PoliticsOctober 7, 2017

Winston Peters is the hot girl on campus: a sexy guide to MMP relationships

Editor

If the Beehive were a US college, Winston Peters would be the It Girl with multiple suitors. Madeleine Chapman presents a guided tour through Peters’ relationship options as the Hot Girl on Campus.

While New Zealand twiddles its collective thumbs and stares longingly at Beehive windows, Winston Peters is meeting with teams from Labour and National to discuss potential partnerships. It’s all about Winston. Winston said this, Winston said that, Winston said something mean to a journalist, and so on. It’s like he’s the new hot girl on campus who everyone wants to know but who everyone also kinda hates. As for the potential MMP deals? They’re your classic clichéd romances. All of them tempting, none of them that great in the harsh light of day.

Winston Peters is New Zealand’s Hot Girl on Campus. He’s hot and he knows it, and everyone wants in. But Hot Girl Winston has to make a relationship choice next week and he’s got options, because the Hot Girl on Campus always has options. What are they, exactly? I read some incredibly boring documents on the official parliament website and hereby present Hot Girl Winston’s options in the form of terrible college relationships.

Coalition with Labour/Greens (polygamy)

A polygamous marriage with Labour and Greens might be fun and exciting at first, but three’s a crowd. A three-way marriage between a woman and two men who hate each other is less polygamy and more sitcom. Hot Girl Winston would get some policies through but it would take a whole lot of arguing with Husband #2 James Shaw.

Alternatively he could enter into a coalition with Labour with confidence and supply from the Greens. This means a legal marriage, potentially pleasant, with the understanding that there’s a fuck buddy on the side. But more on that later…

Coalition with National (doomed romance)

A coalition with National would be a tempestuous marriage for Hot Girl Winston, one where they don’t even remember how they got together in the first place. All they know is they hate each other. Bill is so boring and has annoying friends, but Bill has a swanky house and a steady job and wool carpet. By entering a coalition, Winston would have to vow to support National in every way in exchange for shiny things which Hot Girl Winston wants Bill buys. They’ll sit at tables together and have all the same opinions even though you’re pretty sure you heard Winnie bitching about Bill before they got together.

Neither Hot Girl Winston nor Bill would be able to say they were unhappy but you’d see it in their eyes. A cry for help. Suddenly the wild Hot Girl doesn’t like to have fun anymore. But she has a sweet upgraded Super Gold Card so maybe it’s fine.

Confidence and supply (fuck buddies)

A confidence and supply agreement is reached when two parties don’t want to be seen as an “item” but both have things the other needs. In this instance, Winston could decide to be fuck buddies with either National or Labour/Greens, though not both. It’s not free love. Winston has the votes needed to keep his chosen buddy in power, and he would agree to provide them on every vote that involved “confidence” or “supply”. Confidence means a vote that, if the government lost, it would have to call a new election. Supply means supporting the budget, which is actually a confidence issue too, because if the government can’t get its budget passed it can’t govern. In exchange for supporting the budget shopping list, Winston could add some things to the trolley, like a few policies and a ministerial position.

In other words, Winston will offer his Hot Girl status to some nerd every Friday night in exchange for all the science cheat sheets. Anything more than that would require some negotiations and flirty back-and-forth. It’s a win-win in the short term but can get messy quickly. The problem with being fuck buddies is that no matter how many times you tell all your friends “omg I don’t even like him”, all they see every Friday at the club is you two hooking up in the corner and they assume you’re together.

The last fuck buddy National had was the Māori Party (as well as ACT and United Future RIP) and, like all casual relationships, it ended pretty terribly, with the Māori Party unable to shake the label. Because when you’ve been public fuck buddies with a guy for nine years, any potential partners will want you to be tested before committing.

Crossbench (stubbornly single)

It’s all about the status here. Hot Girl Winston knows he’s attractive to all parties and is fielding offers of courtship from every direction. But like any stereotyped Hot Girl, he may consider himself too good for everyone and stay single forever. He could have any partner he wants and yet wants no one, asserting a position neither in government nor in opposition. Sitting on the crossbenches will most likely lead to an agreement to abstain, which means any NZ First votes on budget issues would be excluded and National could run a minority government. Labour-Greens couldn’t because together they still wouldn’t make up a majority, even with NZF seats deducted.

While this option would allow Winston and his Hot Girl votes to potentially manipulate parties into currying his favour, nobody likes a tease. And by refusing to commit, he’d get none of the perks of a relationship, like an upgrade to the Super Gold Card or a ban on foreign buyers. Sitting on the crossbenches, Hot Girl Winston would be confined to life as a mistress, with only the power to end relationships, not build them.

So while a crossbench life sounds appealing for its independence, at the end of the day even the Hot Girl on Campus can end up alone, abstaining from votes and abstaining from sex.

Live the Hot Girl life (drop out)

Winston Peters could just leave. He could go live in his giant house, collect his now correct superannuation, and spend the rest of his waking hours getting free ferry rides to and from Waiheke Island. Truly the life of a Hot Girl.

Keep going!

Prime Minister Bill English and deputy Paula Bennett (Photo by Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images)

PoliticsOctober 6, 2017

Through the eras: assessing the diversity of our parliamentary cabinets

Faisal Halabi

Guest writer

Prime Minister Bill English and deputy Paula Bennett (Photo by Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images)

If parliament is a house of representatives, how representative has its most powerful members been? Lawyer Faisal Halabi crunches the numbers.

