Tenei Te Tangata Puhuruhuru*
Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Keep a keen eye on airport departure lounges over the next few weeks. The assembly has a further 22 days to elect a first minister, which would take them conveniently into their Whitsun holidays.

In the meantime, nobody except Mike German is returning Rhodri's calls. So Wales goes on without a government. And the longer it goes unresolved, the more people are talking about Labour going it alone with Plaid or the Lib Dems backing them up in a confidence and supply type arrangement.

This, we are endlessly told, is the New Zealand model. They even sent over a cabinet minister to give Rhodri some tips on how it's all supposed to work.

But hang on a minute, why are we taking lessons from a country that's only got one vowel sound?

Their election was won narrowly by the Labour party, but only after what has been described as a "dirty campaign punctuated by threats and bullying". Even then, the auditor general found they overspent by $768,000 and ordered them to pay it back.

Despite the predilection for rugby and sheep farming, New Zealand is not Wales. Neither is their much-lauded governmental agreement necessarily transferable.

For instance, in New Zealand the government is supported by minority parties in exchange for ministers outside of the cabinet. But Welsh legislation wouldn't permit such a deal here.

In the Senedd, it's cabinet or bust. And nobody seems to want to share a table with Brian Gibbons. So, Labour would have to fill the 13 seats themselves. That means means half of Labour's assembly members would end up in government. Bearing in mind that Rosemary Butler is deputy presiding officer, the other 12 would have to spread themselves very thinly indeed across the various scrutiny committees which will be central to the new system.

Martin Shipton will be polishing his axe with relish, because if some of the women in Labour's ranks weren't up to it last time around, they'll find a minority government under the new system even tougher.

In New Zealand, meanwhile, there are 20 members of the ruling party in the government, leaving a further 29 to perform backbench functions.

Neither situation is ideal, but at least down in Mordor there's a somewhat more realistic ratio between ministers and ordinary members within the ruling party.

No doubt some people will use this as an opportunity to call for more assembly members. But that misses the point. The system is designed to work when there are a reasonable amount of people in government. In the end, it might come down to a call from Rhodri to decide whether he considers his 26 members numerous and capable enough to pull it off. As they say in New Zealand, 'He who stands, lives, he who sleeps, dies.'


*lit. 'this is the hairy man'. Line five of the haka, apparently.

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