Now 49 all

Labour and National now both command 49 votes in Parliament with Gordon Copeland giving his proxy vote to National on everything bar supply and confidence.

What Copeland has done goes well beyond what is normally involved with giving a party your proxy vote. He has effectively said he wants to be treated as the 49th member of National’s Caucus (not that he will be attending meetings).

Normally if an Independent MP gives a party his proxy vote, he or she still claims discretion as to how it is cast. For example Labour has Field’s proxy vote, but he tells them how to cast it for him. Only if he does not say, do they cast it as they see best.

But Copeland has effectively said he will be bound by decisions of National’s Caucus on all non confidence and supply issues. That is not something I can recall being done before by someone not a member of said Caucus.

In the end it seems to be branding. Copeland hopes that Future NZ can attract 5% support as a conservative Christian coalition partner to National (which has heathen liberals like myself :-). He wants there to be no ambiguity about what party Future NZ would support.

Future NZ would certainly be a much more moderate or acceptable partner than the Christian Coalition was in 1996, or Destiny Church would be ever ever ever, but personally I hope the National Caucus never has to make compromises along the lines of “Party X will vote for the budget, if we agree to promote chastity instead of sex education”. But in the end it is up to the public – if they put a party in Parliament, one has to work with whatever the numbers are.

In terms of my list of preferred coalition partners for National, where would Future NZ be:

1 ACT
2 United Future
3 NZ First (without Winston)
4 Maori
5 Future NZ
6 Greens
7 Labour
8 NZ First (with Winston)
9 Progressive
10 Destiny