Coalition Winners and Losers

Okay we previously had the election winners and losers. Now it’s time to look at who are the winners and losers from the coalition negotiations.

Major Winners

Helen Clark. Clark has basically six parties voting with her, which gives her a decent majority. More importantly she has locked in enough votes to make sure she has a tame speaker. Do not under-estimate how important it was for Clark to have a Speaker who will protect weak Ministers. She also has enough votes to go into urgency on whim, and to lock the opposition out of any significant select committee chairs. Clark has also escaped with only NZ First extracting specific commitments and have fobbed most of the others off with reviews.

Winston Peters. Peters gets all the perks and powers of office, yet escapes all the responsibilities. He doesn’t have to attend meetings, he can attack the Government whenever he wants and he doesn’t even have to support them in critical areas tied to his portfolio like trade and immigration. Plus Peters has got enough policy concessions he can campaign next time on having delivered to the voters he will target.

Minor Winners

Jim Anderton. Anderton is back in Cabinet despite bringing no extra votes to the table. And it sounds like he will get a more significant portfolio.

Don Brash. Don doesn’t have to try and explain away a National-ACT-United Future-NZ First-Maori Party agreement to his party, the press gallery and the public. Shudder.

Rodney Hide as he just sat back and enjoyed the games.

Minor Losers

Tariana Turia. She may have overplayed her hand with considering National, and may find it hard to make progress on any issues.

Peter Dunne. Despite becoming a Minister, things are not rosy for United Future. They got almost nothing in policy terms, and two terms of propping up Labour Governments could finish them.

Major Losers

Rod & Jeanette. They got the photo op, but got shafted on everything else. Their policy wins are ridiculously light. Not a single thing that Labour wouldn’t probably do anyway. But they have nowhere to go but announce they want people to buy local goods, while Winston represents NZ to the world.