Forward Thinking

Rodney Hide
Thursday, 8 March 2007
Speeches - Other

Speech to The Newmarket Club, Newmarket, Auckland Thursday 8 March 2007.

ACT's job is to make New Zealand the greatest country in the world. We were once. We can be again.

We have the people. We have the resources.

What Kiwis need is the confidence and the belief that we can do it.

We need to look ahead 10, 20, 30, 50 years. We need to lift our sights.

We can be the proud, prosperous, confident, caring country we all yearn for.

We just need to dream it, believe it, work for it.

We all have a part to play. ACT's job is politics. It's our role to provide the political direction and the government that enables New Zealanders to dream their dreams and succeed beyond them.

It's ACT's job to lift the quality of New Zealand's politics and public sector.

It's an exciting job because politics and government are the biggest roadblocks to our country's success. For years and years we have suffered third-rate government that has held us back. We can dramatically boost our country through better politics and good government.

And it's not hard. For a high performance country we need High Performance Government. That means a government which adopts the following core principles:

Number One - That government's prime responsibility is to protect citizens from the thugs and the bullies. Our governments do everything else but protect us.

Number Two - That government treat people and their property with respect. That means not pinching people's property on a whim, or riding rough-shod over their rights.

Number Three - That government should be transparent and accountable. That means being clear about whether our rules and regulations work, and open about the tax we pay and how it is spent.

Number Four - That government recognise private enterprise as the engine of prosperity, not bureaucracies. That means government should do everything it can to create an environment where business thrives - but it's not our role to run businesses or tell them what to do

And Number Five - Honesty with citizens. That government is honest about what level of service Kiwis can expect in health, education, and other government services, and that politicians will be accountable for any failure to deliver.

The application of these five principles would transform our government and our politics. It would put us well on the path to becoming the greatest country on earth. ACT's job this year is to spell out how High Performance Government can be achieved. That's what I will be doing in a series of speeches through the year.

It's also ACT's job to point out where we are going wrong and how we can do better.

It's not good enough to be 'green'. We need to be 'Smart Green'. That means acknowledging and working with the uncertainties of climate change and climate change policy.

Let's be clear - climate change is happening. The earth's climate has always been changing, but when we study it, the uncertainties are significant. Pete Hodgson said Kyoto would be worth $500 million. We are now told it's going to cost us $500 million. He was a billion dollars out.

Al Gore's Oscar-winning "documentary" predicts the seas rising 20 feet by 2100. That would flood Manhattan, Bangladesh, Shanghai and other densely populated coastal regions. That's scary. The UN's IPCC report predicts rises of only 8 to 17 inches. There's a big difference between 20 feet and one foot.

These differences illustrate the state of flux of the science and the uncertainties over best policy.

Being Smart Green means acknowledging these uncertainties.

But being Smart Green also means adopting smart policies. The government through the 1990s to 2001 told foresters and farmers they would keep the carbon credits attached to their trees. The result was a surge in planting. The credits were thought to be worth up to $20,000 a hectare over a forest's life. Trees cost $4,000 a hectare to plant. The incentive was a big one.

The government subsequently said it will confiscate the credits. That drastically cut the incentive to plant trees and collapsed forestry planting. The government has since announced it will tax foresters who fell their trees and convert the land to another use. That has prompted a mass of deforestation ahead of the possible tax.

One of the biggest deforesters is Landcorp. A government-owned enterprise is converting forests into dairy farms, rushing to avoid a tax that will be introduced by their own shareholder.

It's hard to imagine a more disastrous set of policies.

New forestry plantings have plunged to their lowest level since the Second World War. They are down from 98,000 hectares in 1994 to 6,000 in 2005 - and the forestry industry tells us it could well be nil in 2007. For the first time ever, New Zealand's plantation forest cover has shrunk. That's no mean achievement. So much for "carbon neutrality".

So what should we be doing? Well, we should be smart greens. On the forestry front, it's easy. We should respect people's property - and get the incentives right. That means allowing forest owners to keep the carbon credits that are due to the trees they own.

On the wider policy front, we should adopt a policy of least regrets. Our particular concern should be energy security. The Middle East remains volatile. Anything that we can do to reduce our dependence on oil has to be good for the country - and co-incidentally helps us with climate change concerns.

