Panel Discussions
HOSTED BY GREG BOYED

In response to JUDITH COLLINS interview
GREG BOYED
The panel this week is Dr Raymond Miller from Auckland University. Welcome along. Former National Party President Michelle Boag. Welcome back to you. And Mike Williams, former Labour President. First of all, we’ll start with you, Mike. A missed opportunity, or has the government got it right with the alcohol reform?

MIKE WILLIAMS - Former Labour President
Actually, the most interesting bit was why is this a conscience vote? I was just trying to think. I think probably the split age is the best compromise available at the moment, but I do think the minister left open the possibility of raising the excise tax, which, internationally, is the only thing that works.

GREG Why not now, then? Why not raise the tax now?

RAYMOND MILLER - Political scientist
Well, this is an interesting question. If I could just say I think a majority of the public will support raising the age for alcohol consumption. I think the minister is right, that there will probably be a split vote in Parliament on this issue. But what they’ve done is they’ve taken age as a kind of cure-all for a variety of things, and I don’t think it’s that important whether it be 18 or 20. The Law Commission came out with they called an integrated package of recommendations, including increasing the price of alcohol, and they addressed the commercialisation of alcohol. Now, this is a big issue. We know how powerful the alcohol lobby is, and of course politicians are rather loathed to get into a fight on this, but when you think about small children as they are growing up in New Zealand and they see a culture where alcohol is associated with masculinity, it’s associated with adulthood, and I think the problems start much, much earlier. So I think sponsorship, marketing, advertising - these are all important issues which have not been addressed.

GREG Michelle, she kept comparing it to the cigarettes, and said, ‘Cigarettes do endless harm. Alcohol is only harmful to a small portion of people, 15% of people.’

MICHELLE BOAG - Former National President
Which is true.

GREG Having said that, alcohol and the marketing of alcohol has changed dramatically in the last few years. Things like RTDs and the availability in things like supermarkets and so forth. Cigarettes really haven’t changed that much since Adam was a cowboy.

MICHELLE No, except the price keeps going up. I think the issue here is that our problems with alcohol are behavioural, and the observation’s often been made that in other countries like in Italy and France where they grow up with a much more mature attitude to alcohol in a family setting, they simply don’t have these binge drinking issues. Now, I’m now living in the city. I go for walks in the early morning. 6 o’clock in the morning, I see lots of adults, and they are young adults, but they’re not kids - these are people generally in their 20s - pouring out of bars, 6 o’clock in the morning, heading into McDonald’s for a food fix. They are the ones that are noisy, that are loud, that are disruptive, that cause problems for the police. Most of those people are well over 20. They have been drinking all night, which means they can afford it. God knows what else they’ve been doing in there, but I bet it isn’t only alcohol they’ve been taking. But it doesn’t matter what you do legislatively, you’re not going to change that. Sponsorship and advertising isn’t going to change that.

GREG Having said that, cigarettes, they’re going to whack them up to $20 a packet within the next couple of years. The Law Commission is dead clear about this. They say whack it up by 50%, the price of booze, and it’s going to absolutely help the problem.

MICHELLE But the problem, you see, is that might be a disincentive to that small group that abuse alcohol. It means they won’t be able to have as much of it. But the vast majority of people, as Judith Collins said, it’s simply penalising them for the sake of the few that abuse.

GREG But, Mike, is this going to be any disincentive to anybody, this split age?

MIKE No, I don’t think that’s going to make a lot of difference. There’s one thing that Michelle said. I mean, I was president of the Labour Party for nine years, and people talked about the powerful booze industry. I was never lobbied by the alcohol industry.

MICHELLE Nor given money.

MIKE Nor given money.

GREG Crates of booze, though, I hear, Mike. (ALL CHUCKLE)

MIKE Never a crate of booze. I would have remembered that. But I do think that we will eventually be driven down a route of a higher price on alcohol.

GREG Are we being a little bit naïve with the split age thing here? Because basically the stick here is if you’re 18, you can’t buy it. You can go to a bar and have a drink. Plenty of 18-year-olds are going to know 20-year-olds, slip them some money, say, ‘Go buy me some booze.’ What have we solved?

RAYMOND I think this is what’s going to happen. Someone goes to a supermarket as a 20-year-old, gets the booze and passes it on to others. I’m sure that’s going to happen. I mean, there’s a lot of ingenuity when it comes to getting hold of alcohol, and I just think this is a rather unnecessary law reform, and I do think there are other things that have been missed, such as pricing and availability.

GREG The availability side of it, you talk about powerful groups, and then you’re taking on supermarkets.

MICHELLE No, I think the issue around availability is the corner dairies where you can get this stuff at all hours of the day and night.

MIKE Yeah, South Auckland. Yeah, it’s dreadful. But I do think there should be some limits on marketing. Where I come from in West Auckland, there’s no alcohol in supermarkets, and I went into a supermarket in Grey Lynn a couple of weeks ago, and I was staggered to find out you could not enter the supermarket without going past great arrays of bottles of wine. And I think that’s pushing it a bit hard. I think there should be some control on displays, as they’re doing with cigarettes and on marketing.

