NZ Centre for Political Research

ADDRESS TO THE ACT PARTY NORTHERN REGIONAL CONFERENCE
Dr Muriel Newman
12 September 2009

Thanks for the opportunity to address your conference – it is great to see so many familiar faces!

As you may know, I run the New Zealand Centre for Political Research, a public policy think tank at http://www.nzcpr.com, that promotes the benefits of benefits of freedom, liberty and limited government through research, publications and open public debate. Our weekly electronic newsletter examines the underlying incentives in public policy, providing informed commentary and insight into the Parliamentary and political process. The huge feedback I receive each week enables me to keep my finger on the pulse of public opinion. It is from that perspective that I would like to share some observations with you today that I hope may assist ACT going forward.

There is no doubt about the fact that the tide was out for Labour at the last election. As they say, “oppositions don’t win elections, governments lose them” and without a doubt, voters had become tired of Labour’s nanny state, ‘government knows best’ attitude. They had also had enough of a bureaucracy that had grown top-heavy and vindictive, with a ‘rich prick’ outlook pervading the administration and penalising wealth creators.

In other words, the country was ready for a fresh start.

The expectation on election night turned to euphoria when National won. When ACT stepped up and pledged their support to form a government, there was a collective sigh of relief. In the days that followed the election, it was like a cloud of socialism lifted and New Zealand emerged from the shadows.

But the relief turned to concern when John Key embraced parties that many voters were fearful of - the Maori Party with its race-based agenda and the Greens, promoting radical environmentalism and socialism all rolled into one. Suddenly John Key had patched together the five-headed hydra that he had railed against during the campaign.

However, after the election, such misgivings were shelved - the Prime Minister is now enjoying his honeymoon period and people are giving the new government a go.

Having said that, there is a constant stream of opportunities for ACT in its watchdog role of keeping the new government on track - and if ACT is to stay relevant and grow, it cannot afford to let opportunities slip by. To its credit, it’s done a pretty fair job of holding the government to account in some areas.

After almost a year in government National has created major opportunities for ACT. Here are five:
1. Cancelling tax cuts instead of reducing government spending
2. Pushing ahead with the Emissions Trading Scheme instead of wisely buying time
3. Prevaricating on welfare reform in spite of pre-election promises to prioritise dealing with the problem of the underclass
4. Ignoring voters in the smacking referendum
5. Failing to take a principled stand on race-based issues

There are undoubtedly many more, but these five stand out because each is a ‘hot button’ issue for the public.

1. Cancelling the tax cuts

Given National’s pre-election promise to cut taxes, I couldn’t believe that they would cancel the tax cuts.

Taxes in New Zealand are excessively high – the Treasury has recommended that the top rate of income tax should be 30 percent or lower. They also regard company tax at 30 percent as now being too high, with the OECD average being around 26 percent. Further, they have always recommended aligning company and personal taxes with a lower, flatter rate being the goal.

Government spending in New Zealand is also excessively high – the Secretary of the Treasury has been very outspoken about the fact that some $40 billion of the $62 billion of government expenditure is poor quality. That means 65 percent of all government spending needs to go under the microscope.

With central and local government spending in New Zealand sitting at 40 percent of GDP – compared to the optimal size of 25 percent – it is far too high and is crowding out private enterprise.

All of this presents a huge opportunity for ACT to campaign on a low flat tax in conjunction with a cut in government spending to eliminate waste - and to his credit, Roger Douglas has made a good start in this.

2. The Emissions Trading Scheme

The whole Emissions Trading Scheme/climate change area is a vital issue for ACT as many people voted for the Party thinking that they would stop the ETS. Rodney Hide needs to be really visible in opposing the government’s plans so that those people who voted for the Party on this issue do not feel let down.

More and more New Zealanders do not believe the alarmist global warming talk. This reality presents a golden opportunity for ACT to take a lead and inject some sense into this debate. Climate change is a natural process that is not caused by man. Emissions Trading Schemes are a hugely inefficient way of collecting taxes that will impose massive costs on families and the economy without having any impact on the climate. The whole agenda is based on scaremongering and politics, not reason and science.

The point is that those New Zealanders know this whole thing is a ‘con’ need a champion. They need Rodney Hide to step up to lead a campaign to point out the truth, challenging the government’s propaganda, and standing up for what is right.

In Australia some of you will be aware that Senator Steve Fielding, who has a background in engineering and business, challenged the Rudd Government over climate change, helping to defeat their emissions trading legislation. What he did was ask three questions which the government could not answer satisfactorily. Essentially the questions were: if humans are causing catastrophic global warming, why has the earth’s temperature not risen since 1998 when CO2 emissions have increased by 5 percent? Why are we concerned about human emissions when the planet has been much warmer at other times in earth’s history? And why are policy decisions being based on the UN’s inaccurate models that show that global temperatures at present should be warming instead of cooling?

Senator Fielding is this week’s NZCPR Guest Commentator. You can read his article at http://www.nzcpr.com/guest163.htm

Climate change is a defining issue. It cuts across the political spectrum and given the economic damage the ETS will inflict, it is an issue that is not going to go away anytime soon. And the public desperately needs a champion - ACT needs to step up!

