Wednesday 30 October 2024

The 146th Annual General Meeting and conference of the United Fire Brigades Association will take place in Christchurch this weekend. The United Fire Brigades Association is one of New Zealand’s largest voluntary organisations, and over 600 delegates will attend the weekend’s events.

The United Fire Brigades Association (UFBA) represents the country’s more than 12,000 urban and rural volunteer firefighters and emergency workers. Volunteers account for around 86% of all firefighters and cover 93% of the national landmass. That means most New Zealanders, whether they live in large cities, towns or small rural communities are covered by volunteer firefighters, and that the firefighters they see out and about in their communities are most likely to be volunteers. When Guy Fawkes night occurs next week, volunteer firefighters across the country will be on standby to deal with any incidents that might arise.

567 of the New Zealand’s 647 fire stations are fully volunteer, a further 34 are operated jointly with employed firefighters, leaving just 46 stations, principally in the heart of the main centres, operated entirely by employed staff. Volunteers are the first responders to 42% of all structure fires, 70% of all motor vehicle accidents, 71% of all medical emergencies, and 85% of all vegetation fires.

They also play an increasingly important role in responding to natural disasters. For example, much of the response to the cyclones that devastated the upper North and East Coast of the North Island last year was led by volunteer firefighters. Sadly, the two emergency response workers who were killed responding to the cyclones were volunteer firefighters.

Earlier this year, the UFBA’s Board commissioned a report from Esperance Capital on the monetary value of the contribution volunteer firefighters make to fire and emergency services around the country. According to Esperance Capital, that value was $823 million in the year to June 2023. Significantly, the report showed that the value of the contribution of volunteers has been increasing – up just over 16% from the $619 million figure assessed in 2019, the last time such a study was undertaken.

The immediate conclusion from the Esperance Capital report and the increasing contribution of volunteer firefighters is that New Zealand’s emergency services could not survive without them. Nor, given the breadth of that contribution, could any government ever afford to replace volunteers with fully employed staff.

Fire and Emergency New Zealand – the operational body which manages fire and emergency services throughout New Zealand – the government, and the wider community need to take this point on board. Right now, the government is considering various reports commissioned after the cyclones about the best organisational response to similar events in the future.

To date, there has been no discussion with the UFBA about the contribution of volunteer firefighters in such circumstances, despite the reality that without their active involvement, New Zealand lacks the resources and the personnel for any form of effective response to natural disasters. Ignoring what volunteers may have to say seems extremely blinkered and short-sighted.

The commitment and skill of New Zealand’s volunteer firefighters is recognised world-wide. When teams of firefighters go to assist fighting major bush or forest fires in places like Australia or Canada, most of the participants are volunteers, leaving their families and taking time off from their day jobs to do so. New Zealand’s fire and urban rescue services received a special United Nations commendation for their work, again heavily involving volunteers, in the wake of the 2011 Christchurch earthquake.

As the chair of the UFBA’s Board, I hear often of the respect that the public has for our volunteer firefighters. At the same time, many people are still amazed to learn that most firefighters in our cities and towns are volunteers, because of the quality of the public service they provide. I regard this as a tribute to their professionalism and commitment to service, and it is little wonder that they rank amongst our most highly respected public services.

In many ways, volunteer firefighters typify community life in New Zealand. It has been often said that the two best ways to get known in a new community are to join the local volunteer fire brigade, or the school committee. Our volunteers come from all walks of life, and backgrounds. The resilience of the UFBA over the last almost 150 years stems from this. This weekend’s events will be an opportunity to both recall and celebrate past achievements, and to focus on the challenges the ever-changing world of emergency services will pose in the future.

But while the delegates gather, the country’s 567 volunteer stations and the 34 joint volunteer/employed staff stations will still remain on call to meet their community’s needs, just as they are, every hour of every day throughout the year, since the first volunteer brigades were established 146 years ago.

 

Thursday 24 October 2024

The only thing missing when Speaker Gerry Brownlee solemnly announced Darleen Tana’s political execution this week was the Black Cap Judges used to wear in the days of capital punishment when sentencing some hapless criminal to death.

While there will be little sympathy for Tana’s plight, because of the way it was played out, and she herself seems relieved that after more than seven months the saga is over, questions remain about whether the Electoral Integrity Act is fit for purpose and desirable.

Whatever else she did, Tana did not vote against the Green Party in Parliament, nor take positions contrary to the policies of the Green Party. She was held to have breached proportionality because by leaving the party she deprived it of one-fifteenth of its resources and allocated speaking time in Parliament. Her actions had no effect on the stability of government, nor did they reduce the number of votes available to the Opposition in the House.

Tana was expelled because an internal argument with the Green Party over her family’s business affairs led her to resign from the party.

This dispute led the Green Party to invoke the Electoral Integrity Act’s provisions, despite its previous long-standing, principled opposition to such legislation. When the crunch came, the party showed that regaining access to the financial resources and speaking slots in the House it lost through Tana’s departure was ultimately more important than the principles it had paraded for so long.

Tana’s private affairs and how truthfully she may have explained those to the Green Party certainly deserved investigation and raised questions about her suitability as a Member of Parliament. But they were matters for the Green Party to resolve directly with Tana, rather than rely on a piece of dubious legislation.

It should never be forgotten that the Electoral Integrity Act was utu legislation dreamed up by New Zealand First after the break-up of the coalition with National in 1998, and the subsequent defection of many of its MPs to the short-lived Mauri Pacific Party. New Zealand First has insisted on the legislation being part of every coalition or government support arrangement it has been part of since then. It has nothing to do with democratic or Parliamentary principle, and everything to do with being a mechanism for keeping potentially dissident members of the New Zealand First under control. The Green Party, ACT and, in its day, UnitedFuture were right to oppose it as anti-democratic and unnecessary.

