Breaking Out.

Over the next 15 months, each of the three Coalition partners must seize as much of the Right’s ideological territory as possible for themselves.

“HE SAID WHAT!” David Seymour’s response to Tama Potaka’s less-than-fulsome endorsement of Act’s beleaguered Regulatory Standards Bill (RSB) is readily imagined. Interviewed by Jack Tame on TVNZ’s Q+A show, Potaka floated the possibility that Act’s legislation might be reported back to the House of Representatives with recommendations relating to te Tiriti and tikanga.

That is fighting talk.

Did the Minister of Māori Development not get the Memo? Could Potaka really be unaware of Seymour’s public warnings that the RSB is to be passed – entirely unmolested by second thoughts? That it’s a non-negotiable element of Act’s coalition agreement with National?

Seymour was unable to convince his coalition partners to pass Act’s Treaty Principles Bill. That’s why he’s telling National and NZ First that if they step back from their commitment to the RSB, then all bets are off.

But, would the Act leader and his parliamentary caucus colleagues really walk away from the Coalition and move to the cross-benches? More to the point, would they be willing to vote against their former partners, or even abstain from voting, and allow Labour, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori to defeat the Government? Are they prepared to precipitate an early election?