Greens enable Winston Peters to hold NZ to ransom

I wrote recently about why I thought New Zealand's electoral system was the dumbest in the world, and so it has proved to be. Nearly a month after the election we still don't have a government and while I don't think this is in itself a bad thing, watching our politicians jockeying for power has been unedifying. All the blind ambition, self-aggrandisement and incompetence we have come to expect of our politicians has been on display.

The uniquely unqualified, inexperienced and unproven Labour Party leader, Jacinda Ardern, who will become our prime minister in a Labour-led government, has been displaying a quiet confidence in her public comments. Bill English, the current prime minister and leader of the National Party, which won the largest share of the vote, is more inscrutable. Meanwhile, Winston Peters, whom the media have dubbed the 'kingmaker', cannot contain his delight at being the centre of attention again and continues to make the country wait for his decision. As the Guardian newspaper put it, Winston Peters and the anonymous board of his nationalist New Zealand First Party are holding the country to ransom.

This is all pathetic but the prize for the most damaging self-indulgence must go to the Green Party, the leftist environmentalists who have refused to consider negotiating with the centrist National Party, preferring to give Labour their proxy in coalition negotiations. This has, of course, strengthened Winston Peters' hand, an outcome for which their supporters surely could not have voted. A National-Green coalition could govern without New Zealand First's support and thus even the pretence of negotiations between these two parties would have taken the wind out of Winston Peters' sails. Many commentators have expressed disappointment with the Green's holier-than-thou attitude with even former Party MP Nandor Tanczos calling for his party to enter into negotiations with National.

Winston Peters may be holding the country to ransom but it is the Greens who have given him the means to do so. I hope the voters remember that when it comes to the next election, which, I am picking, may be not that far away.