OPINION
It is becoming increasingly apparent that we are witnessing the performance of a ‘chalk and cheese’ parliament. What is on show is probably the biggest chasm in ability between a government and an opposition in our lifetime. The reason for this is we have a government of people with real-world experience up against a bunch of mainly career politicians, academics and community workers. No doubt there’s the odd one who could claim otherwise but largely they are the types who lack the ability and skills you acquire working in the business world.
Two articles in the Weekend Herald emphasise this point. One is written by Fran O’Sullivan, who accompanied Christopher Luxon on his recent South East Asian trip. Fran emphasises the importance Luxon places on forging strong relationships with the leaders of countries such as Thailand, the Philippines and Singapore. She says Luxon’s ambition is for New Zealand to be “at the table” and “relevant”. “I don’t want us to be brushed off as ‘nice but not relevant’”, he says.
Fran writes that the Prime Minister believes our firms need to take a more strategic approach so they can gear their endeavours to the national strategies the South East Asian nations are pursuing and grow with them. She says it’s a philosophy he’s employing in New Zealand. He wants his cabinet ministers out talking with their stakeholder communities away from their wood-panelled offices and Wellington cars. These comments reflect Fran’s headline to her article: Out of the Beltway and into the World. This is where Luxon is going to excel for New Zealand.
Bruce Cotterill starts his article by asking: Can you feel it? It’s the early stages of something called momentum. We’re starting to get things done. And it feels like we have some direction again. He talks about the Prime Minister leading a business delegation in Singapore and our Minister for Agriculture and Trade pitching our wares in China. Once again we have a Foreign Minister who is prepared to front up to the rest of the world and tell our story. It’s refreshing to see us back out there once again, hustling on behalf of our own country.
Bruce comments that, back home, the momentum is building. Our biggest challenges are back in the spotlight. In education, it’s getting the kids attending school and being taught the basics daily, a policy that makes sense to the majority of us. He says crime is in the Government’s sights and the Three Strikes law is being reinstated. He mentions the hard work of Louise Upston cracking down on people cheating the Job Seeker system. In his article Bruce talks about immigration and targeting those we really need. And also the need to deliver faster, cheaper and simpler housing, particularly emergency housing. He also documents the destruction of Fenton Street in Rotorua.
Our challenge, says Bruce, is to build the country’s revenues while decreasing our costs and improving the delivery of services across the board. He says somehow the government needs to bring us along with it. Its goals need to become our goals. Most of all we need to get back to a country with an aspiration to be better at this stuff. Better at providing a place for our people to live and work, to bring up their families and have meaningful careers. Better at looking after those who need help and ensuring that the lifestyle in this fantastic little country of ours is accessible and affordable for those who choose to call it home. Amen to that.
Here is my question: Is any of what you have just read in any way discernible to the left? Assuming it were, do they have the aptitude or indeed the fortitude to do something about it? If they did, would they be capable of executing a sensible and realistic strategy? The answers to these questions, as the last two terms of Labour showed, are all in the negative. A mix of ignorance, ineptitude and ideological idiocy prevents them from achieving anything in any way meaningful. Tax and spend coupled with borrow and hope is a strategy with a funereal air about it.
Take the recent utterances from the Leader of the Opposition. Chris Hipkins is either not understanding or deliberately lying when it comes to the egregious decisions he and his Labour Government made. He defends increasing the public workforce while he was in government, saying it was in line with the increase in population. WRONG. During his time in office the number of public servants increased by about a third – 33 per cent – while the population increased by 11 per cent.
He then said government spending was in line with the increase in population. WRONG. Government spending increased massively by 79 per cent. Next he tried to claim the public sector workforce had increased by slightly less than the general workforce. WRONG. As if that weren’t enough, he then had the audacity to say the country wasn’t broke and we’ve got some of the lowest debt levels in the OECD. WRONG. There are 15 countries with lower debt levels than we have. He made all of these claims on the AM Show to Lloyd Burr, who was probably no better informed and therefore wasn’t in a position to challenge him. Maybe he didn’t want to…
Labour, the soft on crime party, are opposed to bringing back the Three Strikes law. According to their spokesperson on criminal justice, Duncan Webb, this is “political posturing of the worst kind”. He said it had led to unjust sentencing and gave the example of someone getting seven years for patting a prison guard’s bottom. The bottom Duncan needs to focus on is the barrel Labour keeps scraping being totally devoid of any semblance of credibility, ideas or leadership to get them in tune with the people.
Recently we had Debbie Ngawera-Packer lauding Jacinda Ardern, the worst prime minister in living memory, saying what a wonderful wahine she was. Then she accused the current Prime Minister of misogyny because the two people he sacked were women. The truth of the matter is he is hell bent on getting results and, as in business, if you don’t perform then you’re out. The left – Chloe Swarbrick and her Green companions in particular, cry: ‘You can’t run the country like a business’. This from a puerile assembly who would be sorely tested if asked to run a bath.
Here’s an unpalatable truth for the left: if you run the country as Labour did with no targets, no accountability, no transparency or integrity, no ability to succeed and nothing but a barrow load of lies from Ardern, which Hipkins is still pushing on the AM Show, then you end up in the untenable position we are now. This is something the left neither understand nor care about. Their policies are economically bankrupt and, after six years of their reign of terror, so is the country.
So it’s a chalk and cheese parliament. Chalk is not edible but cheese is. I’ll leave you to work out who is which. The coalition Government is making progress and the left are flailing in their wake. Their hope of future electoral success is diminishing by the day. They haven’t the first clue about attaining prosperity but want it just the same. The Maori Party, wallowing in a document that is well past its use by date, and the Greens, dreaming of everybody cycling to the supermarket, will not get this country anywhere; Luxon getting out of the beltway and into the world forging relationships for trade and exports will. As Matthew Hooton commented, all power to his elbow.