Christian Heritage Party of New Zealand - The "Testimonial Party" Debate

The "Testimonial Party" Debate

Some controversy exists over whether to describe the CHP as a "testimonial party", because while the party attempted to remain true to its principles, it also made rare politically-pragmatic decisions.

As noted above, the CHP may have modelled itself on a prior Dutch Reformed separatist political party, the Political Reformed Party, given the particular provincial origins of Dutch immigrant New Zealand CHP founders. On this assumption, the CHP could have consciously modelled itself on the Netherlands template of a testimonial party. In Dutch politics, "testimonial parties" do not expect concrete political outcomes from their meagre parliamentary representation, but participate purely on "principle".

While the Dutch proportional representation electoral system permits this due to its demographically-based nature, New Zealand's Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) electoral system has a German-style five percent threshold, which a political party must exceed in order to win parliamentary seats without the security of a constituency seat. However, the CHP has never been able to pass or circumvent the five-percent threshold on its own. One can therefore argue (retrospectively) that voting for Christian Heritage New Zealand acted in effect as a "spoiled vote" reservoir for conservative Christian political ambitions, on the basis that it only ever functioned as a New Zealand "testimonial party", based on a Dutch model being used in a New Zealand political context where it would never work.

Against this, those do not see Christian Heritage as a testimonial party point out that the CHP did compromise some issues of principle in an attempt to obtain concrete political outcomes. Bryce Edwards, a New Zealand commentator states:

"The more irrelevant that the Christian Heritage Party became after 1996 – when it came closest to getting into Parliament – the more it moved away from its extremist values and policies in order to gain office. By 2002 the party had dropped most of its far-right economic policies, and also gave less emphasis to its more conservative moral positions. In relation to this shift, party leader Graham Capill declared ‘We’re not changing our stance but it’s a question of emphasis’ (quoted in Mold, 2002a). Capill also announced that Christian Heritage had broadened its view on many issues, and that ‘He wanted the party to be judged on its "big ticket" policies like health, education and defence rather than just its moral stance.'

Probably indicating its increasing office-seeking motivation and its shift from the extremes, in 2002 the party recruited the chief executive of Women’s Refuge, Merepeka Raukawa-Tait. This was very surprising because Raukawa-Tait was well-known as being anti-smacking, sympathetic to gay rights, and notorious for visiting a Wellington strip club. That the party knew of her liberal stances and not only accepted her as a member but also made her the deputy leader of the party and an election candidate, spoke volumes about how far Christian Heritage had come in recent years and how much further it was willing to moderate. In fact Christian Heritage used Raukawa-Tait’s selection to indicate its intention to ‘mainline more’, focusing on broader economic issues rather than just moral values (ibid).

Like United Future, Christian Heritage focused much of their 2002 election campaign on the family, and proposed the establishment of a Commission for the Family, something which the Labour-led government agreed to after the election, providing further evidence that the Christian Heritage Party was no longer entirely outside the new consensus."

The party had already compromised on various policies when it entered the Christian Coalition in 1996. Christian Heritage and the Christian Democrats formed the Christian Coalition in order to achieve political power for/through the Coalition. The Party also compromised on the capital punishment issue in order to gain an MP in parliament (Frank Grover) in 1998. The party also attempted to win power and prevent the spoiling of its votes by standing the high-profile Merepeka Raukawa-Tait as its Wairarapa electorate candidate (even though she did not agree with all the party's policies). Had Raukawa-Tait won her electorate, the party would have gained two Members of Parliament. While she placed highly in that contest, she did not win the electorate, however.

However, while Merepeka Raukawa-Tait did record the highest ever constituency-seat vote-count for the CHP when she stood in the Wairarapa electorate, she proved too socially liberal for the Party, and ultimately resigned as CHP Deputy-Leader. With the resignation of this high-profile mainstream public figure, the CHP reverted to its usual high dependency on the media profile of Graham Capill, its long-term leader. In addition, while Frank Grover stood for office as the CHP candidate in the Tauranga electorate, he placed lowly in subsequent election results, given the popularity of New Zealand First leader, Winston Peters.

These three instances suggest that while periods of political opportunism might have existed in its history, the CHP basically seemed to conform to a prescribed, confessional "testimonial party" model.

Against this, opponents of the testimonial-party theory also point out that the CHP changed its policies over the years for political reasons. They cite removal of the capital-punishment policy and changing the stance on the anti-nuclear/ANZUS issue. However, supporters of the testimonial-party argument would respond that the CHP only changed its position on nuclear issues in 1999, and abandoned its support for capital punishment in 2004, after Graham Capill had stepped down as leader. Therefore, both instances may not disprove the testimonial-party model, due to their late adoption as party policies. This late adoption suggests strong resistance to changes within entrenched confessionally-based organisational policies consistent with a testimonial-party model. When Capill and his Reformed Church associates left the party, this resistance lapsed.

The party constitution also seemed to rule out Christian Heritage acting as a purely "testimonial party". While allowing that the Party had as an objective to "promote and uphold biblical principles", the constitution went on to state that the Party had the goal to "gain seats in arliament so that it can have a direct influence on legislation, policy, and the governing of New Zealand."

However, this does not preclude possible Netherlands-centred Reformed Church influences that had only had experience within a confessional, testimonial party structure, and might have subconsciously replicated the testimonial-party model in the context of New Zealand.