The gulf between the government and the opposition is becoming wider by the day. The combined mental capacity of the three parties in this government far exceeds that of the three parties on the opposition benches. The left themselves are making it more obvious by both their actions and their words. The government’s methods are straightforward: targets for achievement levels, and a disciplined approach to home in on what is working and what isn’t. This is a welcome strategy, long overdue and consistent with why they were voted in.
Both the Roy Morgan and the Taxpayers Union Curia polls have reflected this. The latter poll showed big leads for the government over the opposition in key areas such as the economy, taxes, spending, inflation and education. People are happy with the way the government is handling these issues, again basically doing what is asked of them.
Getting the economy back on track, getting spending under control, getting inflation down, going back to basics with education, putting water back in control of local councils rather than Maori, creating and improving more roads, putting speed limits back up to sensible numbers, cancelling the loopy idea of a tram to Auckland airport (one hopes the pollution-pumping Te Huia will be the next to be derailed), giving students perfectly good lunches for less cost so more can access them, improving the lives of children in state care, appropriating more money for defence, cutting red tape making it easier to build more houses: the list goes on.
The Taxpayers Union poll also showed the government doing well in rural areas, towns, provincial cities and, most importantly, Auckland. Not surprisingly Wellington is heavily aligned the other way and Christchurch only just. This all points to a government largely in tune with the sentiments of the electorate. We must remember that with Parliament sitting only a couple of weeks prior to Christmas and then the break to the end of January the engines of government are still being warmed up.
Even in the short space of time so far, both Todd McClay, the Minister of Agriculture and Trade, and Winston Peters, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, have visited a number of different parts of the world, putting New Zealand’s case and pushing for further opportunities. This is a sign that the coalition partners were on the same page from the start and were ready to hit the ground running. A surprising revelation from the Taxpayers Union poll was Paul Goldsmith (Treaty Minister), Winston Peters and Simeon Brown all receiving a positive rating from members of the Maori Party.
There are some who think the government is not doing enough to make a dent in the enormous amount of debt that the country is carrying. That may be so but I don’t think it is the government’s intention to introduce measures that would require an austerity budget. I think Nicola Willis is employing a measured approach, taking into account that people have been, and are, suffering from the cost of living. To me, this is the right strategy even if it means getting the country back on track will take somewhat longer. Neither Arnold Nordmeyer nor Ruth Richardson received plaudits for their efforts to quickly turn things around.
In contrast, the left are continuing to let the electorate know they were correct to boot them out. Far from taking any responsibility for their demise due to their rank incompetence, they are happily cementing themselves into the opposition upholstery. Their actions and talk in opposition prove it’s where they belong. Post election they have not done a single thing to make them more palatable to the voters, in fact quite the opposite.
The lights nearly went out on Friday morning due to a possible lack of sufficient power generation. We need more gas; otherwise we’re burning more and more coal: not our cleaner coal but dirty Indonesian coal. According to Simeon Brown, this is a combination of Labour switching to renewable sources faster than advisable in order to meet what he says is “an impossible” target of completely renewable energy by 2030, and their oil and gas ban. Not so, according to Dr Megan Woods, who holds a PhD in New Zealand history from Canterbury University. She says the risk was solely due to maintenance work, highlighting the uselessness of her PhD in this field.
Judith Collins announces more funding for the Defence Force for increased pay and updating hardware, and Chris Hipkins has the audacity to say it’s long overdue and not enough. The government and Auckland Council have reached an agreement whereby ratepayers will have a seven per cent increase in their water bills, rather than 26 per cent. Up pipes former TAB bookie Kieran McAnulty, currently racing to be the next leader of his doomed party, who says if Maori were in charge under his plan it would only have been two per cent. These people expect to be taken seriously?
The Greens are a political joke. They have no right to be in Parliament. Taken as a group they rather remind me of the Cher song “Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves”. A more obtuse-looking lot would be hard to find. One who resigned we do know is a thief, another is on what appears to be semi-permanent leave (at our expense) while a possible business misdemeanour is investigated and another who has a penchant for cycling and appears to cyclically blow a fuse, both in and outside the House, finds herself before the Privileges Committee. They are a disparate bunch of supposed conservationists and Palestinian sympathisers with a communist agenda.
The Maori Party are racist to the core and are not representative of the majority of their race, even if they think they are. They are nothing more than elite activists drowning in a plethora of made-up rubbish about colonialism and a hatred of white people. According to one of their MPs, Pakehas are “white supremacists out to exterminate Maori”. They are not the slightest bit interested in helping their people. They are an embarrassment to themselves, their people and the country as a whole.
While it is easy to be critical on individual issues, on the whole voters seem pretty happy with the government so far. Two out of three recently released mainstream polls reflect this fact. A fourth, the Talbot Mills poll, can be discounted as they only poll their clients. The 1News Verian poll is also not so mainstream in its methodology as Roy Morgan or Curia, who both poll using mobile and landlines. In their latest polls both had the right with a 10 point lead and both gave the Coalition 66 seats.
The 1News Verian poll can be classed as an outlier despite Maiki Sherman’s unbridled enthusiasm and excitement when she found out her leftie friends had enough support to form a government. This was a patently ridiculous result as the other two polls confirmed. Maiki can visit her fairies at the bottom of the garden as often as she likes but the facts are, as of now, the right is doing swimmingly well, while the left are failing to keep their heads above water.