The legislation is anti-democratic because it turns MPs into mere ciphers, slaves to the dictates of their party, and unable to express contrary opinions or views of their own, lest they be expelled from Parliament for breaching proportionality. Until the politically awkward Tana situation arose, the Green Party had been consistently the most strident opponent of the legislation, arguing that the right to freedom of speech and opinion should always be upheld for Members of Parliament. It is an unremovable stain on its integrity that it should so readily abandon its principles the way it has done in the Tana case.

From what we know now, the blunt truth is that the skeletons rattling around in Tana’s cupboard meant she should never have been selected as a candidate by the Green Party in the first place. Proper due diligence by the party during its internal selection process should have identified the potential risks Tana posed, long before she was selected. Proper scrutiny at that stage would have identified the issues that were to sink her career and should have prevented her selection in the first place. That they were not, is as much an indictment on the way the Green Party went about things as it is on Tana.

The wider question this whole situation raises is the appropriateness of the Green Party relying on legislation to resolve an internal situation largely of its own making. Legislation should focus on broad areas of policy or principle, and not be a device for helping political parties to patch up their internal mistakes.

Tana is undoubtedly a major loser from these events. Her Parliamentary career was abruptly ended before it really started, and her reputation has been shattered. It will take a long period away from the public eye for her to recover that. But she is not the only one – the Green Party is also a big loser. Its actions have shown it to be just as craven and opportunistic as it accuses its political opponents of being. They have destroyed forever its unctuous, self-righteous claim to be the only party of principle in Parliament.

The process has shaken the notion that Members of Parliament are chosen by the people, not anonymous party delegates doing their leadership’s bidding. It has left a tawdry shadow over Parliament, which the sombre discomfort detectable in Brownlee’s announcement reflected. To recover the mana it has lost, Parliament should now move to dump the repugnant and draconian Electoral Integrity Act, as unceremoniously as Tana was.

Thursday 17 October 2024

The last thing the beleaguered public health system needs right now is a distracting debate about which language hospital staff should use when communicating with patients.  There should be no argument that English, the most widely used language in New Zealand, is the one that should be used in all communications with or about patients, unless they do not speak English and need to be communicated with in a different language. But, at the same time, how, and in what language, hospital staff talk privately to each other, away from their patients, should be their own business. This is not a question of cultural respect, but simply a matter of practicality. As such, it does not deserve the attention it is currently receiving.

At a broader level, it is symptomatic of the wider problems facing the health system where the focus has too often been on side-issues, ahead of more critical matters like access to, and quality of, services provided, and secure funding.

Labour’s bold health reforms, announced three and a half years ago, have long since been dead in the water.  In fact, they were virtually stillborn when Labour refused to commit to the long-term funding that its plans would require to be implemented.

I well recall attending a briefing shortly after the reforms were announced. Promises were made then there would be substantial increases in nursing and medical staff numbers, although there was no indication of where all these new staff would come from, or how their positions would be funded. When I raised questions along these lines, there was no answer. 

The recent debacle over nursing positions is a direct and tragic consequence of this woolly thinking.  Labour’s mid-2023 decision to boost nursing numbers, without adequate future funding, has caused two immediate crises. The lack of long-term funding has led to understandable fears of significant nursing cutbacks in hospitals to meet budget shortfalls. At the same time, the climate of expectation the projected increase in nursing positions created led to a substantial glut of overseas nurses being lured to New Zealand who are now unable to find work here and seem set to join the job exodus to Australia.

So, instead of the bold, new 21st century, fit for purpose health system that Labour promised in 2021, we are now faced with a hurried patch-up job on the current dysfunctional system, before any substantial reforms can be even considered. Health Minister Reti’s quiet tones of reassurance sound more and more despondent as each week goes by. For his part, Health Commissioner Levy is becoming increasingly bogged down firefighting the health system’s day-to-day problems, leaving him less time to focus on the strategic and organisational future of health services that he was appointed to oversee. Those on the Health New Zealand Board who were pushed aside to make way for the Commissioner might now be forgiven a quiet feeling of “I told you so.”

Commissioner Levy’s staunch commitment to retain key frontline services is admirable but is likely to become increasingly difficult to sustain. While nursing and medical staff have shown extraordinary patience, commitment and professionalism over the years, as the uncertainties around them have unfolded, their confidence is being stretched. Many are now threatening to leave the system altogether because they are exhausted and frustrated. The strictures the system is already facing mean there is no guarantee that adequate replacements could easily be found for those choosing to move on. And the dire warnings the government has been receiving from the Treasury and other key advisers that New Zealand’s budget deficit is structural and unlikely to be overcome in the short term bluntly mean that the health system cannot rely on hefty annual funding increases indefinitely.

Reti’s and Levy’s immediate priority is therefore to rescue the public health system and restore an air of stability within it, before they can even begin to think of what the best structure for the future might be. That may not be as dramatic or exciting as the bold mission of reform Labour imagined it was starting on in 2021, but in its own way, it will be just as challenging an assignment. A key part of getting the health system “back on track” will be restoring confidence and trust within it. That may not have been the role both Reti and Levy thought they were signing on for, but it is the outcome they are now both expected to deliver.

Labour hoped that the prospect of bold health reforms would pay a political dividend in 2023, but they were wrong. Today, National hopes its more limited objectives will work for it in 2026.

How times change!

Friday 11 October 2024

In the early days of the fourth Labour Government then Finance Minister Sir Roger Douglas frequently described the government’s sweeping reform approach as moving so quickly on a variety of fronts that it was impossible for the Opposition to keep up with the pace of change. But a few months later, then Deputy Prime Minister Sir Geoffrey Palmer was acknowledging that the government was suffering from “speed wobbles.”

When it took office at the end of last year, the current National-led coalition government swiftly set about dismantling as many of the cornerstone policies of the last Labour government as quickly as it could in what looked like a none-too-subtle attempt to remove as many vestiges of Ardernism as possible from the national political landscape. What had been known as “blitzkrieg” under 1980s Labour became “scorched earth” under 2020s National.