GREG Split age - it looks pretty tight, politically. What are you hearing as to which way this is likely to go?

MICHELLE I think that most people will go for the compromise because it is regarded as middle of the road. You can go into a bar and drink if you’re 18, but you can only purchase when you’re 20. And, as Ray says, it’s probably not going to make an awful lot of difference, but it is a statement they’re making.

MIKE That’s right. And it looks as though they’re doing something. In fact, they’re not. As Raymond pointed out, they’re really not doing anything, but it looks as though you’re doing something.

PANEL DISCUSSIONS
HOSTED BY GREG BOYED

In response to DAVID SHEARER interview
GREG BOYED
Raymond Miller, Michelle Boag and Mike Williams at my side. You were all on three months ago when David Shearer first appeared. You were all pretty impressed then. Mike, is there a bit of buyer regret now?

MIKE WILLIAMS - Former Labour President
Not for me. I thought that was a pretty solid interview, and I think David Shearer is kind of growing on people. I had a look at the preferred reader in the polls, and I compared David Shearer with John Key at a similar point in their careers, and there’s really not a lot of difference. Shearer’s about 14 or 15, and that’s pretty much where John Key was at that point. So I think he can look back on a reasonably solid six months of achievement. He’s certainly gone out and sold himself to the Labour Party activists, which is a really essential first step. He’s done that, and he’s done it well.

GREG The Greens relationship - obviously we know they have a relationship with the Greens. They’re meeting with them regularly. It’s going to be a delicate balancing act, though.

RAYMOND MILLER - Political Scientist
Yes, because I think that David Shearer is exaggerating the friendship between the two political parties. They’re both trying to cannibalise the other’s vote. We did a survey after the 2011 election and asked people how they voted in 2008. And a quarter of all those who voted Green in 2011 have voted Labour in 2008. And in fact the other worry for David Shearer is a third of those who voted NZ First in 2011 voted Labour in 2008. So they’re really suffering from small parties gaining momentum. The problem for David Shearer is he wants to give 20 Cabinet positions to his Labour colleagues after the next election. But if the Greens are growing and growing and are only three or four percentage points behind Labour at the next election, they’re going to have to give away a lot of Cabinet positions and a lot of power, and I think that’s going to be a real problem for the Labour Party.

GREG Russel Norman - a potential deputy Prime Minister or Finance Minister?

MICHELLE BOAG - Former National President
Well, I think the Greens are very lucky. They really haven’t had the scrutiny they should. It’s almost as if it’s not appropriate to question the Greens too much. You know, the media give them a really free ride. Nobody asks the questions. They’re against every single development, but they’re supposedly pro-jobs. They don’t want the government to cut any spending, but they’ve got no idea where jobs and growth are going to come from. They don’t want us to build more roads or upgrade the roads, but they don’t understand that if freight can’t get from one place to another because of gridlock, that just sends costs up.

GREG Why is that? Why do you feel that is the case with the media and the questions being asked? Is there a feeling that a liberal media doesn’t want to question a liberal party?

MICHELLE I think it’s just too easy to let them have a free run, and they’ve had a free run. I think as far as Shearer’s concerned, people forget that Helen Clark was leader of the Opposition for five years before she won an election. And I think Shearer’s quite right to have talked in the past about instant gratification - people want him to win the election now. And in fact there’s a lot of work to do. Mike’s right. He’s done the groundwork with the party, which he did have to do. He’s still the same person. He needs a bit of fire in his belly. I think his team need to realise whether they like it or not, he needs a bit more animation. He needs a bit more spirit.

RAYMOND The other thing is, Michelle, that the Greens have a clear agenda. They have a clear message. People know what they stand for. I don’t actually know what David Shearer stands for, and I sometimes wonder if he knows what he actually stands for. Now, that didn’t prevent John Key from winning the Prime Ministership in 2008, but nevertheless, the advantage the Greens have over Labour is there a very clear public perception as to what the Greens are on about.

GREG What about the perception of the difference between the two of them? With Key and Clark, it was simple. You had the woman. She was the career politician. She was as hard as nails. You had the guy. He was a new politician. He was a bit of everyman, albeit with $50 million in the bank. Now you’ve got the Labour guy who’s sort of not that dissimilar to John Key.

RAYMOND Well, that’s part of the problem for Labour. I mean, Labour really need to redefine themselves, in a way. They need to re-energise themselves, and they need to do that through leadership. And this is where the contrast is constantly being made with John Key and with Russel Norman, because they’re both very effective leaders.

GREG The threat of David Cunliffe is still a real one, though, isn’t it?

MICHELLE I think the problem for David Shearer is that his own people have expectations which are unrealistic, and Mike’s quite right in terms of where he is now six months into his leadership. He’s doing OK.

MIKE Well, at least as well as John Key did.

MICHELLE Exactly. So I think the problem is these unrealistic expectations that he’s going to win the election next week. It’s a long road. We’ve got to wait and see where he is come the next election, and then - they’re right - if he hasn’t made progress, then question. But right now he’s doing everything he should be doing as a leader of the Opposition.