We should be forging ahead full-speed for other economic ways to generate power. We should also be concerned about energy conservation. Much can be done to reduce our energy demand. These are all good things to do irrespective of Kyoto, but still help us to meet our commitment.

Innovation is also important in the production, distribution and use of energy supplies. Economic policies facilitating innovation are good for the country and help us respond to shifting environmental threats.

It's not good enough just to be 'green'. We must be smart greens.

High Performance Government also means passing smart laws that are enforceable and enforced, not meaningless 'feel good' laws which can only be applied arbitrarily. That's why it's wrong to criminalise parents who smack their children. It's fine that parents can choose not to smack their kids. That's their choice and their right. But it's wrong for politicians to tell responsible parents who smack their kids that they can't, that they are breaking the law, and that they are tantamount to child abusers. It's stupid stuff.

Plenty of caring, loving, responsible parents smack their children. I know. I was one of them.

Abolishing Section 59 won't stop child abuse. What it will do is put the state between the child and the parent, criminalise loving parents, give the police the nightmare of what to do when some do-gooder rings to say they saw Mrs Smith smack Johnny at the supermarket, and produce even more ridiculous court cases than we see already.

ACT will continue to speak out on the stupidities of government.

But we want to do more than that. We want to lift our country's ambitions for what we can achieve and set out what we must do to become the greatest country in the world.

Red tape is a problem. We are drowning in it. It's the consistent cry of Kiwis up and down the country - and especially those in small businesses. The Institute of Chartered Accountants estimates the annual cost to families and businesses of complying with regulations as high as $25 billion.

High Performance Government requires much greater oversight of laws and regulations before they are passed. We also need to regularly review all laws and regulations to keep tabs on their effects and their cost.

That's what my Regulatory Responsibility Bill - which is now before Parliament - does. It's designed to provide greater transparency and accountability in rule and law making.

It would require every new law and regulation to be tested against a simple set of questions. Questions like 'what will a new rule accomplish?' 'What will it cost?' And 'what will the side effects be?'

These questions will again be asked about each rule after five years. They will identify those rules which aren't working, and the ones which are costing Kiwis more than they're worth.

We also need a proper contract where the government that takes our money provides a service in return. Right now there's nothing.

We pay and pay and pay, but instead of receiving the services we pay for - like healthcare, education and infrastructure - we're made to wait. My colleague, Heather Roy, calls it "the waiting list society".

Under Labour, Aucklanders wait on our roads - for hours. Tens of thousands of people wait for health treatment while beds in private hospitals lie empty, and drunk drivers can spend longer waiting for a date in court than the few months they lose their license.

The answer is not to simply pour more money into the public systems. Labour has spent an extra $3 billion on health, with no discernible improvement.

High Performance Government means telling Kiwis exactly what public services they can expect, and holding government to account if they fail to deliver. That's what we expect when we spend our money, and it's what we should demand when government spends our money for us.

We must demand that government spells out exactly the health care we can expect in return for our lifetime of paying tax. Right now we have no idea. We need to know what illnesses and accidents are covered, and what level of service we would receive. We expect that from private insurers, we should demand it of government. And we should be able to hold government to account if they fail to deliver.

Managing a business, being part of a family or running a Government department means making tough choices - and it means having to be responsible for the outcomes of your decisions. Members of a family answer to each other, and a business to its shareholders. Likewise, Government should be accountable to the taxpayers, should listen to what Kiwis want, and front up when our expectations are not met.

We must demand the same level of transparency and accountability in law and order, education, welfare and, indeed, everything government does. That's the key to High Performance Government.

There's much debate about the level of tax. That's good. But debate is not enough. We need to involve people in the decision of how much tax to take. As a bare minimum, we should subject all new taxes and tax hikes to a referendum. It's the people's money that's to be spent; so the people should have a say. That's what ACT's Taxpayer Rights Bill does. It's another key plank to achieving High Performance Government.

These are just some of the ideas ACT is working on to lift the performance of our government and of our politics. That's what makes us different from the Labour and National parties. That's why ACT exists.

ENDS

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