Both approaches were panned by critics of the day and sparked typically circular debates about the need to curb the executive powers of governments to act this way. Predictably, these calls died down as those governments settled into their work and people adjusted to the changes being made. Equally predictably, Opposition parties of the time promised not to behave that way when they next came to office.

However, in a recent interview, Labour’s finance spokesperson (and potential future leader) Barbara Edmonds showed a refreshing honesty. In a remarkable affirmation of the French maxim “plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose” (the more things change, the more they stay the same) she said Labour has learned from the current government when it comes to managing economic reform. She said “‘do it early is probably a lesson”. In her view, an incoming Labour-led government should go early and go hard, so there is time for things to settle in before the public next heads to voting booths. Her candour was reminiscent of Douglas’s approach forty years ago.

So, those looking to a future Labour-led government to slow down the pace of change seem set to be disappointed if Edmonds has her way. She clearly intends to be just as ruthless in quickly clearing the decks should she become Finance Minister as Douglas, Ruth Richardson and now Willis were before her.

However, Edmonds was somewhat less specific about her policy intent. That is hardly surprising at this stage of the electoral cycle, nor is it inconsistent with past practice. After all, Douglas did not reveal his full hand until after the 1984 election, arguing the sudden calling of the “Schnapps” election and the largely concealed parlous state of Muldoon’s controlled economy prevented a full election policy roll-out before the election. Likewise, Willis argued that she was constrained by potential coalition negotiation concessions, although she was adamant her tax cuts programme would proceed in some form.

The only clear policy hint Edmonds has given – in contrast to the waffling coyness of her leader Chris Hipkins – is that the capital gains tax Labour has previously campaigned on unsuccessfully in 2011 and 2014 (and which both Ardern and Hipkins ruled out as Prime Minister) is firmly back on Labour’s agenda. After all, why else would she in the same interview have claimed that many business leaders privately support ANZ Bank CEO Antonia Watson’s recent public call to introduce a capital gains tax, and pleaded that she now needs them “to say that publicly”?

Shortly after he became Finance Minister in 1999, Sir Michael Cullen described the role as akin to that of a managing director. Other Ministers were like branch managers, he said, with the Prime Minister being like the Board Chair. Over the years, governments of whatever political hue have become defined by the policies of their Finance Minister. From Rogernomics to Sir Bill English’s “compassionate conservatism”, it has always been the same. It is the Finance Minister who puts the stamp on a government’s policy style and approach. In that regard, it could be argued that Edmonds’ interview comments were as much about making this point clear to her own colleagues, as they were remarks for the wider public.

While Edmonds’ comments have revealed how she would approach the role of Finance Minister were it ever to come her way, they have also made it more difficult in the short-term for Labour to criticise the government’s pace of change. And her acknowledgment that Labour did not always get it right on key policies – like fair pay agreements which she says Labour remains committed to reintroducing, although not in their original form, or social insurance that she is silent on – makes it that much more difficult to criticise National’s abandonment of those policies.

But overall, Edmond’s admiration of the speedy way the current government went about its early changes simply confirms that a future Labour-led government will perform just the same as the current government. Therefore, the National-Labour political merry go-round looks set to carry on, the way it always has done.

Thursday 26 September 2024

 

Darleen Tana’s extraordinary run as a Member of Parliament looks set to continue for some time yet. Now that the High Court has dismissed Tana’s application for an injunction to prevent the Green Party invoking the so-called party-hopping legislation, the party will be able to proceed with their proposed meeting to determine her fate.

That meeting is now scheduled for 17 October – just over a year after the general election at which Tana was elected to Parliament. If more than three-quarters of the participants agree, the Green Party will then seek to apply the legislation to finally oust Tana from Parliament.

But it may not be quite that simple, nor a resolution of this distraction that rapid. For a start, there must still some doubt that the planned 17 October meeting will in fact occur. Tana is reportedly considering whether to appeal the High Court’s decision and has until 2 October to decide whether to do so. If previous practice is any guide Tana will delay that decision until as late as possible. Should an appeal be lodged, it is unlikely that it will be disposed of in time for the Green Party’s proposed 17 October meeting to proceed, further slowing down an end to the saga that has already been dragging on since March.

But even if the meeting does proceed as planned, and the 75% support threshold the Green Party’s rules require for seeking to evict Tana from Parliament is achieved, there are still more steps to be taken before Tana’s political execution can be carried out.

Under the Electoral Integrity Act 2018, there is a deliberate process for expelling a Member of Parliament who has left the party for which they had originally been elected. It is triggered by a letter from the Member’s party leader to the Speaker formally advising that they have left the party for which they had been elected.

The Act requires that notice to the Speaker to state “that the parliamentary leader reasonably believes that the member of Parliament concerned has acted in a way that has distorted, and is likely to continue to distort, the proportionality of political party representation in Parliament as determined at the last general election.” The letter must also confirm that the party leader has written to the Member of Parliament, advising them that the party is seeking to apply the legislation, and setting out the specific reasons for its decision to do so. The Member of Parliament then has 21 working days to respond to the party’s charges. The party leader is then required to advise the Speaker that the party’s caucus has considered the Member’s response and that a minimum of two-thirds of its membership has supported the application for the Member’s expulsion proceeding. It is then over to the Speaker to determine the outcome.

Therefore, should the Green Party meeting scheduled for 17 October proceed and give the party the mandate it requires to seek Tana’s expulsion, the party leadership will then need to apply the processes set out above. Assuming no slippage, the absolute earliest date on which the party will be able to confirm with the Speaker that it has followed the procedures set out in the Act and that Tana should be expelled from Parliament is 18 November.

