Why is a sinking ship trying to drown its rats?

  You know a ship is in trouble when the crew starts drowning the rats.

  That is how I read Liam Hehir’s column in the NZ Herald this week. Hehir, a National Party member, casts ACT and NZ First as tapeworms devouring National. “If the host dies, the tapeworm dies with it.”

Two days from an election, it reads like the mood below decks. It also fails on every count.

  Start with the history. For most of MMP’s 30 years, the big fish ate the small. NZ First fell from 13.3 percent to 4.3 after governing with National, which governed on with its defectors. The Alliance fell from 7.7 to 1.3 under Labour. ACT shrank to one MP. Every minor party in government, a Victoria University analysis found, polled worse next time. “Tails on governing dogs get smaller, not bigger,” Colin James wrote.

  Nobody at National called that parasitism. It was simply the natural order. Now, for once, the small parties are growing, and Hehir diagnoses a disease.

  Next, the diagnosis. The final 1News-Verian poll has National on 29.5 percent, down 8.6 points on 2023. ACT and NZ First combined are up just 3.7. Most of National’s net loss went elsewhere. RNZ-Reid Research had National on 24.8, below its 2020 wreck, though National calls that poll “out of step”.

  Tapeworms don’t explain that. National’s caucus held two confidence votes on Christopher Luxon in four months. In the Reid poll, 53.8 percent rate him poorly.

  Hehir says the partners imposed “contentious but futile stances”. National signed the deal, including the Treaty principles bill’s path to select committee. Hosts don’t sign contracts.

  Then the born-to-rule bit. National is “the natural home of centre-right voters”, it was “never a coalition of equals”, and the country’s fate must not rest “in the hands of others”.

  Others? That is MMP. On Verian’s numbers, National gets 36 seats and needs 61. In 2017, it won 44.4 percent and lost government. Under MMP, the big party without friends is the one that dies.

  Nor can Hehir’s tapeworm be starved. National has tried. Jim Bolger and Jenny Shipley sacked Winston Peters. John Key ruled him out. Judith Collins said ACT’s job was to destroy NZ First’s vote. NZ First has governed with both major parties and returned from oblivion twice. That is no parasite.

  Hehir’s warning about 1935 to 1949 predates MMP by almost half a century. His “licensing defection” line is richer still. Key told Epsom to vote David Seymour. National wrote that licence.

  Now Key, who taught Epsom to split, has been hauled back to demand “two ticks blue” for Paul Goldsmith, who concedes National’s list “is not as certain as it was in the past”. On the Herald’s poll of polls, National would be the first major party under MMP with no list MPs.

  Chris Bishop, in the tightest projected race, has an unlikely lifeline: Peters. The tapeworm is throwing the host a rope.

  Then the bogeyman. RNZ counted 37 of National’s 94 Instagram posts in six days featuring the Greens or Chloe Swarbrick, the supposed next Finance Minister. Chris Hipkins says that job goes to Barbara Edmonds. Luxon says National merely uses the Greens’ “own words”. Meanwhile, Luxon calls Nicola Willis keeping Finance “non-negotiable”, though she is list-only and may not reach Parliament.

  So who are the rats? National’s own. Don Brash, Maurice Williamson and Harry Mowbray, whose son calls himself “National’s largest donor”, are urging voters to withhold National’s party vote. That distorts Parliament. And the fear may be working: Verian’s final poll has National up one point, with ACT and NZ First down two each.

  But frightening passengers back aboard does not fix the hull. Voters are nobody’s host, and no party owns them.

  Rats don’t sink ships. They are just the first to notice the water.