Seymour Speech [21/2/15]: Our classical liberal tribe
act-new-zealand
Fri Feb 27 2015 13:00:00 GMT+1300 (New Zealand Daylight Time)
Seymour Speech [21/2/15]: Our classical liberal tribe
Friday, 27 February 2015, 1:48 pm
Speech: ACT New Zealand
Delivered by ACT Leader David Seymour on February 21, 2015.
Video is available here.
It’s a pleasure and honour to speak with you as Act Leader in our Party’s 20th year of parliamentary representation.
I’d like to pay tribute to those ACT people who have gone before. An extraordinary group have kept the liberal flame alive.
• For 20 years the world’s most liberal elected party.
• The eighteen MPs elected by this party over six elections.
• Our past leaders, many of whom are here today. I’d like to point out that the last three became leader at ages, 71, 65, 49 and I’m 31. It’s an accelerating trend. The next leader may not have been born yet. I am in for the long haul.
• The many staffers who have worked in the party office and in parliament, especially the wonderful folks who keep me out of trouble today.
• ACT’s donors who recognise freedom ain’t free, and that political parties atip civil society’s spear to the heart of state power.
• Of course, the volunteers who make heroic contributions to our campaigns. I want to single out John Windsor for his extraordinary contributions.
To my fellow ACT members. The electoral Act defines a political party as having a certain number of members. You literally are the party. Membership lists are secret and your number adds moral weight to our cause. Thank you.
Finally, my fellow Epsom electors. We are the only electorate that consistently uses both votes to get the government we want. I don’t just mean those of us who sit on the right. Our left wing neighbours try it too, but thankfully they aren’t too numerous. Representing my community in parliament is a great honour and responsibility.
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Kiwis have a lot to be proud of.
We are a free, harmonious, technologically sophisticated and prosperous country.
Even our government sector is better than most. If you doubt that, try renewing a Russian passport.
Our country is relatively free of corruption and we rate extremely well on many international indices – on lifestyle, quality of our institutions, social capital, the economy, on ease of doing business.
Even the most shop-worn of clichés is true – NZ is a great place to bring up kids.
But our job as a political party is to identify policy weaknesses.
To identify what could improve, and how to improve it.
But in doing that, let’s try not to be, as we sometimes have been, too cranky, too negative, too downbeat about New Zealand’s prospects.
Because the Act Party can justifiably take the credit for much that is good in New Zealand today.
Through the 1970s and into the early 1980s, New Zealand was heading towards a destination similar to that of modern Greece.
The reforms starting in 1984 saved us from that.
It wasn’t the Labour Party as it is today that drove those reforms.
And it certainly wasn’t the National Party –Muldoon had effectively staged a coup.
As we know, it was Act’s founders and first political leaders that led those reforms.
And it was Act’s political philosophy that motivated them.
That’s why New Zealand now rates so well on international rankings.
For example, the latest Fraser Institute Economic Freedom indices rank NZ third (as does the Heritage Foundation index), just behind Hong Kong and Singapore. On most of the variables that go to make up this ranking, we do pretty well, comfortably in the top ten in the world.
New Zealand has adopted more of ACT’s policies than any other nation bar two.
On the Legatum global prosperity index funded by a New Zealander, NZ again ranks 3rd, but this time after Norway and Switzerland. This index looks at much more than just GDP related incomes but considers education, health, social capital, and safety, amongst the usual other factors.
On a per capita income basis, however, we rank somewhere in the 21st to 31st range, depending on the currency adjustment.
After the upheavals of the reform period our long decline stopped. But we are only holding our position, not improving it much.
In these global surveys there are clues about what matters.
We rate poorly on size of government (too big of course).
The costs of regulation on business, our labour market regulation and restrictions on foreign direct investment all count against us.
Land use regulation has made the supply of housing inelastic, with property prices absorbing gains.
While our performance overall in education is good, we have a long tail of underperformance.
That’s both a source and a symptom of the problems we face.
There are areas of significant socio-economic disadvantage in NZ.
But these inequalities are largely self-inflicted.
• Building human capital is the key to escaping from poverty. We need a more responsive and flexible education system.
• The lack of affordable housing is a major contributor to poverty. We need reform of the RMA and council restrictions on land use.
• A lack of jobs of course drives poverty. We need RMA reform so that businesses can expand without having to jump through a hundred hoops.
We can do this. It doesn’t need a magic wand.
It just needs governments with the determination to do the right thing.
