Fitzgerald v Muldoon and the Prevention of Personalism in New Zealand.
With the discussion around personalism this week, I was reminded of the 1976 Supreme Court case Fitzgerald v Muldoon, which highlights arguably the most significant act of judicial prevention of personalism in New Zealand politics, through the enforcement of proper governmental checks and balances.
For context, Robert Muldoon (the Prime Minister at the time), had made the decision to abolish New Zealand’s superannuation scheme, and that contributions which had been made into the scheme at that point in time should be refunded to affected employee’s, Muldoon was also the finance minister. This decision was announced at a press conference, with no prior consultation, which was an illegal exercise of power on Muldoon’s Part.
The outcome of the case was a declaration from the supreme court that the Prime Ministers statement was illegal, because it was an exercise of pretend power. In the end this decision from the courts served as a warning that a member of the executive could not single handedly change the laws of New Zealand, as a matter of preservation of democracy. It is also of note that since Muldoon, no Prime Minister has also held the finance portfolio, as a future normative measure undertaken to prevent too much power being vested into a single individual, greatly diminishing the ability of a single Prime Minister or politician in New Zealand to extend this power to enable personal rule.
References
Fitzgerald v Muldoon [1976] 2 NZLR 615.
https://www.cnas.org/publications/commentary/how-personalist-politics-is-changing-democracies
This reminded me of the recent introduction of the fast-track approvals bill. The placement of power in three Ministers (Shane Jones, Chris Bishop, and Simeon Brown) to decide regardless of the advice of expert panels, whether or not to fast-track projects raises concerns around how these projects will affect the environment, as well as whether this is at all democratic. While not concentrating power into a single leader, it shows a shifting of power from experts or organisations to the executive. I don't believe that New Zealand will ever reach a high level of individual personal power for the Prime Minister simply because of our MMP system and the difficulty for a single party to gain a majority and govern without the support of coalition partners. However, the current government's public servant cuts shows movement in the direction of personalism, even if we know it will never reach an extreme.
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