Helen Houghton
New Conservative Co-leader
The medical sector is broken, education is broken, mental health is broken, transport is broken, households are broken, and the economy is broken, yet there is hope – if every minister in Parliament is prepared to work instead of focusing on saving their seat.
This is how your tax money has been wasted from previous governments’ cycles of inactivity. Over the past few decades a new government typically takes around a year to get any policy off the ground; blaming the past governments for the mess they inherited. Then the last year of that cycle, those incumbent government ministers are all scrambling to say the right thing to bring in as many voters to keep them safe in their seat for the next cycle. In effect what we have really is a government that only spends one year in three actively doing anything of value for the taxpayer. Even then that value is questionable.
For this Labour Government, all that has been combined with the excuses of Covid and climate change preventing them from effecting any meaningful change in the lives of New Zealanders. This is their weak reasoning for why we have so many failed ministries. Yet, they want you to trust them just because there is a new face.
When you think about why you vote for a party in October look at what they do every day. For instance, when asked what he will do this year, Prime Minister Chris Hipkins said he is aiming to have three more years. Shouldn’t he be aiming to help New Zealanders survive the living crisis conditions we are all facing? Shouldn’t a Prime Minister be looking at each day like they want to make a relevant impact now?
It is New Conservative’s goal to make New Zealand a place where we all want to live and that means working to the best of our ability each day, impacting the lives of others each day, working at the coal face, listening to those at the coal face, listening to the taxpayer and the parents whose family is impacted by policies. For now, New Zealand must watch on as National and Labour scrap it out over the next six months. What should they be doing during these crucial months to help the cost of living?
I for one would like to see tough questions being debated like, how can we better prepare New Zealand for hard times or natural weather events? These are questions that have no easy answer; however, I would appreciate a government that is not afraid to have serious debates on these issues instead of tiptoeing softly lest they lose votes.
Responding to the needs in our communities, identifying gaps where they can do better and admitting where they need to start over if something is broken, asking, and responding to the hard questions, are all important factors to be working on over the next six months and every month, not focusing only on saving their seat.
No one expects perfection from a government but we do expect them to identify if something is not working and fix it.
New Conservative will help fix New Zealand.