In spite of all that, NZ is doing pretty well.
Act principles, classical liberal principles, have underpinned our successful policy reform.
Our tribe is the standard-bearer for classical liberalism in NZ, representing a general orientation towards a defence of private property, freedom of contract and limited government.
This is by no means an extreme or pure libertarian position. Classical liberalism takes a larger and more realistic view of government.
In short, we all know that government must respond to problems of pollution, the creation of infrastructure, of monopoly power, and raise funds through taxation.
But we seek a more even application of government sanctions: we challenge government monopoly in education and health, and the exemption of unions from anti-trust legislation.
Those principles have a long history in New Zealand politics.
You could think of us as a tribe – a tribe of classical liberals.
Our tribe and our diaspora are scattered through other political parties and organisations.
We have a history.
We have ancestors.
We have war stories.
And no doubt we have our myths.
The reformist period of the 1980s was substantially due to some of the founders and previous leaders of the Act Party – to Roger Douglas and Richard Prebble.
Of course, there was unfinished business – Roger always has unfinished business.
Some of that was left to the classical liberal supporters who achieved positions of influence in the National Party.
These notably include Derek Quigley, fired most honourably from Muldoon’s cabinet, and who became in 1993 a founding member with Roger Douglas of the Association of Consumers and Taxpayers
And, of course, there was Ruth Richardson, who got on with some of the unfinished business, and since leaving Parliament has been a strong Act supporter.
Ruth is New Zealand’s most efficient politician. Her legislation sunk the profligate fifth Labour government 14 years after she left parliament. Greece could have done with a Ruth Richardson and a Greek version of the Fiscal Responsibility Act.
That belief in small government, low taxes, self-reliance and personal responsibility can be traced back to the early British settlers in New Zealand.
Court judgements and Parliamentary debates from our early history reflect beliefs that people should stand on their own feet to the extent of their capacity, and not rely on the state.
In 1928, a group of mainly Auckland businessmen formed the 1928 committee, wanting an end to inefficient state trading organisations. They wanted a more business-like approach. They cast about for a Leader and found Sir Joseph Ward, half blind, diabetic and with a dicky heart.
He gave a speech where his notes reveal he was intending to announce that his United Party would raise loans of only 7 million sterling, rather than the customary 9-10. But he misread his notes, saying he would borrow 70 million. The crowd went wild. They loved it.
That sums up the challenge we face.
Later, a new ACT-like party was established, the Democrat Party. It contested the 1935 election. They polled well in several seats but won none, and instead split the centre-right vote to the advantage of the Labour Party.
The Constitutional Society of the 1950s and 60s, led by the remnants of the 1928 Committee, had been urging the National Party to change direction for many years. They even cast about for a more market-oriented leader than Keith Holyoake.
But the long slide had started.
NZ drifted from having the third highest living standard in the world to the 21st by the mid-1980s.
Increasingly for the business sector it was like trying drive a car with the handbrake on.
Actually it was worse – you had assorted politicians, like timid learner drivers, pushing hard on the brake pedal at every turn or imagined threat.
More recently you have had to cope with an Occupational Health and Safety Officer and a council planner shouting directions from the back seat.
It’s madness.
The turning point came when Bob Jones launched the NZ Party, with a strong free market, almost libertarian message, and helped tip National out of office in 1984.
We all know the rest of that story. Act’s founders and first Leaders launched the revolution now known as Rogernomics.
It only seemed radical because of where we were coming from. We were just catching up. By 1984 Thatcher had been in office for five years, Reagan for three.
So here we are.
Act NZ is a political party, not a think tank.
Now that we play a role in government, we have to deal with political realities.
I want to talk about those briefly.
National’s shifting and changeable commitments to free market are a source of immense frustration to us. As they are to many National supporters.
But sometimes we have to cut our natural political partners of the centre right a little slack.
National has to win over the median voter, to win the centre ground, and without that you remain in opposition.
It’s an unedifying business, winning the centre ground. A dirty job, but somebody’s got to do it.
You sort of feel lost in a Groucho Marx gag – you don’t like my principles; I have others.
Given that political reality, our job in Act is to stop the centre ground of politics moving to the left.
The only way we can do that is to be sufficiently persuasive that we have enough support, enough MPs, to tilt the centre of gravity of politics towards a classical liberal position.
The National Party and John Key have been extremely successful by any reasonable political metric.
For our part, we need to be frank about our failure in recent elections.
