They say that learning is easier when watching the mistakes of others. If that is true, Parliament provided plenty of learning opportunities this week.
Something that failed repeatedly was something called ‘message discipline’, and that failure was often caused by ACT’s repeated distractions.
National's leader Christopher Luxon and his partners at the signing of their coalition deal. Message discipline was not in the fine print. Photo: Phil Smith
Listen to the Radio version of this story with excerpts from Parliament
Message discipline and setting the agenda
Message discipline is a tool of political communication. It happens all the time but if it is done well you may not notice. It is a technique for managing the news agenda by trying to ensure that your chosen message is either the strongest, or only one available to the media.
By making your message the only thing you talk about you limit choice. It is reinforced with strong soundbytes, appealing visuals, emotional angles, and stirring rhetoric.
The media picking up your message may also force your opposition to respond to your topic, rather than focus on their own. This is often referred to as ‘setting the agenda’.
Crucially, every member of the party or government must stick to the agreed ‘talking points’ and not get distracted. This is one reason why, when MPs or journalists ask a question on topic A, they get answers on topic B – the chosen talking point.
The planned message
The message the government was most focused on this week was the promised adjustment in tax brackets. Some MPs described this as ‘tax cuts’ but it appears the preferred descriptor was ‘tax relief’.
Politically speaking, tax relief is a well-chosen phrase. Political word choices are often heavily freighted. They are chosen to carry secondary meanings, emotional weight or negate their opposition. For example, National MPs say ‘restore law and order’ (rather than ‘reduce crime’). The word ‘restore’ presupposes a country out of police control and also prompts a nostalgic desire to return to an imagined idyllic past. Such phrases are harder to argue against than cold language. A politician can hardly say ‘we are against tax relief’.
Suffice it to say, the National party had obviously put some thought and work into the message and they devoted time and effort to it in parliament’s debating chamber. There were patsy questions in Question Time, and then afterwards; when National had five slots in the General Debate, every National MP gave speeches on tax relief.
That is message discipline. National’s speakers even all used the same statistics, factoids and claims, presumably provided by a party comms specialist who assembled the talking points.
Message discipline, what message discipline?
The General Debate also demonstrated a total lack of message discipline. National’s first speaker, Chris Bishop, generously noted that all the coalition parties (National, NZ First and ACT) had campaigned on the issue of tax bracket changes, and had achieved this policy together.
Despite this, when ACT and NZ First rose to speak, they entirely ignored the messaging that National was so unified on. Their coalition partners’ speeches wandered off somewhere else entirely. ACT’s Cameron Luxton focused on specific road plans, and Winston Peters had opinions about an op-ed that Labour’s Arena Williams had written about Cook Strait Ferries.
That is anything but message discipline. The opposition spoke more about tax changes during that debate than National’s coalition partners did.
Worse than choosing random and unrelated topics in the General Debate was a constant parade of distractions from ACT, largely self-inflicted. For a perfect example of the impact of poor message discipline consider how many media stories this week have been about various ACT party uproars, distractions, outbursts, walkouts, and complaints.
Consider that every journalist who spent hours writing a story about some apparently compulsive distraction was not spending that time mentioning ‘tax relief’ or anything else the government would prefer to be talking about.
National’s communications staff must be pulling their hair out.
The twain: Unenthusiastic desk neighbours during the previous parliament: Raiwiri Waititi and David Seymour. Photo: VNP / Phil Smith
An illustrative niggle
There have been many sideshows featuring ACT MPs recently. Here is one example, concerning niggles over the display of party logos in the debating chamber.
This recurring distraction has served little purpose but may be spurred by ACT’s constant dudgeon with Te Pāti Māori.
The two parties sat cheek by jowl in the last parliament and very obviously hated it. ACT have now moved across the aisle, but Te Pāti Māori may continue to rent space in their heads.
It began last week when National’s James Meager and ACT’s Cameron Luxton raised points of order during debate on the bill that walked back Māori Wards legislation. Both interruptions were within a single speech by Te Pāti Māori MP Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke.