3. Welfare Reform

Welfare reform was always an ACT issue, but without ACT’s advocacy nothing will change. The dependency culture will continue to escalate – the underclass, child abuse, dysfunction and crime will all continue to grow unabated until the system is changed. And at the heart of the problem is the Domestic Purposes Benefit which is the source of the greatest damage.

New Zealand is one of only four countries with a stand-alone sole parent benefit. The incentives inherent in the DPB that undermine the family have had a devastating effect over the years: in 1968, while 89 percent of non-Maori children were born into a married family, by 2008, that had dropped to 65 percent. But when it comes to Maori families, the change has been catastrophic: in 1968, 72 percent of Maori children were born into a family where their parents were married but by 2008 that had dropped to 22 percent. What we are witnessing is the almost total collapse of the Maori family. Is it any wonder that with the family being in such a precarious state, Maori are totally over-represented in all of the negative social statistics? And while the DPB is, of course, not the only factor, it plays a key role. Presently over half of the 107,000 sole parents on the DPB are Maori or Pacific Islanders and almost half are unmarried.

With the cost of welfare in New Zealand now amounting to over $2,200 a year for every man, woman and child, we have the bizarre situation that because taxes are so high, the only parents who can afford to stay at home for 18 years to look after their children are sole parents on the DPB!

But in spite of the significant problems, other countries have shown that it is possible to reform welfare to create better opportunities for women and children and better outcomes for the country as a whole.

It remains my greatest regret that ACT could not shepherd through welfare reform because it would change the future of this country in a way that no other policy change could.

4. Smacking Referendum

What a debacle the whole smacking issue has become!

To recap: when Green MP Sue Bradford introduced the United Nations’ ban on smacking children through a Private Members’ Bill, both the Labour Party and the National Party intended to give their MPs a free vote and the Bill was destined to be defeated. Then Phillip Field resigned from the Labour Party and politics took over.

The Greens demanded Labour’s vote for the anti-smacking bill in return for their support in the House. Then John Key saw the stalemate that had developed in Parliament as an opportunity to be Prime Ministerial, and with both main parties whipping their MPs to vote along party lines, the Bill passed into law – because of MMP politics. Only the ACT Party stood for common sense.

But the public know it is bad law. While it does not stop child abuse – as we all predicted – it does interfere with how responsible parents bring up their children by criminalising good parents who discipline their kids.

This is an issue that hurt Helen Clark and the Labour Party badly as they were seen to be claiming that the government knows better than parents how to raise a child. And with the public speaking out strongly against the new law through the referendum, John Key needs to re-think his response as ignoring a significant majority of voters is a very dangerous place for a Prime Minister to be!

5. Race

And finally, the fraught issue of race.

I would like to say to Rodney Hide that he has done more to restore the confidence of the public in politicians over his stand on the Maori seats for the Auckland super city than anyone else. I was truly shocked by the revelation that the Prime Minister intended to trade away the principle of one law for all by voting for the Maori seats in order to appease the Maori Party.

That essentially means that we can’t trust the Prime Minister or the Maori Party in this area. ACT needs to step up into a leadership role because if ACT doesn’t, Winston Peters will!

There are big issues ahead with very big challenges that will require courage to address, including the Foreshore and Seabed, Maori seats in Parliament, and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

In particular the UN Declaration stands out as a dangerous treaty because the demands are so radical. And while the declaration is not binding, if adopted, over time it would be used to advance the argument for greater Maori rights.

For example Article 26 would effectively give indigenous people full rights to all the land in New Zealand. This is one of the main reasons why the Labour Government opposed it in 2007. Rosemary Banks, the Labour Government’s representative at the UN General Assembly meeting stated: “Madame President, the provision on lands and resources cannot be implemented in New Zealand. Article 26 states that indigenous peoples have a right to own, use, develop or control lands and territories that they have traditionally owned, occupied or used. For New Zealand, the entire country is potentially caught within the scope of the Article. The Article appears to require recognition of rights to lands now lawfully owned by other citizens, both indigenous and non-indigenous, and does not take into account the customs, traditions, and land tenure systems of the indigenous peoples concerned. Furthermore, this Article implies that indigenous peoples have rights that others do not have.”

[Rosemary Banks’ full statement can be read here:
http://www.nzembassy.com/info.cfm?c=51& ... to&p=63315
My article “No Mandate for UN Declaration” can be read here: http://www.nzcpr.com/weekly191.htm
And the NZCPR Guest Commentary by law lecturer and Treaty expert David Round can be read here: http://www.nzcpr.com/guest157.htm]

The reaction to Don Brash’s Nationhood speech in 2004, which catapulted the National Party ahead in the polls, demonstrated that New Zealanders are desperate for politicians to stand firm on the issue of race. They need a champion to challenge the opportunism of Maori separatists, to remove Treaty clauses from all legislation, and to pro-actively promote one law for all.

Since one law for all was a founding principle of the ACT Party, I hope that Rodney Hide will take a leadership role and continue to defend that right against all political attacks.

ACT was formed as a party of principle.

Promoting principles from the Opposition benches is easy. Standing firm on principles as a part of government is harder.

That is ACT’s challenge. I hope for the sake of the future of New Zealand that the Party is up to the challenge!