However, given the history of this case so far, that deadline seems extremely unlikely to be met. From the outset, Tana’s entire strategy has been to drag things out for as long as possible to inflict maximum embarrassment on the Green Party, while continuing to collect her Parliamentary salary and allowances.

That approach hardly seems likely to change at this late stage. Even if Tana decides not to appeal the recent High Court decision, there remains the likelihood of further Court action at any point from here on, especially if the Green Party does not tick correctly all the provisions of the Electoral Integrity Act. There is also the more unlikely possibility that the Speaker may feel unconvinced in part or in whole by the submission the Green Party eventually makes to him.

If the 2003 case of Donna Awatere-Huata’s expulsion from the ACT Party is any guide, the Tana case may therefore only be at its middle stages. In July 2003, the ACT Party leader advised the Speaker of his party’s wish to invoke the Electoral Integrity legislation then in place to expel Awatere-Huata from Parliament. Subsequent legal action from Awatere-Huata challenging this move went through several Court processes, before being finally resolved in ACT’s favour by the Supreme Court over a year later in November 2004.

A repeat of that legal marathon might appeal to Tana but is the last thing both the Green Party and the public would want. Nevertheless, based both on experience and Tana’s conduct to date, it is a potential outcome both should brace themselves for.

After all, political revenge is at its best when it is drawn out!

Thursday 19 September 2024

It is often said that timing is everything in politics. Sometimes the timing is fortuitous, a case of being in the right place at the right time, and sometimes it is the precise opposite.

This week, the Labour leader heads off to Britain, taking up the traditional annual taxpayer funded overseas study trip, available to the Leader of the Opposition. He will be away until the start of October, attending the annual conference of Britain’s new governing Labour Party and “meeting with think-tanks, economists and writers both in Liverpool and London”. Hipkins says it is an opportunity “to take stock of what is happening internationally and discuss our direction with other policymakers.”

It all sounds very reasonable and plausible and not likely to be in any way controversial or newsworthy to anyone but the most ardent Labour aficionado.

However, the timing of this trip might come to prove awkward for Hipkins. Earlier this week, a Taxpayers Union-Curia poll showed support for his leadership plummeting. According to the poll, Hipkins’ net favourability rating with voters has suffered a large fall of 16 points to -10%, since July. The net favourability rating is the gap between those poll respondents who like a leader, and those who do not. In this poll, just 31% of respondents said they had a positive view of Hipkins, while 41% said they had an unfavourable view, a difference of -10%.

Whenever there is concern within a political party about its leadership, the absence of the leader abroad always seems to prompt the opportunity for discontent with that leader to come to the surface. The infamous, but ultimately unsuccessful “Colonels’ Coup” against Sir Robert Muldoon in 1980 was hatched while he was out of the country. It failed because Muldoon aggressively and forcefully stared down his critics upon his return to New Zealand.

In 1997, supporters of Dame Jenny Shipley worked during the absence overseas of Jim Bolger to secure the numbers for her to replace him as leader of the National Party and Prime Minister. Senior Minister, Sir Douglas Graham, was then deputed to meet Bolger at the airport upon his return to acquaint him with this unpleasant new reality. Bolger stood down a few days later, without provoking a direct contest with Shipley.

There was another feature of the Taxpayers Union-Curia poll that should be of concern to Hipkins as he sets off overseas. The poll showed the governing parties increasing their lead over the Opposition, with the Labour Party going slowly backward, now polling marginally less than its percentage at last year’s General Election. The combination of this, and Hipkins’ plummeting personal support, will undoubtedly have set some alarm bells ringing within the Labour Caucus.

Of course, it is unwise to read too much into one poll – the longer trends are more important – but the Taxpayers Union-Curia poll confirms a trend that has been apparent since the election ten months ago.

Under Labour’s Caucus Rules, the position of party leader must be considered at the first Caucus meeting of the year preceding a General Election. So, Hipkins’ position is up for review next February anyway. Normally, this is a formality if the leader is seeking to carry on – the last time Labour voted out a sitting leader was in 1965 when Norman Kirk replaced Arnold Nordmeyer by 25 votes to 10.

But Hipkins, given Labour’s currently indifferent performance and his own declining public support, will be under pressure to make his intentions clear well before then. Since last year’s election defeat, he has been adamant that he wants to lead Labour into the next election campaign, and there have been no apparent challenges to that. Two names frequently mentioned as leadership contenders, Kieran McAnulty and Barbara Edmonds, have both persistently and emphatically (at least so far) ruled themselves out of contention.

Hipkins’ forthcoming absence overseas will give the Labour Caucus – and Hipkins himself for that matter – an opportunity to reflect on the party’s poor performance of recent months and the extent to which Hipkins as leader is responsible for that. It will give each the chance to consider whether it is credible for things to carry on as they are, or whether Labour’s prospects might improve if someone else was at the helm.  

If there is a move afoot within the Caucus for change, Hipkins’ absence will give any challengers the opportunity to quietly canvass Caucus support and then to assess the mood of the Party overall. Whatever outcome is reached, nothing is likely to happen publicly before next February’s first Caucus meeting.

However, an early clue might be provided by who – if anyone – turns up to meet Hipkins at the airport when he returns on 1 October.

Friday 13 September 2024

Back in 2013 then Prime Minister Sir John Key raised the ire of Wellingtonians when he told a Takapuna business audience that “Wellington is dying, and we don't know how to turn it around. All you have there is government, Victoria University and Weta Workshop.” His comments provoked such outrage in the capital that he was quickly forced to “unreservedly apologise” for any offence he had caused, adding “Wellington's an extremely vibrant place; there's lots of things happening here, lots of activity “and “I should have chosen my words better.”

This week, as more and more hospitality and downtown Wellington businesses close their doors, blaming public sector job cuts, the cost-of-living and more people working from home, the current National-led government has been adamant the city is not dying. Finance Minister Nicola Willis has insisted that “there is so much entrepreneurship and excitement still in Wellington … we have vibrant exciting businesses; they are Wellington's future.”