The complaint was that Maipi-Clarke’s laptop had a party logo sticker on it. On Parliament TV it wasn’t easy to tell. The obvious stickers said “Taiao”, and “Toi tu ti Tiriti”, but at the right angle you could make out the word Māori in a white font against the silver laptop.
After the first complaint Maipi-Clarke blocked MPs’ view of the laptop to (as the presiding officer put it), “protect the sensibilities of others”. When the visual barrier fell, ACT rose with the second complaint.
As she covered the logo again, Labour’s Duncan Webb pointed out that the MP complaining about the display of a party logo was wearing a lapel pin with… a party logo. Likely hypocritical but not unusual – ACT MPs have worn such lapel pins for some time.
Hana-Rawhiti Maiki-Clarke in the House, though not using the ‘offending’ laptop. Photo: VNP / Phil Smith
Distraction, distraction, distraction
The logo niggle returned on Wednesday soon after the ACT leader rose to raise a beef with the Speaker, Gerry Brownlee.Seymour was outraged that the Speaker had not agreed with ACT’s claim that one of their junior MPs had been thought too white to lead a sub-committee on a contentious Māori-oriented bill; described by Seymour as Brownlee appearing to give “a green light to racial harassment in this Parliament.” (It was a job the junior MP had succeeded in being given.)
Seymour’s Point of Order was itself out of order, and was a distraction from the ‘message of the day’.
The party logo issue came up again soon after, when the Speaker clarified the rule. The prohibition on the display of party logos in the House did not only apply to stickers or file boxes, but any display.
“There are people displaying party logos at the moment. My advice is that they should remove those logos, in any form that they might have them, in order that I don't have to take stronger action to raise the standards that so many in this House want to see raised.”
The reminder was immediately before a question from ACT MP Todd Stephenson, who was wearing an ACT pin. Brownlee ruled Stephenson could not speak until ACT removed their pins.
Argument ensued, and Seymour was again lucky not to be sent packing for challenging a ruling, and worse, for questioning the Speaker’s motives.
EventuallyTodd Stephenson removed his pin but his colleagues would not, so ACT got no questions and no answers. A National Party minister had to answer on behalf of ACT’s Minister for Children, Karen Chhour.
National Party comms people were probably back in their office shouting at the TV. This was yet another self-inflicted distraction on what was meant to be their Big Tax Messaging Day.
The shamozzle continued into the General Debate (immediately after Question Time), when ACT MP Mark Cameron raised a point of order just to try and catch the speaker out.
The odds of tax relief being the big story were getting smaller and smaller. The bigger story was rapidly becoming ‘Parliament in chaos’ or ‘are racist agendas at play?’.
Repetition done well & oratory
When Rawiri Waititi stood up to speak in the same debate he knew which of those messages he was opting for. His speech was also interrupted by ACT, when Nicole McKee questioned whether he was allowed to call the Government’s agenda “racist”.
The Speaker noted that traditionally MPs can call a policy racist, but not a person.
For some time here at the House we’ve been wanting to collect examples of Parliamentary oratory for a programme, mostly to see how often MP’s use classic oratory tools in their speeches, and whether it helps their messaging.
The answers are ‘not very often’, and ‘but it can be very effective when they do’.
When Waititi resumed his speech he employed an oratory technique the Romans called Epistrophe (concluding repetition).
I note it here because it is based on the same idea as message discipline – repetition, endless repetition. But because the repetition occurs within a speech (rather than spread across a day), it is unlikely to be interrupted by the distractions of your own allies.
Here is his example of the oratory technique, epistrophe.
"I apologise if my kōrero is triggering, but we are punch drunk from the racist agenda this anti-Māori Government lead and have been leading and are led, by the dark triad. They've been punching Māori since you took office:
“The attack on Māori wards — punch! Demolishing of the Māori Health Authority — punch! Removing section 7AA — punch! Rushing through the Fast-track Approvals Bill — punch! Cutting Matariki funding — punch! Erasing te reo Māori from public service — punch! Cutting supply and capability of Māori housing — punch! The establishment of youth bootcamps — punch! Gang legislation that will disproportionately target Māori — punch! Ignoring tribunal and High Court rulings — punch! And yet to come, the Treaty principles bill — punch! "