Why a Shadow Cabinet matters, even with no power or standing in New Zealand, and how Christopher Luxon's should operate.
Even after the recent turmoil in the National Party, the level of interest in the make-up of new leader Christopher Luxon’s first Shadow Cabinet was unusually high. It reflected curiosity as to whether National has in fact turned a corner with the leadership change, or whether the Luxon team would be just a reshuffling of the same old faces, in different roles.
In the event, the make-up of the Luxon line-up is largely predictable – significant promotions for up-and-coming MPs Chris Bishop and Erica Stanford and the retention of Dr Shane Reti in Health.
While he had indicated previously he had big roles in mind for former leaders Judith Collins and Todd Muller, the reality has turned out a little differently. Although Muller now appears to want to become a contributing member of the Caucus again, questions remain about how constructive and co-operative Collins will be over the next little while.
Overall, Luxon will gain some credit for promoting people of talent and doing his best, with extremely limited resources, to make his top team look as diverse as possible. However, the real test will be how effectively this team can take National’s challenge to the Labour Government.
Beyond that, Luxon’s announcement raises some interesting questions about the role and purpose of the Shadow Cabinet. Its most obvious function is as the Opposition’s alternative team to the Cabinet of the Government of the day.
However, because the Opposition is not in office, the Shadow Cabinet has no executive power to do anything, other than be the shop front for the Opposition. It is a somewhat fictional concept.
In many ways, this is no different from the Cabinet itself. As the Cabinet Manual succinctly notes, “Cabinet is central to New Zealand’s system of government. It is established by convention, not law.”
While Cabinet is the place where all the “significant decisions or actions taken by the Executive are first discussed and collectively agreed” the legal responsibility for their implementation rests elsewhere with those Ministers or agencies holding the relevant statutory authority. The role of Cabinet has developed over the past couple of centuries to be the clearing house of government but is really an advisory body with no specific authority or legal standing of its own.
However, the notion of the Shadow Cabinet is a much more recent development. It grew out of the previous practice in the British Parliament of former ministers grouping around their leader in Opposition to “shadow” what their successors were getting up to in their former portfolios. Over time, it has developed into something much more formal, with more emphasis being placed on the role of the Shadow Cabinet as a viable alternative to the Government of the day, right down to the practice of the British Cabinet and the Shadow Cabinet even meeting at the same time each week.
But the notion of a formal Shadow Cabinet has been much slower to develop in New Zealand, mainly because of the smaller size of our Parliament.
The Labour Party, for example, during its long periods in Opposition from the 1960s to the late 1990s, was generally reluctant to have a formal Shadow Cabinet, because it felt it created a distracting distinction between those who were “in” and those who were not. Instead, it preferred to have an extensive network of caucus subject committees, with the convenors being regarded as the Party’s spokesperson in each area.
For its part, National has also relied on a more informal system. Since Muldoon’s time, the National Party in Opposition has often gone as far as ensuring that every member of its caucus who wants to be a party spokesperson is given some area of policy, however small in some cases, to call their own. (There was even at one time a National MP who was spokesperson on grains and small seeds.)
However, Luxon has dispensed with this approach in appointing what he calls his Shadow Cabinet.
Rather than a formal Shadow Cabinet structure, both parties have used internal ranking systems to show seniority and decide House seating, especially who gets to sit on the coveted front bench alongside the leader. But in neither party is this type of ranking or spokesperson’s role an automatic guarantor of what happens in government.
In Labour’s case, the Cabinet is elected by the caucus, although the Prime Minister allocates portfolios and appoints ministers outside the Cabinet. National’s leader both appoints all ministers and allocates portfolios when the party is in government.
In both cases, though, Cabinet composition is governed by performance in opposition – which requires a different set of skills from being in government, which some MPs never adapt to. There have been many cases of stars in opposition becoming flops in government. Since the advent of MMP, there has been the additional factor of needing to accommodate coalition and confidence and supply partners as well in the appointment of ministers.
While the most senior portfolios – finance is the obvious example – usually go to the person who has been the spokesperson in opposition, the picture regarding other portfolios can be less certain for the reasons cited above, and the overall number of ministerial spaces available.
So, it is no given that in the event National can lead a government after the next election all those holding positions in the Luxon team today will automatically slot into equivalent ministerial roles then.
However, it would be astounding if National’s new finance, health, education, primary sector, and climate change spokespeople – areas where big policy challenges loom, regardless of who leads the next government – are not retained in those roles in government if National wins in 2023.
Luxon and his senior team will not only be keen to parade their credentials to the electorate as a whole over the next two years but will also want to start developing the key relationships with sector leaders they will need to have in place so they can hit the decks of government running.
One need only look back to the current Government’s problems in critical policy areas like housing and poverty reduction to appreciate the problems that can arise when this ground has not been properly sown, and a government comes unexpectedly to office.
While Luxon has chosen to follow the practice of some former leaders and rank only his top 20 MPs numerically – conveniently referring to them as his Shadow Cabinet, the idea of a formal Shadow Cabinet still has limited value in New Zealand.
Like former leaders, Luxon will have a closer, tighter and more focused small team of his closest confidantes and supporters in Caucus, his “Kitchen Cabinet” if you like, with whom meet he will meet much more frequently to chew over more immediate political and policy issues and develop short-term strategy responses.
Moreover, with a Caucus of just 33, Luxon will probably not have too many formal meetings of his Shadow Cabinet. It would be rather difficult for caucus unity to have nearly two-thirds of the caucus meeting formally from time to time, while the remaining third sit outside twiddling their thumbs.
More likely, he will use the concept of his Shadow Cabinet as a general contrast with the performance of the Labour Cabinet.
Ultimately, the test of Luxon’s reshuffle will be performance, rather than process. He has chosen to promote those whom he believes are National’s strongest and publicly appealing performers to get National’s message across.
He has held out a sort-of olive branch to former leaders Muller and Collins although it is somewhat limp.
If his proteges fail to perform in the way he believes they can, and if Collins fails to cooperate as she should, it will be Luxon who will pay the price.
