Calling for ‘bipartisan’ solutions is like building castles out of sand
Friday, 16 January 2026
Rob Campbell has an extensive background in trade unionism, business leadership, governance and public service.
OPINION: There are many calls for “bipartisanship” these days, on matters of infrastructure, trade, health, fiscal policy, foreign policy and more. It seems a natural inclination, which follows any recognition that some issues are inherently long term, not well suited to electoral cycle volatility.
It suggests a comfort, a certainty, a continuity of experience which is again a natural inclination.
But it is no more realistic than the old “melting pot” ideas of washing away ethnic differences in a flood of assimilation of all into a single culture. A culture dominated by the, well, dominant existing culture.
The current version of this is the “we are all equal” stance that recognises no distinction or power imbalance between billionaire and pauper, corporation and precarious employee, colonist and colonised, privileged and outcast. This is magical thinking.
In reality we have many different interests amongst us. It is good to have shared interests within our whānau, wider communities and the country if they are supported by material reality. But shared policies cannot be simply invented or imposed over real differences. As the old saying goes, facts are stubborn things. And difference of material interests is a fact.
If you look closely at those calling for “bipartisanship” you will often find that what they really seek is agreement with their own view based on their own interests. They want others to wish away reality like a kid at a magic show in favour of the magician.
Even the idea that differences are “bi” rather than “multi” is wishful thinking. Not all, in fact not many, major issues can be neatly structured as between two political parties.These big issues are complex, with changing characteristics, threats and opportunities.
Proponents of “bipartisanship” may pose or even view themselves as pragmatists, but in reality they are dreamers (or misleaders). They try to ignore material realities.
This fact of competing, often contradictory, material interests does not mean that we are condemned to eternal scrapping and switching between policies. Maybe or maybe not there is some world ahead in which all material interests are aligned. Meantime we get on with living, creating some problems, solving others and kicking others along the road.
Leaders in any sphere may exploit the tensions involved to their own benefit (they and we know who they are), or preferably seek constructively to find ways that are fair and inclusive from bases which are open and principled. Which take into full account the real material differences.
If you were genuinely to seek common and lasting approaches to these big issues here is what you would do:
The whole range of material interests in the matter would be openly and fairly identified;
the best available knowledge on the issue, the options and the implications for all interests would be identified and kept updated while consideration continued;
consensus would be sought on which interests were to dominate in the chosen outcome and how these would be recognised in any compromises required to gain consensus.
minority protection, monitoring, review and revision protocols would be agreed.
This is a process not just between political parties but which must involve all of the material interests involved, as much a matter of civil society as one limited to Parliament.
Such an approach is time-consuming and demanding. Those with a short attention span or pushing their own barrow might want to short cut, to simply impose their view and accuse those opposing or subsequently reversing their direction of being negative or divisive. That is simply their dreamworld collapsing and we have no need to buy into it.
We are nowhere near a stable, agreed, accepted multi-interest position on these big issues. Nor have we seriously tried to achieve that. So calling for “bipartisanship” is just grandstanding. The political equivalent of building castles with sand, doomed to fail with the change of tide.