to invite Labour Party leader Helen Clark to address the Alliance conference.
Clark's appearance at the conference provoked some muted grumbling within the Alliance. The NewLabour Party, the backbone of the Alliance, was formed as a breakaway from the Labour Party in 1989. Most of the activists in the Alliance spent many years involved in campaigns either against the Labour Party in government or against its phoney opposition to the new right while in opposition.
But any opposition to a coalition with Labour was isolated, the overwhelming majority of the conference welcoming the prospect. The industrial spokesperson for the Alliance, Laila Harre, pulled out a white flag during the conference and made a joke about the Alliance learning to "bury the hatchet".
In her address to the conference, Clark outlined key areas where the Labour Party disagrees with the Alliance. She stressed that the Labour Party would not accept the level of taxes supported by the Alliance and took a "much more positive view of NZ ability to compete in the global economy".
Alliance chairperson Matt McCarten presented a paper to the conference which called for the formation of a loose coalition with Labour. According to McCarten, this would allow the Alliance to campaign against Labour where they did not agree.
McCarten hoped that the Alliance could enter the elections with key areas of agreement cemented with Labour. Where there was no policy agreement, the Alliance would campaign for Labour support and force Labour to vote down its policies in parliament, thus exposing Labour's policy.
Some of the hard questions about how a coalition would work remained unanswered by the conference. Asked how it would be possible to draft a joint budget with Labour, which still supports a GST and opposes an increase in corporate taxation, Sandra Lee, deputy leader of the Alliance, told Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly she doesn't know.
According to Lee, "The bottom line is, you either accept wealth distribution or you don't. You have to accept that all the problems that exist in our society today — for example, the slashing of health services, user-pays education — are going to stay with us unless we increase taxation on the wealthy.
"You can't make promises before an election that you are going to address the issues of health, education, housing and so on, unless you know you are going to be able to pay for it. As long as we live under a capitalist economic system, we have to ensure that the money is there to pay for these things, and that comes from taxation".
Asked whether the Alliance would bring down the government if Labour refused to "pay for it", Lee said that there was "no point going into a coalition with Labour if the Alliance said it was going to bring down the government", but also acknowledged that the "Alliance would have to campaign to defend its policies" against Labour.