We should be able to attract those National voters who want a more energetic, more principled government, who want smaller government, lower taxes, less regulation, more choice in education and healthcare services.
It is we that need to do better, and I am determined that we will. I believe our failure stems from the lack of a clearly defined and widely agreed definition of our party’s mission.
We are, among other things, the party of business. Here is how we add value: New Zealanders who want a larger role for business and community and a smaller role for government currently have the worst of all words.
We are a disorganised minority. We will never be the majority in New Zealand but when we are organised we are a highly effective tribe.
Our mission is to represent our fellow New Zealanders who want a larger role for business and community, and a smaller role for government. To be the voice for an organised minority, firmly pressing New Zealand toward a more liberal future.
So what are we up against?
Well, much of the electorate has an enthusiasm for big government?
Voters look to government for entitlements, and they look to the political left to supply them.
And National plays that game too.
But the left also face formidable obstacles in selling their vision.
First, they have to overcome the individualism of our culture, especially the post-Rogernomics generations.
Then there is the demonstrable bankruptcy of most of the left’s programmes - poor incentives, no allowance for individual responsibility, and a disastrous track record.
And they are pitched against middle-class energy, aspiration and the desire of most of us to stand on our own feet.
The entrepreneurial values in our culture are newly resurgent.
And one more thing. Real incomes are steadily rising. If historic trends continue, average weekly incomes, in 2014 dollars, will lift from $56,000 now to around $70,000 by 2030, and $94,000 by 2050.
More and more households will be perfectly capable of looking after their own affairs, so long as taxes don’t keep on rising and especially if they fall.
Income trends are a problem for the political left.
And that might explain something else.
The way the left have become not just the enthusiasts for the nanny state, but also the new puritans.
H L Mencken expressed it best; puritans seem to have the “the haunting fear that someone somewhere may be happy”.
In the past, the Puritans were conservatives, fighting against the booze, sex and drugs.
Today’s Puritans are still shrill, bossy, freedom-hating and totalitarian in attitude.
Now the focus is on haranguing us about what we eat, whether and where we might smoke, how our food is packaged, what we are allowed to see in newspapers, all for our own good, of course. It’s not just protecting children so much, as treating us all as children.
A population of infants.
Well, the fightback against all this got underway in 1984.
It was people like Douglas, Prebble, Richardson, along with many others, that enabled NZ to flourish.
They didn’t make it flourish; they enabled it.
Those who are making it flourish are the entrepreneurs, the thinkers and doers, whether in business, in the arts, our bravest educators, or most innovative healthcare workers.
They are business people, small and large businesses, from trades through to software and high-tech; those in agriculture, horticulture, fishing, the wine industry; not to mention our flourishing craft beers.
In short, people with an idea and willing to back it with their energies and capital.
Actually, our whole approach can be routed back to a simple question: Is it the efforts of individual New Zealanders that make a difference in their own lives and the lives of those they care about, or is it politicians and their grand government schemes?
It’s clear where the Labour, the Greens, New Zealand first, and sometimes even National stand. There’s not a problem in the world that can’t be solved by a government directive.
Child poverty? Another $60 per week on top of the current welfare state is their answer.
Energy innovation? Subsidising a particular energy type with government dollars.
RMA killing growth? Make more rules so that councils will do what they’re told.
Educational failure? Set a ratio of 26 students per teacher by state decree.
In the eyes of our opponents, there’s nothing that can’t be solved by just another government directive.
Our view is the opposite.
We believe in personal responsibility. We applaud the charitable sector where helping doesn’t mean voting every three years, but getting out and helping people every day.
Take the example of Terrance Wallace. An American who moved here and saw an opportunity to help. He approached the United Maori Mission and suggested their premises on Owens Road could become a hostel allowing underprivileged kids to access Auckland Grammar.
He travelled the regions north and south of Auckland and recruited kids with the offer of new hope. When the authorities said he was illegally hosting kids in the zone, he legally adopted fifty boys.
The first cohort of twelve graduated this year. Nine are going to University and three to apprenticeships or professional sports projects.
Now he has opened another hostel down the road. It is an inspiring story that government could never have invented.
We in Act have a particular interest in education and in Partnership Schools. Although they are new, they are already making an impact on the lives of many kids. But they have come under sustained attack from the political left, in an appallingly mean-spirited manner.
I find it astonishing that there is so little good will displayed to the educators who have embraced the challenge of addressing the demonstrable failure occurring in some parts of our education system.