A similar tone is being reflected by the Wellington’s newspaper, The Post. It has been running a series of comments from local people in recent issues extolling the advantages of living in Wellington and why they live there, even including the weird comment from a local MP that he regularly swims in the harbour, unbothered by pollution or sewage discharge warnings.

These upbeat comments are all very well – no doubt the besieged people of Kiev will be doing likewise at present – but they do nothing to overcome the basic problem Wellington is facing. According to Kiwibank’s Regional Insights 2024, most New Zealand regional economies are performing better than last year and are projected to improve again next year. Wellington, however, is the exception – it has been the worst performing region since 2022 and that is not expected to change any time soon.

The easy answer is to blame Wellington’s recession on the current government’s public sector funding and redundancies, but that overlooks the long-term nature of the city’s decline. After its halcyon days from the 1980s through to the late1990s (remember Absolutely Positively Wellington?), Wellington has been in steady economic decline since the early 2000s. Attempts by successive city councils to revitalise the city have been unsuccessful, with the current dysfunctional council’s disastrous Reading Centre redevelopment plan and inner-city transport proposals reeking of incompetence and making Wellington a national laughing stock.

The one potential bright light on the horizon is the current government’s still developing plans for region and city specific development deals. However, the dismissive attitude of the Minister of Local Government to anything emanating from the Wellington City Council and the Mayor’s seeming loathing of everything the Minister stands for are major stumbling blocks to local progress. Both are equally intransigent, ignoring what each has to say, as they continually talk past each other.

While that mutual antagonism continues, there will be little progress, and Wellington looks set to be well down the queue for negotiating a regional deal with the government. And, in the meantime, the city’s slow but steady economic and social decline will continue, no matter how many pro-Wellington articles The Post runs.

A circuit breaker is clearly needed. Wellington’s future is bigger than the egos of the Minister of Local Government and the Mayor. Unfortunately, Wellington lacks a champion at the national level – its three local MPs (two Greens, one Labour) are not part of the government and are therefore largely unheard and ineffectual. The Minister of Regional Development, who blusters about so many other parts of the country, does not appear to even know the city exists, and the two former Wellington Mayors who are now regional list MPs (one Green, one New Zealand First) have disappeared from public view altogether.

Given her earlier comments, Wellington’s best hope at the national level might now be Nicola Willis. As a regional list MP, she certainly fully understands Wellington’s problems, and as Minister of Finance is well-placed to do something about them. While her Ministerial workload will almost certainly preclude her from taking on singlehandedly the herculean task of sorting out Wellington and restoring some sanity into its management, she might be just the person to bring her colleague the Minister of Local Government and the Mayor together and knock some sense into their working relationship.

When I first went into Parliament in the early 1980s, there was in place something called the capital city planning committee, which comprised the local MPs, the Mayor and senior councillors, and relevant government and council officials to work together on issues affecting the city and its development. Major projects like the development of Te Papa, the centralisation of the Courts near to Parliament and the redevelopment of the Wellington waterfront, which contributed so much to Wellington’s growth in the late 1980s and 1990s, all had their genesis in discussions in this committee. Unfortunately, it fell into disuse in the 1990s, after the Ministry of Works and Development, which serviced it, was abolished.

But perhaps now is the time to re-establish a similar body and for Nicola Willis to play the broker’s role in bringing it together. Without a move in this direction, current circumstances mean there is little prospect of effective collaboration between the government and Wellington on important issues of common interest.

Something clearly must give. Carrying on the same way as the last few years will do nothing to arrest Wellington’s decline. Rather than throwing rocks at each other – the way the Prime Minister when he spoke at the recent Local Government conference and criticised the venue, Wellington’s new convention centre, Takina, as “lavish” – the government and the city’s civic leaders must start working together, if the ailing capital is to be revived. 

Unfortunately, “mood-lifting” frothy newspaper articles will not do it.

Friday 6 September 2024

Sir John Key got it right when he told the recent National Party conference we need to "take the temperature down" on race relations. But that is not to say that the critical issues around at present should be swept under the carpet or ignored altogether.

In an open society as we profess to be, the right to hold different opinions should be paramount. There should also be the capacity to debate those differing viewpoints, on their merits, without rancour or bitterness. But sadly, that is rarely the case.

The current debate about the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi is a good example. Debate about the application of the Treaty and the principles which underpin it has been going on since it was signed 184 years ago. ACT’s proposed Treaty Principles Bill is but the latest in a long of moves attempting to define the contemporary relevance of our founding document. And, with every other party in Parliament now pledging to vote against ACT’s Bill, it is doomed to fail.

But despite that near inevitable outcome, this obviously political stunt is being accorded a measure of credibility it does not deserve. What is becoming more worrying is the amount of unnecessary heat the argument around this dead-duck policy is generating, on both sides. Tolerance and perspective are quickly giving way to sensational, unfounded accusations. And with it, the very right to hold and promote diverse views is being challenged.

Left unchecked, such bitter debates cause tensions which can lead to extreme political outcomes. It is no coincidence that the rise of far-right politicians across Europe, from Marine Le Pen’s National Rally in France, Vicktor Orban’s Fidesz Party in Hungary, and most recently the neo-Nazi Alternative für Deutschland (AFD) in the eastern German state of Thuringia are in large part due to the wave of Islamophobia that has swept across Europe in recent years. New Zealand is not yet as polarised a society as those countries, but the risk is that the two xenophobic parties currently in Parliament, alongside more extreme fringe groups outside, could exploit a deterioration in race relations here in just the same way, to the detriment of our overall social cohesion.

Here is where Key’s warning to the National Party conference delegates (and also by extension to the country as a whole) a few weeks ago assumes its true relevance. He was not suggesting that we should shy away from debating difficult and controversial issues, but that we should be careful as we do so not to inflame further already tense situations.