PANEL DISCUSSIONS

HOSTED BY GREG BOYED

In response to IAN LECKIE interview

GREG BOYED
So, what do the panel make of this week’s stoush? Raymond Miller, Michelle Boag, Mike Williams. Raymond, first of all, Hekia Parata - what do you make of how this has all been handled by her?

RAYMOND MILLER - Political Scientist
Well, I think it’s been a source of considerable embarrassment for the government within days of the Budget. I don’t think the government worries too much about the unions, the teacher unions. If there was a stoush there, I don’t think they would worry too much, but they will be very concerned about parents and grandparents and those who are really concerned that the quality of education for their children is going to suffer. The thing is that there is something counterintuitive about associating class size with teacher quality. Regardless of all the research, I think many people believe that the bigger the class, the less attention the children are going to get, the lower the quality. And Mr Fix It, John Key, had to come in this week and try and deal with this issue and deal with this issue as he’s done with other issues. It kind of reminds me of John F Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis. You create the crisis and then you try and save the world from it, and that’s sort of the feeling I got this week with John Key.

GREG Something new to come from Ian, though - that they want this in contracts. This could through up a whole new Pandora’s Box of issues, couldn’t it?

MIKE WILLIAMS - Former Labour President
I don’t think that makes a hell of a lot of difference. I think this is the worst week this government has ever had, and I think this issue could be a game-changer. I spent five or six years of my life as a secondary school teacher, and anyone who believes that teaching 36 kids is the same as teaching 26 in a class is in cloud cuckoo land. I think the government was caught badly on the wrong side of this issue, and I think they will have to change their mind. It’s not just kids; it’s parents. I’m incensed about this.

GREG I think the number’s actually 29, not 26. Would it be fair to say the government misread what the fallout of this was going to be come Budget time?

MICHELLE BOAG - Former National President
I think this was always going to happen, because up till now, every other public sector has had the screws put on them for expenditure, and I think this is the education sector saying, ‘We’re the sacred cow. You can’t touch us.’ Right? So it was always going to get to this point over something. It just happens to be this particular policy. From a PR point of view, if I was giving advice to the government on how to handle it, I’d say start again and start again quickly, because otherwise you’re going to have months of this discontent. You’re going to have months of students sitting in Symonds Street, blocking the traffic for no other reason than they want to be on the telly and have all the attention on them. I think if they were to say, ‘Right, we’re going to backtrack,’ and sit down and say, ‘Sorry, Education, we’re going to look at how we can improve quality and reduce costs, and we’ll sit down and we’ll work it through with you. This is only a temporary respite. We’re still saying, “Education is has to look at how it’s going to do things better and get better quality.”’ Because, as she made the very correct point, we’ve had an increase in teachers; we haven’t had an equal increase in effectiveness and quality of education. But from the point of view of how you manage it, I’d say take the hit now. Do a temporary pull-back and go on to actually some constructive working with the sector.

RAYMOND Yeah, the problem is this affects middle New Zealand. This affects National’s core constituency. It’s not like picking off, if you like, particular sectors in the economy. Health, education - these are core issues. And when you start really eroding quality in those core areas, then middle New Zealand will rise up, and the government knows it, and that’s why I think it’s such a significant issue for them to deal with.

MICHELLE And the irony is she wants the focus on quality, right, and it’s been taken entirely off quality, and quality is now being interpreted as class size, which is not where she wants to be. So she has to get the focus on quality, and the only way to do that is to take the heat out of that issue, sit down with the teachers and say, ‘We need to focus on quality. What does quality mean?’ And work that through, but give them the very strong message that things can’t stay the same. All the teachers want is to be left absolutely untouched, and I think that’s unrealistic.

GREG Ian Leckie said every class, every school. This is different to what Hekia Parata’s been peddling this week.

MIKE Yeah, I don’t think she understands the formulas involved. I think she was badly briefed, and I don’t think she comprehended it. But the point I’d make is that I have an article here from The Economist, and we have one of the best educations on Earth right now in terms of reading, maths, science. We’re ahead of Australia, Japan, United States, Sweden, Germany, France, United Kingdom. It is one of the jewels in our crown - our education system. It’s what sets us apart as a successful country. To fiddle with it is just insane. And I guarantee there is not a single mechanic in the National Party caucus. Because if there was, that person would be saying, ‘If it works, don’t fix it.’ And I think people will be angry about this, and I think it will damage the government, and they deserve damage.

MICHELLE But I think the issue is, Mike, that we are still failing some pupils. There are still kids coming out of the education system who can’t get a job, who aren’t prepared, who don’t have the simple, basic qualifications.

MIKE OK, that is called the tail.

MICHELLE It may well be.

MIKE Every country has a tail, and it is a very expensive problem to fix, and if you want to put more money into it, you can teach these kids in classes of four and six. But the government’s not prepared to do this. You are not going to remove the tail by piling 40 kids into a class.

GREG We are going to have to leave it there, I’m afraid.

© Scoop Media