They should be commended for their bravery, supported in their efforts, be accountable for their failures, and congratulated for their successes – not attacked for simply trying to help kids succeed.
These educators are also risk takers and entrepreneurs.
Their efforts most certainly make a difference to New Zealand.
And you, you brave supporters of a long tradition of classical liberalism, now manifest in the ACT NZ Party. – your efforts make a difference.
I’d like to finish with a challenge to our political class. A challenge to stop ducking an issue that has no immediate political payoff but is vital to our nation’s sustainability.
I have been sitting on the “new flag” committee, charged with organising the process leading to a referendum on a new flag.
I am not quite sure why. Maybe we need a new flag, maybe not.
But the interesting thing is the process.
Clearly we wouldn’t want to leave a decision about a new flag to a bunch of politicians, with their various agendas and likely dubious aesthetic preferences.
Thus we are charging a committee to come up with options, put those to the public in a referendum to find a preferred alternative, and then run that off against the “no change” option in a second referendum.
And it occurred to me that if we can do that about a matter that is largely symbolic, why not follow the same process for another intractable problem, one that politicians have been dodging for decades.
Namely the changes needed to ensure that NZ Superannuation is viable over the longer term.
That it doesn’t cause undue fiscal pressure, and pressure on tax rates, and is reasonably fair across the generations.
It is clear that political parties cannot resolve this, as balanced positions are too easily misrepresented and attacked.
It is too dangerous politically.
National is ducking the issue; Labour courageously tried but is now gun-shy.
This is a political Mexican stand-off, with the guns pointed at the younger generations, of which I am a member.
All New Zealanders know that this is an issue that must be addressed
How could we make progress then?
Well, let’s follow the “new flag” process.
Let’s appoint a group with the necessary expertise to come up with options. A good starting point would be members of the Retirement Policy and Research Centre (RPRC) at the University of Auckland Business School, perhaps in conjunction with the Retirement Commission.
We would charge them with consulting with the public and presenting a series of options for the future, of which “no change” is one.
As with the referendum on a new flag, we would put those options to the public in an initial referendum to establish a preferred alternative.
And then that would go to a binding referendum as an alternative to the no-change option.
Let’s be very clear, this is not an issue that will affect those over, say, 50-55 years of age, and the changes will be modest for those just a little younger.
Let’s also accept that this is not just an issue of raising the age of eligibility.
The issue is more complex.
For a start, many working people are not capable of working much past 65 – eg a gib-stopper, painter, builder, forestry workers, even a hair-dresser etc.
Others can comfortably work on past the age of 65 and earn a high income doing so – ie most professionals, even some politicians.
Putting up the age of eligibility is only one element of what might be a suite of options. These might include the age of eligibility; provisions for those who cannot work on past 65, or even to it; means testing issues (whether full or partial); the basis for indexation; the relationship to kiwisaver in the decades ahead; and eligibility criteria for migrants and kiwis returning home.
It would be up to the group charged with consulting the community to come up with serious options on these matters.
So, in light of the cricket world cup, here’s a proposal.
Lets knock this issue out of the park, taking it away from day-to-day politics.
Today I want to challenge the Leaders of all political parties to support this approach.
In particular, I want to challenge the leaders of both the National and Labour Parties to support me.
I challenge the PM to let the people decide.
John Key has committed to not changing superannuation. Fine. He would not be breaking any promises by letting this issue go to a referendum.
I challenge the new Labour Leader, Andrew Little, to show some leadership on this issue. Your party rather courageously campaigned on raising the age of eligibility at the last election, to your cost. Your Party clearly recognised that changes must be made.
I challenge the Hon Winston Peters Leader of NZ First to also support this issue going to the electorate to decide. He has supported referenda before. NZ First clearly have a significant constituency amongst the elderly, but this proposal will not affect those in or near retirement in the slightest.
I challenge the Co-Leaders of the Green Party to support this initiative. They speak often of the need for sustainability, often where the meaning of that word is obscure or entirely undefined. The sustainability of NZ Super is profoundly important, and making it so is entirely within our powers.
And I challenge the Co-Leaders of the Maori Party, and the Hon Peter Dunne Leader of United Future to also support me on this. The United Future proposal for a flexible start date for people taking up their superannuation (lower if taken earlier, higher if taken later) may well be a feature of the options presented.
In short, let’s resolve this Mexican Standoff.
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