I had alluded to the same point in a column earlier this year where I argued debate around the Treaty of Waitangi and its place in today’s society should be both ordered and reasoned, and not allowed to degenerate into seriously racially divisive acrimony. I suggested there were two people who had critical roles to play to ensure this did not happen

The first was the Prime Minister, by virtue of his position as the head of the government whose policies are at the heart of much of the current controversies. The other was Kingi Tūheitia, following his conciliatory remarks at the national hui he had called together earlier in the year, and reinforced by his speech at the Koroneihana, just days before his recent death.   

It has been noteworthy that many of the tributes paid subsequently to Kingi Tūheitia have hailed his unifying approach as a hallmark of his leadership. The Prime Minister also clearly acknowledged the late Kingi’s role in seeking to bring people together. While it is too early to know the stance of the new Kuīni, Ngā Wai hono i te pō, hopes are high within the Kingitanga and elsewhere that she will maintain the direction and approach of her father.

New Zealand today is a heterogeneous nation of many differing strands, built on a strong bicultural tradition. As Kingi Tūheitia said just last week, we are nevertheless all paddling in the same waka. However, there will always be differing perspectives on the issues of the day, and how to resolve them. But they should not be seen as threats to our social fabric. Rather, they should be welcomed for the opportunities they provide to help us better define who we are and what it means to be a New Zealander today.

In the wake of the sentiments expressed at Kingi Tūheitia’s tangi, and the goodwill his reign engendered, the Prime Minister and the new Kuīni, Ngā Wai hono i te pō are now well-placed to work together to guide and shape that way ahead, if both are of a mind to.

Thursday 29 August 2024

Over recent elections, tax policy has proven to be Labour’s Achilles Heel.

Its coyness on tax in the 2011 campaign led to John Key’s famous “Show me the money, Phil” retort to leader Phil Goff on Labour’s spending plans. When Goff could not answer satisfactorily, Labour’s campaign was sunk amidst a public suspicion of new taxes looming to pay for Labour’s policies. So, in 2014 Labour resolved to be more specific, explicitly promising to introduce a capital gains tax. But that did not work either and Labour was again heavily rejected by voters.

By 2017, Labour had fudged its intent somewhat, promising to establish an independent working group to review the tax system. It duly recommended the capital gains tax Labour had long hankered after, but, when the crunch came, Prime Minister Ardern baulked at the idea, saying the government lacked the political support it needed. She further added that even though she personally still supported a capital gains tax, she would never introduce one, so long as she was Prime Minister.

After her resignation in 2023, it became known that the Ministers of Finance and Revenue had been quietly working on a tax-switch package for the 2023 Budget under which a new wealth tax would be introduced for the “super wealthy”, to pay for making the first $10,000 of income tax free for all income earners. That plan was vetoed by then Prime Minister Hipkins, who also ruled out revisiting such ideas were his government to remain in office after the 2023 election.

One would have thought that Labour might have got the message by now. Apparently not, however. This week reports emerged that former Revenue Minister, David Parker, is working on a yet to be specified capital income tax aimed at the wealthiest New Zealanders. But showing the indecision that has plagued Labour on tax over the years, Opposition leader Hipkins could not quite bring himself to confirm what was happening, defensively saying it was just an “internal debate at this stage” and that more attention should be paid to the government's plans to bring in "new taxes".

The problem with this type of response is that it just confirms ingrained suspicions in many voters’ minds that a future Labour-led government will increase taxes on the wealthy when next in office. But Labour has never really come to grips with the political problem that causes for itself. While its lower income supporters will always welcome such moves, upper income earners and those middle-income voters aspiring to be wealthy – the voters Labour needs to win elections – will be less impressed or inclined to vote Labour accordingly.

To have any chance of succeeding, therefore, Labour will need to be far more transparent about its tax policy development, otherwise suspicions will mount. Labour must spell out the tax problem to be remedied as it sees it, explain why it is a problem, and how their plans will resolve that. But that is a risky strategy, given the electorate’s overall twitchiness about tax policy, which may not work. However, it is far preferable to the timid, non-committal approach that Hipkins has taken over the last year, which did not work then, and will certainly not work in the lead-up to the next election.

At a wider level, the tax issue exemplifies Labour’s current overall conundrum. Conventional wisdom strongly suggests it is unlikely to win the next election with Hipkins still leader, and after just one term in Opposition. But then it seems just as unlikely that it would do any better were there to be another leader. Moreover, both the leading alternative names suggested – Kieran McAnulty and Barbara Edmonds – have so far emphatically ruled themselves out of leadership consideration. Each would face major credibility issues if they were to about-face on those unequivocal commitments now.

For the foreseeable future, therefore, Hipkins’ position as leader seems safe, and with it his tendency to prevaricate, to Labour’s detriment, looks likely to continue. This week, for example, he emphatically denied that Māori ceded sovereignty when they signed the Treaty of Waitangi, only to add later that “that doesn’t mean the Crown doesn’t have sovereignty now, but that Māori didn’t cede sovereignty in signing the Treaty.”   

For Labour’s sake, Hipkins’ needs to understand that such obfuscation aimed at keeping all Labour’s potential supporters on-side, ends up pleasing no-one. And that while Labour continues in this vein, hoping that the government will eventually trip itself up, it will make little impact or be taken seriously. 

Thursday 22 August 2024

The water pipe, which burst beneath Wellington’s Cambridge Terrace on Wednesday morning, could not have chosen a better moment to do so. Not only did it cause massive traffic disruption, but also a loss of water pressure, and in some cases supply, to the nearby suburbs of Roseneath and Mount Victoria. It was the last thing needed by both the beleaguered Wellington City Council, and the hapless Wellington Water (the utility company owned by the region's Councils) whose handling of the region’s water issues has already become a national joke.