The cabinet is a key mechanism through which the governing by our elected representatives is done. It’s the highest point of the executive arm of government where discussions and decisions are made on issues such as health, education and the economy. Current political dreamboat Justin Trudeau made Canadian history when, in 2015, he installed a cabinet consisting of an equal number of men and women – an appreciation of the importance of representation in relation cabinet’s role in governing.

I’m not sure that there’ll ever be enough Young Nat memes to give Bill English the international profile Trudeau currently enjoys, but that’s not important. What is important is to take note of who sat in our most recent cabinet, who did so previously, and what observations can be made about this bunch.

Gender: There were seven women and 13 men in our most recent cabinet

It wasn’t so long ago that the cabinet table was a striking example of the glass ceiling in action. In the Shipley and Bolger days, there was only one woman in cabinet (Shipley herself), although Georgina te Heuheu entered the ranks in the final Shipley cabinet. A run through the Key and Clark cabinets illustrates that overall, the number of women in cabinet was consistently about half the number it is now. In Clark’s final cabinet, for example, there were four women (Clark, Annette King, Ruth Dyson and Nanaia Mahuta). So over the past 20 years, the number of women in cabinet has risen very slowly – making English’s seven an all-time peak. In the cabinet world, slow and steady wins the patriarchy race.

Careers and work experience: politicians are mainly lifers

In the current cabinet, one-third of ministers have work experience in public office before entering parliament. The most common background of those from the private sector? Law.

A handful of the 20 ministers have bespoke backgrounds: before she launched her political career, Maggie Barry was…Maggie Barry.

An almost-extinct variable in the work experience category becomes evident when comparing recent cabinets to earlier ones (see all the source data used in the following graphs here). For a nation that prides itself on stomping around in our gumboots and the no. 8 wire mentality, it’s clear that those in the highest spots of executive office have very little to do with that. Granted, current Speaker of the House and former Cabinet minister David Carter had a career in farming sheep and cattle.

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away known as the Muldoon-era National cabinet, about a quarter had work experience in blue-collar jobs and farming or fisheries. That contrasts to the Palmer-era Labour cabinet, where a majority had work experience as university professors or schoolteachers.

(see the data used in these graphs here)

The correlation between experience and portfolio

Closely related to the variable of career and work experience is the correlation between each minister’s portfolio and the experience they bring. That correlation is there in English’s cabinet. Overall, every minister in cabinet can safely say that they have experience that is relevant to the portfolio they hold.

This correlation between career/work experience and each minister’s portfolio has generally increased over time, despite some dips and dizzyingly clear contrasts. For example, in Palmer’s cabinet, almost every minister had some correlation between their portfolio and work experience prior, which contrasts to Bolger’s cabinet in the cycle after, where almost every minister did not.

Reasons for leaving

The ghosts of cabinet ministers past from this current cabinet adds another dynamic. Their reasons for leaving include the benign (Simon Power; resigned and entered the private sector), controversial (Pansy Wong; misuse of Parliamentary travel allowance), and to take on roles in other, considerably more flashy offices (Tim Groser; New Zealand Ambassador to the United States). So, it’s safe to say you’ll only be looking to leave cabinet if you’ve got an apartment with skyline views in New York, or you’ve committed a no-no.

Roles subsequent to cabinet

Regardless of why you leave, the occupations of ministers subsequent to leaving cabinet have been consistent over the years: later appointments to ministerial positions and public sector employment. Only a minority of cabinet ministers in the past have entered senior roles in the private sector. Perhaps an observation of this may be that the cabinet position has instilled in them a long-term appreciation of public service. Or perhaps the private sector just ain’t hiring cabinet ministers.

Marriage and children

Being a cabinet minister is a very busy role, but one must always find a healthy work-life balance. Most cabinet ministers, from Norman Kirk to the present, have been married. In fact, it’s not until more recent cabinets that we saw a change: in Key’s first cabinet, two ministers were single and two were divorcees. Some ministers have been even busier: English is high up in the spectrum of cabinet ministers with children, with six. Jim Bolger is the clear winner though with nine.

A matter of degrees

Another almost-extinct variable in the makeup of our cabinet ministers appears in the qualifications category. Today, the majority of cabinet ministers hold a tertiary qualification. Anne Tolley, ever the tech guru, is the closest to an exception in the most recent cabinet – she holds a diploma in computer programming.

In the years of Norman Kirk’s cabinet, the number of ministers with a tertiary qualification was less than half – including Kirk himself, who did not complete his secondary schooling. The other half of Kirk’s cabinet came into the now-extinct variable of a secondary school graduation being their highest qualification. The number of ministers in that category carried on into the Muldoon cabinet, with almost half having that as their highest achievement.

However, by the Lange years, almost all of cabinet held a tertiary qualification. In Shipley’s cabinet, all but one cabinet minister held a tertiary qualification (Tau Henare).

If we were to come back to the premise of what the cabinet represents, then let’s ask ourselves a question: can it be said that today’s cabinet goes towards reflecting the diversity of 2017 New Zealand, versus the parallel of what Muldoon’s cabinet meant to New Zealand in the late ‘70s? The answer isn’t exactly a yes, but it’s closer. There are more women, there are more Pasifika people, and there is greater Māori representation.

But perhaps there is an argument that cabinet remains a reflection of New Zealand’s political elite. Actually, remove that ‘perhaps’ and replace it with a ‘definitely’. The majority of cabinet is now university educated, middle class men. And while it has a greater ethnic and gender diversity than years gone by, in other areas, there has been a swing away from a representative cross-section of New Zealand. We will have to see which way Winston swings to know whether the trend continues.