A Perspective on Last Weeks TVNZ Leaders Debate

New Lynn Rotary Club

When I was initially asked to come and speak to you tonight I thought it would be an idea to give you my impressions of MMP and what it means to you and to us as members of Parliament. But recent events have caused me to re-evaluate that.

The end of last week seemed to be dominated by the Leaders Debate on TV One on Thursday night. I didnt see it because I was at another function - as is so often the case during election campaigns we very rarely get a chance to see any TV.

However due to the clamour I decided I should watch it and did so late last Friday night. Apart from some seemingly well trained sectors of the audience I didnt think anything particularly special or unusual came out of it.

But the media, perhaps because they felt the campaign has been a bit boring so far, decided this was the major turning point of the campaign and that from this date on everything changed. So I looked fairly carefully at the issues discussed.

Health

First of all there was health. The first thing that sprung to mind was that it took me back exactly six years when I was Opposition Spokesman on Health and Helen Clark was the Minister of Health. We had a number of debates together and I have to tell you one thing - winning the Health debate when youre in Opposition is the easiest thing in the world.

No matter how well the Government of the day is doing in the health arena - and I acknowledge the fact that some New Zealanders have been treated poorly and there are problems we have to address - but sadly you will always find people who have missed out on operations, psychiatric patients causing mayhem in the community and what on the surface appear to be apparently unnecessary deaths and suicides.

It doesnt matter what you do in Health, the things you dont do are deemed a reason to regard everything thats been achieved as a failure. Its not easy being the Minister of Health, or any MP in Government defending health so I have a lot of sympathy for Jenny Shipley.

The simple issue is are we better off? The simple answer is that the health of this nation is better than it was three years ago, six years ago, ten years ago and twenty-five years ago.

Look at our statistics in a wide range of categories. We live longer and issues like asthma are much less of a problem. In the last five or six years asthma death rates have fallen from 29 per 100 000 to 18 per 100 000 and we will work to make this figure lower still. The big challenge is to constantly meet the increasing costs of new medical technology and new medicines.

There are two ways to manage the delivery of health care. One is by price and the other is by asking people to stand in a queue. Under our commitment to a public health system no one will barred from health care because it costs too much but there will always be some people standing in the queue. The question is how long should they wait in that queue?

To a certain extent this will depend on the seriousness of the condition and complexity of the operation. But earlier this year the Government committed $130 million over the next three years to fund additional diagnostic, medical and surgical services for people on waiting lists.

It is also worth noting that since we came to Government the number of patients receiving day care has increased 70% and an increase of nearly 12% in the number of people treated in our public hospitals.

In the five key surgical areas there has been a 44% increase in the number of people helped - cardiothoracic - up 77%, knees - up 54%, hips - up 12% and cataract operations - up 31%.

The Employment Contracts Act

The next issue was the Employment Contracts Act. To me this has also received a real political buffeting. But as one who has travelled up and down the country, and been in hundreds of factories over the last few years, I can say its much more positively accepted in the workplace than some people lead us to believe.

Jim Anderton commented on Rod Deanes salary in relation to the salary of one of Telecoms technicians. Its true income disparities have been reasons for revolutions. What Dr Deane must face is that if he screws people down too tightly, will he have the technicians he needs in five years time?

Or will he find he has to pay them a lot more than he believes he should be paying them now because he has allowed his bank of technical people to run dry through low salaries? Thats the issue I hope Telecom management is now addressing.

Taxation

The next issue was tax. Its always easy to tax people more. That device has been used by successive New Zealand Governments for many years. We now have a low rate, broad based tax system. I felt real sympathy for the man who had spent some ten years building up a business to a point where he had just reached the highest marginal rate of tax to be told that he may well have to pay more.

It obviously left him incredibly perplexed and somewhat resentful to think that he had spent ten years working for peanuts to build up his business and now there was the chance he was going to be kicked in the teeth for it.

It wasnt long ago, and I can distinctly remember it happening, when we chased good doctors, dentists and engineers out of this country because our tax rates were too high. Then we developed artificial remedies to hold them here or bring them back. Lets hope we dont have to go back to that. Present taxes are high enough for everyone and we are committed to bringing them down for low income people

Super-annuation

And then the debate on super-annuation. How much should be paid for by the individual, how much should we save and how much should we depend upon the state?

In my view therell always be a mix of all of those. People should always be encouraged to save for their retirement, if only to give them greater control of their retirement. At the same time a scheme has to be in place to help those who at the end of their working life have nothing to live on. Achieving the balance is very much the key to this exercise. However I still find it surprising that people want Rod Deane to get full super-annuation.

Coalitions

The next debate dealt with how much we should know about coalitions before the election. The starting point here is that we are all newcomers to MMP. Nevertheless we in National have been working in a coalition Government for nearly a year. Its been trying at times, but by and large if people are prepared to put their cards on the table it can work.

Not withstanding that I dont think its rational to ask political parties to put all their negotiating cards on the table before the election. Its been pointed out that this does happen in Europe but in the majority of countries operating under an MMP system they dont do this before an election.

The ones that do, do so on the basis that their positions are well known, they have been around for more than fifty years, they have regularly coalesced with known partners and there is no real public secret about their position on a number of issues.

Most New Zealanders know there is a natural alignment of a number of parties on the left as there is a natural alignment of a number of parties on the right. But no party wants to see its position eroded before an election by putting its negotiating cards out for all to see. And even though political commentators may try and predict which parties will come together, remember the current government in Ireland is a combination of a party from the far right and one from the far left and its somehow working. Maybe thats something only the Irish can do!

My own party is fully aware there are five economic fundamentals which have made this country great in the last decade and we intend to stick to them. They are the basis for all the extra funding we want in order to be able to deliver all the social services we want to - whether in Health, Education or Welfare. They are - an open internationally competitive economy which gives people maximum freedom, we do want to continue to repay debt because we have accumulated far too much in recent years.

You do have to have a broad based, low rate taxation system which encourages people to work and not head off overseas when they feel hemmed in by centrally controlled ideas.

We have benefited tremendously by the Employment Contracts Act and finally we want to stick with a low inflation because it produces the best possible incentive for investment - certainty.

The whole crux of this speech has been to reinforce for you that this Government knows where it is heading - we have our sights firmly set on the future - were committed to certainty and stability - were a proven team, a team that works well together with a proven record on economic management.

What you are looking at on the other side is not proven - a Cabinet that on current polls would be eight Labour, six NZ First and 6 Alliance - and all the signs to date suggest such a team will be virtually impossible to pull together, with the result that all the economic gains will be shot, the tax cuts will be reversed and interest rates will go up.

Home || Ministers || Policies || Speeches || Departments