 

For that was also the very day the Prime Minister was due to make his first major address on local government to the annual conference of Local Government New Zealand - the body which represents all the country's local authorities - at the Wellington City Council's new Takina Conference and Exhibition Centre, just a few hundred metres away. Moreover, the theme of his address was that Councils need to "rein in the fantasies" and get "back to the basics" of collecting rubbish and fixing pipes and potholes. Councils had to return to “reality” he said, adding that “the days of (government) handouts” are over because ratepayers “are sick of white elephants.”

 

The Prime Minister also spoke in detail about Local Water Done Well, the government's recently announced national water upgrading government plan to replace the former Labour Government's Three Waters scheme. His remarks could not have been clearer, and more pointed, and his target more obvious. Coming on top of the Minister of Transport’s remarks to a Wellington Chamber of Commerce breakfast that same morning where he “congratulated” his audience for making the “arduous journey” into Wellington City, past leaking pipes, and an “infestation of speed bumps”, the Prime Minister’s comments confirm the government’s general disdain for the left-wing Wellington City Council and its current leadership. But whether the Council will heed, or even listen to, the government’s messages remains to be seen.

 

Certainly, the Prime Minister’s “back to basics” message will strike a chord with ratepayers in Wellington and elsewhere who are facing large rates increases over the next few years. They are likely to welcome a renewed focus on fixing potholes and pipes, and better waste collection services, ahead of more inner-city speed bumps and raised pedestrian crossings.

 

But, to mix a metaphor, it is not all a one-way street. While ratepayers generally want to see less Council indulgence and a greater focus on getting the basics right, they do not expect that to mean the government withdraws completely from any role for Councils to support the development of local amenities or services. At the Local Government Conference, the Prime Minister reaffirmed the government’s intention to remove once more the promotion of the “four well-beings” – social, environmental, economic and cultural – from local government’s mandate. These had been put in place by the Clark Labour-led Government, removed under the previous National-led Government, then restored under the last Labour-led Government.

 

However, that should not mean that those well-beings are to be ignored completely. By default, if nothing else, the responsibility for upholding these now shifts back to central government. The Prime Minister and his colleagues cannot allow the abolition of the well-beings as local government responsibilities to also mean that they are to be ignored by central government. Yet that now appears very likely to be what will happen.

 

Culture and heritage looks set to be the first area where this will occur. Our system of classification for buildings and items of heritage significance is a national, not regional, one. So, maintaining and upgrading buildings and items of national heritage interest ought to be the responsibility of central government, not hard-pressed local ratepayers. But that is not happening, nor is the government showing any interest in honouring our national heritage classification system.

 

In Wellington, for example, a significant contributor to the sharp rates increases has been the blow-out in the costs of restoring the city’s earthquake-risk Town Hall. Some, like the increasingly heritage-sceptic Housing Minister, have questioned the Town Hall’s heritage value, but so long as the building retains national heritage status, the responsibility for funding its restoration should not be falling as heavily as it is on Wellington ratepayers, while the government sits idly by.

 

It is the same with Christchurch Cathedral. This iconic building in the heart of the city is one of the country’s best-known buildings. It is a long standing image of Christchurch and the quest to secure its restoration became a symbol of the city’s resilience to come back after the devastating earthquakes of 2010 and 2011. But now the project is being mothballed indefinitely because of a funding shortfall of $85 million, which the government is refusing to meet. Christchurch Cathedral has been a central feature of the city’s life since construction began in 1864 – so it is hardly a “white elephant.” But the government’s short-sighted decision calls into question its commitment to upholding national heritage classification and protection standards. After all, in the grand scheme of government finances $85 million, possibly advanced by way of suspensory loan over many years, is not a large amount. 

 

Beyond that and arguably more worryingly, the government’s refusal to act also sends a clear message that at least so far as culture and heritage is concerned this government has no interest in upholding the well-being responsibility it is about to remove from local government. That raises the far more important question whether it will be similarly uninterested when it comes to upholding the social, economic, and environmental well-beings it is about to remove as well.

 

As with its wider reforms, the government narrow focus on getting to know the true cost of various services risks it overlooking unwisely their wider value and benefit

Thursday 15 August 2024

In every government there is a quiet achiever – a Minister who just gets on with the job and gets things done, without fuss or fanfare, no matter what else is going on around them. In the current government, that Minister is Judith Collins.

When Collins lost the National Party leadership in bruising circumstances in 2021, after a difficult couple of years in charge, which had included one of National’s biggest-ever election defeats in 2020, many wondered about her political future. She left the leadership role largely unlamented and unloved, with little apparent support in her Caucus.  While no-one really expected her to slope off into political oblivion – that did not seem within her nature (she was renowned as a natural fighter) – many speculated she might become a difficult personality within the National Party Caucus, like Sir Robert Muldoon did after he lost the National leadership in 1984.

Initially, her assertions that she was “the ultimate team player”, “always happy to be a constructive member of the team” were taken with a considerable grain of salt. But over the next two years in Opposition, despite a comparatively low Caucus ranking of 19, Collins proved to be just that, burying her head and working hard and effectively in her roles as National’s spokesperson on Research, Science, Innovation and Technology. She was able to build up a rapport with the science and technology community that, despite public platitudes of support, has often felt neglected by governments in the past. Collins also developed an interest in space technology, an area in which New Zealand has the capacity to play an increasingly important role, as the growth of companies like Rocket Lab is showing. 

When National returned to government last year, Collins unsurprisingly returned to Cabinet, ranked number 8 around the table, and holding the substantial portfolios of Attorney-General, Minister of Defence, Minister for Digitising Government, Minister Responsible for the GCSB and the SIS, Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology, and New Zealand’s first Minister for Space. She was also appointed a Kings Counsel in December 2023.

