If this doesn’t send shivers down your spine then nothing will.
Right-leaning political commentator Matthew Hooton says New Zealand’s opposition and governing parties shouldn’t rule out a grand coalition to keep extremist fringe parties out of power as they gain public support.
[…] Now, with the emergence of Hannah Tamaki’s Vision NZ, Matt King’s DemocracyNZ and Jami-Lee Ross’ Advance NZ parties as well as anti-vaccination group Voices for Freedom planning on standing in the local elections in October, Hooton told AM’s Ryan Bridge that Labour and National should be open to the grand coalition idea.
[…] “If we ever did get in that situation – where an extreme right-wing or extreme left-wing group had that type of power [to decide who would be prime minister] and was playing those games – I think it would be the responsibility of the leaders of the Labour and the National party to reject that proposition and talk to one another, and at least establish some type of temporary grand coalition.”
[…] During election 2020, his wife Hannah’s Vision NZ party garnered 0.1 percent of the vote.
[…] “I think Matthew’s right,” political scientist Bryce Edwards said of the grand coalition idea, appearing on AM alongside Hooton. “Labour and National do have to decide how to deal with this sort of force, and ruling them out is sort of illegitimate.”
How do you even define “extremist fringe” party? Would a party calling itself Fundamentalists Christians for Jesus Party be considered an extremist fringe party? What about The Sharia Party?
Secondly, for a grand coalition to be viable, Labour and National would have to agree on basic policies, ie Labour and National would basically differ in name only.
And if a grand coalition were formed in response to a threat, who is to say the grand coalition will be disbanded once the threat is gone?
To his credit, Luxon has so far ruled out the idea of a grand coalition. But the fact the idea has even been floated is shocking. And from somebody supposedly ‘right-leaning’ no less.
