Attempting to achieve so much legislative change according to a completely arbitrary deadline is not only monumentally stupid, it is also deeply undemocratic, argues Marcelo Rodriguez Ferrere.
On July 25, 1933, US president Franklin D Roosevelt broadcast his third “fireside chat” with the nation. He’d been a busy man. His election on the promise of the New Deal – Roosevelt’s solution to the Great Depression – was “the Nation is asking for action, and action now” and so at his urging, Congress had passed 76 different pieces of legislation since his inauguration in January. By July, he “wanted the opportunity of a little quiet thought to examine and assimilate in a mental picture the crowding events of the hundred days which had been devoted to the starting of the wheels of the New Deal”.
It was this comment that coined the modern concept of the 100-day plan, which immediately stuck and became an omnipresent feature of American politics: an arbitrary benchmark to measure the success of a new administration.
The 100-day benchmark of an incoming government’s performance has long been a feature of New Zealand politics, too. Twenty-five years ago, a week before the 1999 election Helen Clark said that her government would be “very busy” in its first 100 days, outlining 21 steps it would take to “restore fairness, opportunity, and security”. Fifteen years ago, John Key issued a checklist of 27 items of all the things his government had completed in 100 days. And only six years ago, Jacinda Ardern revealed a 17-point plan that it almost completed in 100 days.
Thus, it should not have come as a surprise that the current coalition government would follow suit and produce its own 100-day action plan. With 49 items, this was a plan that was “ambitious for New Zealand”. As the prime minister quipped, “I think we’re going to do more in 100 days than the (last) government did in the last six years”. Zing!
However, once you’ve stopped laughing at that absolute slay, take a deep breath and have a think about whether that pace is actually a good thing; something a government should be proud of. Because (spoiler alert) I’m going to posit that actually, attempting to achieve that much legislative change according to a completely arbitrary deadline is not only monumentally stupid, it is also deeply undemocratic.
First, the stupidity. As Jane Patterson wrote in 2018, the Labour-led government’s 100-day plan created months of “frenetic activity for ministers and for the public service with a very tight timeframe to develop policy and new legislation”. Given the current government’s plan uses the words “repeal”, “stop” and “cancel” on 12 different occasions, its completion might have led to a higher incidence of RSI complaints after pressing the Ctrl + Z buttons continuously, but it has been no less frenetic. And unless you’re Hunter S Thompson, working at a “frenetic” pace doesn’t often lead to effective work outputs. There is a reason why “more haste, less speed” is an idiom, whereas there is absolutely no reason why new governments must conform to an arbitrary and self-imposed deadline of 100 days of action.
No reason, of course, beyond a 100-day plan sounds like a good idea. After all, even this august publication noted that such 100-day plans are “often observed as a crucial period for a new government or leader, as they attempt to put their stamp on governance after an election victory”. And indeed, given the prime minister’s corporate experience (did you know he once ran Air New Zealand?) and affinity for business speak, he might have read best-selling corporate literature on how new business leaders need to move fast in order to take charge. These days, though, corporate gurus think 100-day plans aren’t really that great: “What may define the success of a CEO’s tenure is not the achievement of milestones … but, rather, the cultivation of relationships across multiple constituencies.” Prime Minister, if you’re reading (lol), take note, because those relationships sure need some work.
Moreover, the applicability of such corporate ideas rests on the myth that governments should be run like businesses, which is just that: a pernicious and dangerous fiction. Sure, running a government like a business sounds like a good idea, but a 2008 study found that the public reckon it’s a bad idea in practice once they factor in the impact on, y’know, democracy.
That impact on democratic principles could not be clearer. As noted above, the government’s action plan involves more demolition than it does rebuilding. Simply erasing the policies of the previous government without identifying an alternative solution leaves a vacuum in terms of good governance. The problem persists, and while there might be a democratic mandate for repeal of one policy solution, that does not mean there is a mandate for the alternative. People may have voted to repeal Three Waters, but they did not vote for Local Water Done Well – because that policy did not exist before the election! – and it shows.
Sometimes even that mandate for demolition is shaky. Although Act opposed the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products legislation when it was enacted last year, neither it nor National campaigned on its repeal. Only NZ First made such a promise in its manifesto; a manifesto it released only a week after advance voting began.
Now, of course it is possible for policies without an existing mandate to gain legitimacy through the legislative process. Usually, that process allows input from different sectors of the community, which then allows the government to amend its legislation to take account of those views, countervailing the general vibe of the public with specific measures designed to protect the most vulnerable. But the process is completely circumvented by the use of urgency, which is why even the usually conservative-friendly Maxim Institute warned this government against using it.
However, those warnings fell on plugged ears and self-tied hands, since the government must use urgency if it is to meet its arbitrary 100-day deadline. The astonishing abuse of urgency in New Zealand by both National and Labour is well-documented, long-lamented and deeply problematic in the way it excludes democratic deliberation. But a worrying milestone was reached when the government’s use of urgency conveniently prevented the Waitangi Tribunal from considering whether the abolition of Te Aka Whai Ora was a breach of the Treaty. The 2023 election might have provided the mandate to govern, but it cannot – and does not – mean that every government decision is democratically legitimate.
Roosevelt could only get his 100-day agenda enacted because of a never-repeated quirk of legislative timing. That, and because he was dealing with a capital-G Great Depression. That, and because he won an election in a landslide with a clear mandate. This unique combination of factors means no other US president has ever effected so much change in their first 100 days. And yet even Roosevelt was slowed down (for a time) by the judicial branch of government in effecting that change.
We don’t have that luxury in New Zealand. Our former prime minister once described this country as producing the “fastest law in the west”. Because there are perilously few handbrakes on our legislative processes, and uniquely few checks or balances against the outcomes of those processes, New Zealand’s national government wields an astonishingly large amount of power. If it uses the language of an arbitrary, self-imposed 100-day action plan, that government can get a lot done without a lot of mandate, supervision or discussion. And so it shouldn’t. Just like tipping culture and the Taco Bell Crunchwrap Supreme, the American import of the 100-day plan has no place in Aotearoa.