In each of these portfolios she is already marking a mark. As Attorney-General she has made several new judicial appointments and is overseeing the government’s response to the Royal Commission’s Report into the Christchurch Mosque Attacks. As Minister for Digitising Government, she is working on unifying government digital services, beginning with developing an app to bring together all NZTA services from vehicle registration reminders, to warrants of fitness and ultimately leading to a digital driver’s licence.

As Minister of Defence, Collins is at the forefront of New Zealand’s efforts to assist Ukraine, and, more controversially, in discussions about what role, if any, New Zealand should seek to play through Pillar Two of the AUKUS Agreement. She has also taken up the cause of conditions of service for Defence personnel.

In both her related roles as Minister in Charge of the GSCB and SIS, Collins has taken a strong position on protecting New Zealand from mounting international cybersecurity threats. In her Science, Innovation and Technology, and Space roles, Collins has also been busy. This week, she announced her intention to modify New Zealand’s genetic modification rules to better align them with current international practice.

There is also Collins’ previous experience during the Key and English governments as a Minister holding at various times the Police, Corrections, Justice, ACC, Revenue and Energy portfolios. They add to the breadth of experience she brings to the present government. Whether one agrees with her politics or not, Collins has proven to be one of National’s best performing Ministers, the ideal combination of a safe and reliable pair of hands that gets things done, seemingly with a minimum of fuss. Other Ministers, still struggling to come to grips with their portfolios could well look to Collins as a guide on how to carry out their roles effectively.

Through her actions since leaving the party leadership, Collins has effectively rewritten the book about how ex-leaders should behave within a party Caucus. Over recent years, there have been examples in both the major parties of disruptive former leaders, sulking on the backbench, more interested in trying to protect their reputations, than serving their party’s needs. True to her initial post-leadership assertions, Collins has resisted that temptation, and proven that if they are of a mind to, ex-leaders can play a constructive role in their Caucuses and make an effective contribution to government.

 

Thursday 8 August 2024

Too often, an apparent concern for good public policy is really a cover for the protection of vested interests. In a small and intimate society like New Zealand this can make it difficult for governments to reach the best decisions on critical issues.

There is no intrinsic wrong in groups promoting their vested interests when issues of public policy are being considered, provided those interests are clearly identified. However, we are often too polite a society to do so. And so, the vested interests become – by default – a more significant part of the story than they deserve to be.

Earlier this week, the Maritime Union hit the news with claims that the cost of cancelling the Cook Strait ferry replacement could be as high as $500 million on top of the $500 million already spent on “sunk” costs. It did not name its “impeccable” sources, saying unconvincingly they were far too sensitive to be revealed publicly. Nevertheless, the media took the unsubstantiated claims seriously and dutifully reported them as such. So far, there has been no independent confirmation of the Maritime Union’s assertions, which are left looking like fact.

The Maritime Union has a long history – led by such colourful figures over the years as Fintan Patrick Walsh, Bill “Pincher” Martin and more recently, Dave Morgan. It has always staunchly promoted mariners’ conditions of service and general rights, leading to some of our more significant industrial disputes. So, its entry into the ferry replacement debate should therefore be seen for what it is – a legitimate attempt to protect the future employment interests of its members. Dressing it up as a wider concern about the contract arrangements for the replacement of the ferries is a clever tactic from the union’s perspective, but, in the absence of corroborated information, is hard to take more seriously.

In a similar vein, the head of a major traffic management company says, “everyone wants to tackle the cone problem, but framing it as a ‘war’ implies someone will have to lose”. And, he says, such rhetoric will undermine the attempt to save lives. While admitting that New Zealand might be the world’s “most cones per worksite” nation, he seeks to position the argument in more reasonable terms, saying the issue is a safety one for the community to resolve. He professes support for the criticisms of the Transport Minister and the Mayor of Auckland about what they consider to be the excessive use of cones. But then he says he has “a problem with some of the consequences of their delivery” and falls back on the cones are “an item ultimately designed to protect someone’s life” defence.

He also just happens to be chair of the Temporary Traffic Management Industry Steering Group which is considering ways in which current traffic management issues can be streamlined and improved to gain more public support. He could have added – but did not – these include protecting the interests of the plethora of traffic management companies across the country and the revenue they derive from central and local government.

Given his comments, and the prominence of traffic management companies and their ubiquitous cones, this is another area where it will be difficult to separate the obvious protection of vested interests from a sound public policy outcome.

Earlier this week, the government announced it was accelerating from 2026 to next year, the introduction of a new mathematics curriculum for primary and intermediate school students to significantly improve achievement rates. Since then, there has been a steady stream of criticism of the plan from various education groups. This has ranged from questions about who was involved in advising the government on the new approach, to claims its introduction is being unnecessarily rushed, and that there has been insufficient consultation.

The policy is certainly a departure from what was being developed under the previous government, and there are suggestions traditional practices are being bypassed, with resource materials being sourced directly from the private sector, rather than developed in-house as usual. It is easy to see how some professional noses are out of joint that the government is apparently upending their traditional way of doing things in favour of what the Prime Minister says is “swift action to transform maths education” and to end what he describes as years of “not setting kids up for success.”

However, in the debate which has followed this announcement the idea of “setting kids up for success” seems to be taking very much a back seat to the interests of the professional groups. It parallels the wider discourse about education which too often descends into the narrower argument of more resources for teachers, rather than the best ways to meet the needs of children. But skewing policy decisions to appease educational interest groups, as has happened too often in the past, has not always led to the best outcomes for children and parents, as appallingly low maths achievement rates confirm.

In an open society, interest groups have a right to promote their interests and causes and to seek to influence policy outcomes accordingly. But there also needs to be greater recognition that vested interests and good public policy outcomes do not always coincide, and that in the interests of transparency vested interests need to be identified clearly and publicly, so they can be appropriately discounted.

Above all else, the ongoing responsibility facing governments is to pursue the best policies, not just those which satisfy the most interest groups.