ACT’s new regular bulletin

act-new-zealand

Mon May 25 2015 12:00:00 GMT+1200 (New Zealand Standard Time)

ACT’s new regular bulletin

Monday, 25 May 2015, 1:12 pm
Column: ACT New Zealand

We Rate the Budget Speeches
Free Press observed the Budget Speeches live. The media underreported the Government’s momentum and the opposition’s flat-footedness. It was one-way traffic as the opposition sat dumbfounded at National stealing their policies.

Death by Assimilation
National have returned to their traditional governing style, managing other parties’ ideas. Labour promised to introduce a capital gains tax and build houses, the Greens promised to deal with child poverty, New Zealand First promises to do nothing on Superannuation, and Peter Dunne promises to do nothing on the RMA. National are now, to an extent, doing all of that.

Bill English (7/10)
Bill is the policy architect of this government. He provides his colleagues with the alternative to government by pork barrel, and often succeeds. He has managed to refocus the civil service on achieving outcomes instead of consuming inputs. The biggest disappointment was that his courage cutting the $1000 Kiwisaver kickstart wasn’t matched on fixing Superannuation. As a result, a generation is paying twice.

Andrew Little (1/10)
Free Press feels sorry for Little. His speech has been panned as the worst ever. Some would have sat down upon running out of material, so we are giving him one point for speaking right through his time allotment. He talked about a ‘rooster on heat’ and then about ‘fiscal gender reassignment.’ Clearly Little needs biology lessons. But he’s got bigger problems too.

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What he Needed to Do
Little theoretically wants to be the Prime Minister. His 20 minutes of rage showed he is out of touch with the country – New Zealand in 2015 is not exactly at a low point in history. Unless he’s proposing a total revolution, he could have spent five minutes talking positives. That would have given him fifteen minutes to lay out Labour’s alternatives.

There is No Alternative
The problem is Labour doesn’t have any. They have abandoned most of the policies they stood for last election. Changing the electricity market, reforming Superannuation, capital gains taxes, changing the Reserve Bank Act, all gone. What do they stand for?

John Key (8/10)
John Key delivered a tub thumping speech crowing about Little’s failure. We give him an eight because he mentioned David Seymour and ACT twice and endorsed Partnership Schools.

Meteria Turei (4/10)
Turei mentioned sustainability once, 15 minutes into her speech. RIP the Greens as an environmental party. The grandstanding on child poverty was cringe worthy. A person who got free university, lives in a remote castle and complains about urban sprawl tried to appeal to younger generations on housing and finance - priceless. A four is generous.

Winston Peters (5/10)
You have to hand it to him. We have no idea what he was on about (did he?) but it sounded great. His main refrain was “I See Red” a la Split Enz, complete with his caucus holding up fire hazard signs. Free Press understands “That was my Mistake” and “I Hope I Never (Have to See You Again)” have become more popular among Northland voters recently.

Te Ururoa Flavell (6/10)
Flavell gave a solid defence of the Maori Party’s wins for Maori in government.

Peter Dunne (6/10)
Dunne is an exceptional parliamentary speaker. Without any notes at all he gives perfectly structured essay-like addresses. Nonetheless we don’t know what Dunne’s end game is.

David Seymour (7/10)
Along with Little, David gave his first budget speech, certainly the best of the rookie speeches but he has room to grow. He gave a spirited defence of Partnership Schools and the people who step up to run them and change young people’s lives. He also pointed out that the budget lacks the kind of long-term view that younger New Zealanders need. Where is the Superannuation reform, where is the housing market reform? Where, in all this focus on child poverty, is the recognition of those who save, sacrifice, and delay having children to bring them up without poverty? Where are the company tax reductions aimed at bringing capital and more interesting jobs to New Zealand in years to come? You can watch David’s speech here.

Bonus Speech
Parliament sat late to pass Budget legislation, which makes for some noisy night-time debate when MPs think no-one’s watching. But Free Press sees all. If David’s Budget speech was too proper for your tastes you might prefer this onslaught, congratulating National on their Kiwisaver action, but challenging them to show the same courage when it comes to the increasing cost of Superannuation.

Greens don’t get Dependency
Catherine Delahunty tweets: Rise in benefits welcome but extra work expectations and pressure on sole parents is punitive. No, that balance is essential if you want to reduce welfare dependence. The government’s approach is informed by the Nordic model. Nordic states expect mothers to return to work when their child is 1 to 3 years old. Employment is front and centre in the Nordic welfare strategy. It works.

Responsible Parenting
Moves to tackle child support debt and encourage parents to pay what they owe in child support are also a welcome move.

Government as Land Speculator and Land-Banker
After all the months of commentary about speculators, land bankers and foreign buyers in the Auckland property market, it now turns out that the biggest land-banker of them all was the government! The move to free up Crown land for housing development is sensible and long-overdue. But again, this is only a short term fix – we will soon use up the available 430 hectares. We still need fundamental reforms to allow the market to respond to rising demand for housing.

Where’s Maurice Williamson Going?
Betting site iPredict has opened up stocks for a by-election in Pakuranga, and for incumbent Williamson to be the candidate by 2017. The interesting thing is the opening odds, respectively 30 and 25 percent likely. iPredict’s operators, who have deep political connections, set these odds. Something’s up.

Seriously!?
ACT’s Board has unanimously rejected an approach by the hapless Don Brash (no joking, this is too good for us to have made up) for Williamson to join ACT’s caucus. “My own party don’t want me no more” is not an attractive pitch. For similar reasons, what poor country would accept him as ambassador?

ends

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