With friends like NZ First …

National has recently been tacking to the centre for all its worth.

How else can you explain its Kiwisaver policy? For the party which has repeatedly undermined Kiwisaver ever since the scheme started and a year after shaving $610 million a year from the scheme it has proposed to give back $110 million in the first year of the new policy.

Or the Solar Panel policy which Simeon Brown has been pushing on social media to suggest that National is serious about greenhouse gas emissions. The underlying contribution is a paltry $7 million capital grant and the proposal, modest interest rate loans to homeowners to buy solar units is something that major banks offer already. This feels like a superficial green talking point posing as a serious policy.

Another example of the centre tack is the halting of Fisheries reform. Earlier in the week after pressure from National Matua Shane Jones was forced to wind back some of the more extreme parts of his Fisheries Bill. The Bill has some extreme provisions, like restricting use of onboard filming, no minimum size limit for commercial fishers and limited judicial review of his decisions. The reform has been described as “designed purely to prioritise the profits of the seafood industry” and that if the changes were made it would be the beginning of the end for the country’s fish stocks.

But after pressure from Luxon Jones admitted that the bill needed some panelbeating and requested that the bill’s return to Parliament be delayed until next term.

The backtrack of all backtracks was Tama Potaka’s announcement, also this week, that the Government would delete a clause in the Conservation Bill that would have allowed for the selling off of 60% of the country’s conservation estate. Currently only conservation land with no, or very low, conservation value is able to be sold. The Bill would change the test so that only land that is important to threatened species or ecosystems, or if the habitat is one of the best examples of its type in that ecological region, and some land subject to Treaty claims and settlements, would be protected from sale. Not only this but economic development would be one of the principles to be applied to decision making about conservation land.

Forest and Bird ran a really good campaign against the bill. And the outpouring of public opposition was immediate.

Potaka was hamfisted in his response saying that he only intended to sell “bits and bobs”. If that was the case the clause could have and should have been redrafted. His modest claim jarred with the extremely wide language proposed in the bill.

He has now said that changes to the bill will be made and the sale provision will be reviewed. You can’t help but think that National’s polling and the proximity of the election are major drivers for this decision.

But New Zealand First has jumped into the void and tried to wedge National on the issue by promising to allow mining on conservation land.

From Fox Meyer at Newsroom:

The sale and swap of public conservation land is to be cut from Tama Potaka’s bill, but his critics say the bigger problem remains.

New Zealand First added a provision to the Conservation Amendment Bill that would make economic development a priority over conservation for the Department of Conservation, “to the highest extent practicable”.

Resources Minister Shane Jones maintains a stance that the entire conservation estate ought to be explored for development, so while critics were happy to hear Potaka’s announcement, they still prefer to see the entire bill scrapped.

…

The resources minister says his party has “a profound belief that the DoC estate is an under-utilised resource that can contribute more to the expansion of our GDP”. It’s an issue he says New Zealand First will campaign on.

“God as my witness, if we form a future government, we will be pushing for the DoC department to drive more economic outcomes from the DoC estate, including income to defray the expenses of running the DoC estate.”

He asks the public not to “catastrophise” the idea of using the conservation estate for “extraction business purposes”.

If Jones had it his way, he says this land “would be serving a host of other more commercially orientated outcomes”.

His party’s addition to the bill is a provision that shifts the department’s mandate towards economic development “to the highest extent practicable”, a facet Potaka did not commit to changing.

NZ First have clearly ruined National’s attempt to appear environmentally reasonable. Although after the past two and a half years of environmental vandalism that has occurred you have to wonder why. National must think that we are stupid and will forget all of the attrocious things they have already engaged in.

And to add to the inter party tensions this week Winston Peters accused National of “covertly” changing migration settings for Indians. This would normally be grounds for him to be sacked. Is Luxon that weak that he cannot handle Peters?

Stay tuned as National keeps tacking left and NZ First keeps attacking them from the right. This may just be the day to day chaos related to a completely dysfunctional Government or it may be a cunning plan to try and improve the polling of both parties.

Time will tell.