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Less than 40 days out, the choice is not a personality contest dressed as principle. You may distrust Winston. You may be done with Luxon. As for Chippie – anything nice would just be a lie.
There are ACT policies worth commending – one law, less government in your life, a climate commission that writes reports nobody should have to fund. All good. For many people that is real, but is it enough?
On this sheet ACT is still 50/50: half get the thumbs up; half beggar belief. The India dairy schedule sold as a win – maybe for India. Gene tech treated as if our clean-green brand were a souvenir. Where is the point of difference? Paris left only if someone rewrites a clause – which is already in the script. And a file that never quite meets a wage bill in the provinces.
ACT has a sharp edge. They need to sell a broader range.
National asked for three years to get New Zealand back on track. What was delivered was a little incentive boost, a few education fixes that were overdue, an RMA shoved through in the last weeks of the term and a prime minister who locked into Paris before the count even started and told us the India FTA was the best thing since sliced bread – without butter.
There is only one thing worse than a law that takes forever, and it is a hastily drafted law rammed through at the last minute and sold as delivery. History is not short of examples. Nothing ever goes wrong. Of course not – not on his watch anyway.
A short account of what New Zealand First put on the table in Tauranga last week, what is actually on their policy page and why that list still beats a seminar with a slogan: read it as a voter who has to live here on Monday, 9 November – not as a member of any fan club.
Winston was in Tauranga, the city he won in a snap election in 1984 and then spent a quarter of a century arguing with. The speech was Ending the Waitangi Make-Work Industry.
Translation for anyone who just reads the headline: the tribunal was set up to finish old claims. It now hears anything that will keep the photocopier warm. NZ First’s answer is to abolish it. Put a completion commission on the pre-2008 files. When those are done, the shop closes. Contemporary grievance goes back to a ministry that is supposed to do land, jobs and houses – not sit as a second parliament.
That sounds like common sense. Some will say overdue. The remaining question will be – who is the head and who do they answer to?
One country. One flag. One standard of citizenship. One law. The left will call that ‘divisive’. They have a gift for finding division in the idea that the same court hears the same citizen. They will invent some skullduggery to get the media machine into clickbait overdrive.
Then look at the rest of the list and ask which other party talks like a country that has to pay a wage bill.
Company tax for SMEs under $30 million turnover: 28 per cent reduced to 20. That is the difference between hiring the apprentice and staring at the calculator. Sure there may be some short-term pain but the history of other countries who have tried shows long-term gain.
Labour’s offer, give or take a slogan, is a capital gains tax to fund things that are already cheap if you have a Community Services Card, a promise to wipe 10 per cent off student debt, plus a living-wage sermon that the private sector will be asked to match.
Opportunity wants a land tax and a calculator that only works if you live in their example, and a Youth Court age that would put some people over 20 in the kids’ dock.
The Greens want you to stop doing the thing that keeps the lights on, then wonder why the mill is quiet and the tax take dries up. So now they need more tax. The never-ending story – with the cheesy smirk.
Te Pāti Māori arrives with a menu Hipkins pretends is not in the building. Waititi has already booked the meeting. “Better starts now” starts, as usual, with someone else’s wallet. Kai for $3 billion – I’m not sure what logo will be on the voucher.
When I listen to the rhetoric from these leaders, I am glad we have free speech. It lets you hear their pitch without the disguise.
Let’s be frank. New Zealand needs a government that will remove the costly policies that do not improve the lives of the people who live here. Not another tax slogan and not rob-the-rich when the same cohort already pays most of the tax bill.
If you want the socialists in the room, visit a supermarket in Cuba before you tick the ballot paper.
New Zealand is a rounding error on world emissions and a serious producer of food. Luxon has declared the Paris Accord non-negotiable. Write that down. Then ask what he says on 8–9 November if 61 runs through the two parties that will not wear it. A land tax is also ‘not on the table’ - until it is. No new taxes – just a “levy”.
Citizenship before the vote. Super for citizens from 2029. Immigration that treats the passport as something you join, not a bus ticket with a welfare form attached. KiwiSaver, $1,000 at birth for citizens and locked until 18.
A billion dollars over the term to map what is under the ground so the next dry year is not a prayer. Marsden Point as a special economic zone. Dairy: use the milk here or lose the privilege. Prevention in health instead of another ambulance at the bottom of a $33 billion cliff.
A minor partner at eight or 12 seats gets a veto, a portfolio and a press release. It does not rewrite tax, the tribunal and the banks if National still has the votes around the table.
Labour would be the same with Swarbrick and Wong. Chlöe as finance minister would be much like having Hipkins in charge of women’s affairs. One thinks the books live in the fiction section and two-plus-two is a climate target and the other declines to answer no matter how many times asked.
The NZ First published policy is a buy-back of BNZ from NAB and a merge with Kiwibank. The sceptics are all over it – NZ First needs to get a lot smarter on this one.
The target is fair enough. Who wants four Australian balance sheets setting the price of a Kiwi mortgage forever?
Fix the shop you already own. Do not write a $15–30 billion cheque for a bank to an unwilling seller. Build a better bank first. Create some competition without the big cheque.
Party-vote NZ First if that is the range you can live with. ACT if you want the handbrake on spending and you cannot wear Winston. Electorate the National incumbent where the seat is still the dam – and only because the left has to be blocked. Park Luxon on the party vote so his board gets the message. The odds on him still being head honcho in 2027 shrink a little every week. That is his problem – not ours.
Monday, 9 November, still arrives. Most of us will still have live here. The tribunal will not abolish itself, the gentailer will not split itself and NAB will not gift you a bank.
One country. One law. More seats, fewer sermons. This election is arithmetic and will be won by small percentages.
The job on 7 November is to give the ‘tick’ to the team that keeps us from digging a deeper hole for ourselves and the generation to come.
