The New Zealand Parliament has changed a lot in the last two decades.
The government and opposition are no longer formed simply by two major parties opposing one another; instead, groups of parties support or oppose each other, sometimes even while both being in government.
This is the result of MMP, where no single party wins, so parties have to come up with ways to work together to have a stable government.
Support agreements are the mechanism that New Zealand has developed to make government work, and they have some real benefits.
The trouble is that for the electorate it makes life (as Forrest Gump would say) like a box of chocolates.
You never know what would get.
The agreements act a bit like a pressure valve.
They mean that the minor parties can choose the degree to which they support the major governing party, while maintaining their distinctiveness to their voters and their capacity to challenge the government.
Having flexible governing arrangements with multiple parties also means that it is more likely a government will last its term, because tensions and differences can be managed without blowing the lid on the arrangement.
Yet, there is a major downside in that voters do not get to have a say on which particular policies are dropped, changed or adopted during the negotiations and therefore can find it difficult to know exactly what they are voting for at an election.
For example, after the recent election, some members of the public saw red about the government’s surprise commitment to trial charter schools, which came from the National-ACT agreement.
But as Prime Minister John Key said, “That is MMP for you, isn’t it?”
Another interesting point to note is the changes these support agreements have created. One of the principles that our parliament ticks on is that the Cabinet is collectively responsible for all decisions made.
This means members of the Cabinet are not allowed to publicly disagree on decisions. However, under MMP, in order to keep their point of difference, ministers from minor parties are allowed to agree with the Cabinet only on issues that affect their specific portfolio.
Support agreements are part of MMP politics these days; compromise and policy trading are the outcomes, not policy purity.
The benefit of these agreements is that they are an effective way to provide for stable government under MMP, and can allow many different voices to play a part in determining the policy programme.
However, they have certainly changed how we understand the Cabinet and they can lead to some surprising policies that were not put forward during the election campaign.
