Democracy idea: An independent unit for enforcing breaches of bottom lines

If you rule it out and you do it anyway, the compliance office will be calling soon.

It is election time, otherwise known as the festival of the fiscal hole. In keeping with the holy season, come the calls for an independent costings unit, for an office to assess the fiscal plans. Both National and Labour have accounted for a fiscal costing unit in their fiscal plans. If only one or the other had been in government at some point in the last decade or two.

But forget that great dance for a minute. An imperative at least as pressing needs attending to. For since the advent of MMP 30 years ago, parties’ campaigns have come with a soundtrack full of earnest commitments to absolutely, definitely do or not do certain things in the event that they make it to government. Compromise? Fine. But I won’t, cross my heart, under any circumstance, coalesce with this party. And I definitely won’t, hell or highwater, agree to that policy. 

These are, of course, the Rulings Out and the Bottom Lines. 

The thing is that often these oaths evaporate with proximity to power. And, if we’re honest, that is sometimes necessary. If the consequence for any breach of a ruling out or a bottom line were, let's say, death, then we may not get any government deals done ever again. 

Which brings me to the big idea. A fun sibling, if you will, to an independent costings unit. For every ruling out, for every bottom line, this group of fair-minded, democracy-loving individuals and unemployed arts graduates would independently assign a consequence (not death) for a failure to meet any given commitment. It would provide a signal to the public. And a kind of bond, much in the way a mortgage lender will have your house, thank you very much, if you renege on paying them back.

We shall call it the Technical Office for Bottom Line Exigency and Ruling Out Noncompliance Effects. Toblerone. 

Some examples might help.

Last month, Christopher Luxon declared that National would be doing no deals with the Opportunity Party, making the announcement using the powerful device of a rushed statement from his office issued to clear up the confusion he left upon fleeing from a press conference. In recent times, most commentators have regarded that commitment as unsinkable as the Titanic. 

If he were to do a deal with the Oppies, what should be the consequence? For an offence such as this, I can imagine the committee requiring, for example, that Luxon must emulate that great Australian, Tony Abbott. No, I don’t mean budgie smugglers, nothing gross. If Luxon seals a governing arrangement with Opportunity’s support, he must eat a raw onion (as the Liberal giant did so memorably that time) for every day it prevails. 

Simple as. Luxon rules them out. Toblerone announces the consequence for noncompliance. He either keeps his word. Good! Or he has to eat a raw onion every day. Also good!

It’s not for me to assume the role of the unit, but a handful of other possible scenarios might help flesh out the institute's remit. 

The Opportunity Party decided to pre-emptively issue five bottom lines at the end of September. It was anodyne stuff, absent expletives like “land tax” or “universal benefit”, fashioned into a friendship bracelet for the National Party. Should they fail to deliver on any one of them – or the undertaking not to give Winston Peters the foreign ministry, for that matter – the compliance office would, say, require Qiulae Wong to stalk the streets of Mt Albert for 100 days, shooting on sight every domestic cat.

Peters, by contrast, insists he doesn’t do bottom lines – he called Opportunity’s effort a “wrinkly derriere” – but that’s nonsense, of course. Would he go along with raising the age for superannuation to 70? He has sworn black and blue, meanwhile, that New Zealand First won’t work with Labour after this election. Much more definitive than in, say, 1996. 

On both of the above, the commitment is so strong that the office is likely to make the consequence equally steep. Were he to breach either, Peters would be obliged to wear a singlet, Stubbies and Crocs to the Beehive every day, never visit the Green Parrot again, and announce that his dog, Kobe, who is a very good boy, is not a very good boy. If he breached both, he also has to stand in parliament and say, “Simeon Brown is my daddy”.

Chris Hipkins has ruled out putting coalition partners into finance, or justice, or police; he says he’s having none of the taxes pledged by his putative coalition partners. Were he and his Labour Party to violate these covenants, each offence would require him to permanently remove a vowel from his vocabulary, with the vowel to be chosen at the discretion of the office. If he used the vowel, that would be referred to the independent costings unit, and those people are psycho. 

The entrenchment of Te Tiriti o Waitangi and a powerful tiriti commissioner have been declared bottom lines by Te Pāti Māori. Should they form a government without sealing those concessions, Rawiri Waititi will be required to announce that John Tamihere is not perfect – a prospect which the compliance office is quick to acknowledge is a whole lot scarier than biting into a raw onion every day. 

And if the Greens coalesce with Act or Act coalesce with the Greens, the consequence will be swift and brutal. Each will have to spend time with the other.