Why is the National Party doing so much for landlords, property developers, trucking and construction companies, and so little for everybody who isn’t already pretty well-off? It’s as if protecting landlords’ investments and building apartments and roads now constitute the whole of National’s policy objectives. Even their most faithful supporters in the farming community are being neglected by National’s present crop of leaders. What has happened to the National Party?
The late Bruce Jesson used to say that while National governed for capitalists, Labour governed for Capitalism. Jesson’s suggestion: that National was so firmly locked inside the logic of the private sector that it struggled to see the broader capitalist picture, was a shrewd one. Certainly, no politician with even the most rudimentary grasp of the public interest would consider doing today what made National Cabinet Ministers of the past so notorious: ensuring that the gravel roads leading to their farms (so many of them in those far-off days were farmers) received a generous topping of bitumen.
But, how different, really, is seeing nothing wrong with sealing a seemingly random collection of rural roads at the public’s expense, from accepting a $1,000 per week government allowance for inhabiting a property one already owns, mortgage-free? The first example might have fallen under the heading of ministerial discretion, the second remains a perfectly legal ministerial entitlement. Real effort was – and is – required to bring these “entitled” National Party grandees to a more realistic understanding of their responsibilities.
Christopher Luxon’s problem with his Wellington accommodation allowance reflects his background as a corporate leader and property investor. Such perquisites are taken for granted at the CEO level, and very few, if any, eyebrows arch upwards when they are accepted. Luxon and his ilk float freely in the gravity-free milieu of the privileged. For these types, getting reacquainted with solid ground can be a fraught process.
At least when National was the party of the farmers, its leaders’ feet remained firmly rooted in the soil. Drawing one’s wealth from lamb-sales, wool-clips and cow’s milk is very different from watching property and share prices surge. Farmers are intimately connected to the real world. The best one can say about money is that it is a representation of the real world. Which isn’t the same thing – not at all.
So who are these capitalists on whose behalf National is governing the country? Predominantly, they are the capitalists involved in building houses, apartment buildings, and all the ancillary infrastructure that goes with property development. Not far behind them are the capitalists who use and build New Zealand’s roads – the trucking companies and the big civil-engineering firms.
What little understanding of Capitalism’s priorities National does possess is reflected in its support for the extractive industries of mining, oil and gas, forestry and fishing. The party’s perception of these industries’ importance is sharpened by the quantum of their donations to its campaign funds.
That said, the number of these ‘crony’ capitalists is insufficient to sustain an electoral party. National needs a party vote approaching 40 per cent to have any hope of governing the country in coalition with the other parties of the right. (Forty-eight per cent if it seeks to govern alone.) But, to achieve these sorts of numbers, National needs to make a plausible pitch for the support of close to half the population.
To forge the necessary synergy between National’s capitalist cronies and its electoral base, its strategists have targeted those older New Zealanders in possession of their own, mortgage-free homes – along with one or more rental properties. These voters may continue to make their homes in the leafier suburbs of New Zealand – electorally-speaking, National has long been the party of the better-off suburbs – or, they may have joined the burgeoning number of ageing Kiwis living in retirement homes and villages.
A great many of the people living in retirement communities will be cashed-up beneficiaries of the housing boom. As such, they have no interest whatsoever in Adrian Orr lowering the official cash rate. The higher the interest rates, the greater the return on their savings. They have no interest, either, in wealth or capital gains taxes. When the time comes to sell the family business, they have no inclination to cut the tax man in on the deal. Certainly, National did not lose any votes by relieving these older landlords of Labour’s pesky tax deductions.
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