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More and more people know Jacinda’s COVID-19 response is a grand illusion. We’ve entered Wonderland where the Red Queen is talking backwards, and that great feminist organisation the Taliban gave a New Zealand woman asylum from her own Government. https://www.act.org.nz/speech_state_of_the_nation_2022">https://www.act.org.nz/speech_st...
Every Labour policy has the same problem. The world’s first Instagram Prime Minister has a cartoonish view of how the world works. So long as the pictures look good and the words sound good, then we are making progress. She keeps smiling as reality crashes down around her.
Our lives have become playthings for overgrown student politicians who believe it’s their job to remake us. All the while, everyday Kiwis who just want to get on with making tomorrow better than today are left bemused and pick up the tab.
There’s something unhealthy about our economy. Kiwis work longer hours than ever, but can’t get ahead. The reason is that government is ravaging the economy. People who try to make a difference in their own lives face regulation and compliance costs at every turn.
Another cycle of National holding the line, so Labour can pick up right where it left off, just won’t do. We need to stop assuming government departments and activities should continue just because they always have.
If businesses don’t deliver, they’re forced to close. But when was the last time you heard of a government department being surplus to requirements? How many zombie bureaucrats do we have? Why do we put up with the idea that government can get bigger but never smaller?
ACT says we need to zero base government. By that I mean going back to zero and asking ourselves: If the bureaucracies we have now didn’t exist, would we establish them today?
Labour has gone on a tax rampage to pay for its massive expansion of government. The average New Zealander is now paying $2,138 more in tax than when Labour was elected.
At the centre of nearly every Labour policy, from the school curriculum to Three Waters infrastructure, is an obsession. Labour is obsessed with the Partnership State, putting the Treaty at the heart of everything.
Co-governance is incompatible with democracy. Democracy means one person, one vote. It’s the basis of our globally significant political achievement: realising the idea that every adult New Zealander should have the vote.
People came from England to escape class. From India to escape caste. From China to escape the one-party state where party members get special rights. From South Africa to escape apartheid. If you were to sum up New Zealand’s history, it is people dreaming of an equal chance.
Nobody is born special. There cannot be two types of people: Tangata Whenua, here by right, and Tangata Tiriti, here by the grace of the Treaty. All people born in this country, and all who immigrate here, have a right to one five millionth of the opportunity it has to offer.
The next Government will not be able to simply stop doing new things that divide New Zealand. We will have to actively push back against the divisive idea that there are two kinds of New Zealanders.
We will need to remove the constant references to the Treaty from the law and replace them with a commitment to liberal democracy. One person, one vote, and equality for all in a multi-ethnic nation state.
It means removing co-governance structures from healthcare, from resource management, infrastructure, and education. It means going through the statute books and removing the distinctions in law that hold my Māori ancestors as legally different from my European ones.
People need to communicate to be human; to discuss differences to move past them. Labour’s straightjacket of conformity is the biggest threat to the long-term health of our communities. Hate speech laws are the legislative conclusion of a culture that suppresses the human spirit.
Labour’s soft on crime approach has seen gang numbers explode and more Kiwis are becoming victims of crime. The problem starts at the top. It’s not in this Government’s DNA to say criminal behaviour is not acceptable. ACT’s values are personal freedom and personal responsibility.
Intergenerational welfare is encouraged by this Government. It has gone low on obligations, and high on dependence. Only Labour could close the borders and produce rising welfare numbers in the middle of a chronic labour shortage while fruit rots on the ground.
Jacinda was elected to fix housing, but on her watch the average house price has risen $387,000. The gap between homeowners and non-homeowners has never been wider. Labour has presided over the largest increase in inequality in New Zealand history because it is bad at policy.
ACT is campaigning for a healthier economy where people who try are not beaten down by bureaucracy. For a modern, multi-ethnic society where children are born with the same political rights. For healthy communities, starting with the value of personal responsibility.
