ACT has always had a deep fissure within it. It was organised by people who wanted to engage in policy analysis but at the same time be successful politicians. The result is often confusion – as with its attempted stance on the emissions trading scheme. The policy analysis is right that a national ETS is a very minor issue in comparison with an international response to global warning; the politics of appealing to the short-sighted among farmers and other interests is misguided.
ACT tried to avoid being typecast on the conventional left-right spectrum – its characteristic was to be fearless analysis of options, not promotion of collectivist or individualist values. It could not withstand popular and media insistence on the familiar and so ended up cast as the extreme right-wing. That was never an accurate characterization of Roger Douglas – see my ‘Bliss at dawn – social policy in the first term of the Lange Government’ in Margaret Clark (ed) For the Record: Lange and the Fourth Labour Government (Wellington; Dunmore Publishing, 2005), pp. 84-118 – and the portrayal of him as a right-wing ogre was a grossly unfair caricature but it was a successful tactic for many in the Clark governments. He now has to spend so much time distinguishing himself from the caricature that he cannot be an effective politician in respect of current problems.
The Greens also tried to introduce a dimension into politics distinct from the Left-Right one but they failed even more dismally than ACT. Once accurately seen as water-melons, they now have even pink skins. It will be interesting to see whether the Maori Party can succeed. Currently, Pita Sharples is being very effective in avoiding the mistake Peters made in 1996 – leaving his supporters with a sense of betrayal. Consultative hui on the proposed deal with National is mostly a charade but it is likely to confer legitimacy. (Within limits; Key has also been consulting the traditional leaders of the main iwi – Tainui, Tai Tokerau, Tuwharetoa, Whanganui, Ngati Porou and Ngai Tahu.- and the Maori Party will not become the only vehicle for the relationship between Crown and Maori.) As we move towards 2011, it will be very interesting to see whether the Maori electorates will be so concentrated on a party vote for Labour, but I think that Sharples and Turia have reasonable prospects of maintaining a distinction between a “Maori voice on policy” and “redistribution towards the disadvantaged” so that even the media will have difficulty absorbing the Maori Party on to the conventional left-right spectrum.

The new role of the Maori Party, on the other hand, is likely to prove extremely influential, both for the Nats and for New Zealand.