New Zealand Executive Government Speech Archive

Mr. Chase Poynter, Mayor of Wanganui and Mrs. Poynter, Past Mayor Mr Ron Russell and Mrs. Russell, my colleague Peter Gresham, Neil Walker, Electorate Chairman, Brian Train, Election Campaign Manager, John Rowan, Robin Sutherland, David Bennett, Wellington Division Chair, ladies and gentlemen. I am pleased to be in Wanganui to launch the Whanganui electorate campaign.

A campaign aimed here in Wanganui at two objectives: to elect Peter Gresham as Wanganui's MP on October 12 and to encourage all voters to tick National on the party list. In other words - to tick National twice. What I want to do tonight is to set out why electors should do that when they cast their votes on October 12; to highlight and comment on some of the key issues facing us at this election and to outline some thoughts on the importance for all New Zealanders of the next 128 days. Firstly, the electors of the new Whanganui electorate should vote for Peter Gresham because he is a committed and effective MP.

Peter has been a strong advocate for his electorate and region and managed one of the most difficult portfolios imaginable - Social Welfare in New Zealand in the 1990s and done it well. In that role Peter has made major progress in rationalising the welfare system. The objective of moving from 'welfare to well-being' is one we can all support. Further we would all agree that turning all New Zealanders from dependency to enterprise remains the unfinished business facing this nation in the late 1990s.

Secondly, experience - Peter with a farming, business and accounting background has accumulated a real understanding of the complex issues that face his new electorate comprising the City of Wanganui and surrounding towns and countryside. His electorate reflects the values of Heartland New Zealand and so does Peter. These are some of the values that underpin the National Party's programme.

Peter's values as an individual and the value he places on his family and families in general, add strength to his claim to be a powerful local MP for his new electorate. Thirdly, Peter has the right balance of independence and motivation; he is I believe a person who, because he doesn't need to be an MP, is driven by a high degree of public service. An essential characteristic that is often missing in today's somewhat cynically individualistic political world. As a result he listens and is therefore a tremendously effective advocate for the interests of constituents.

That is the message I ask you to take to the voters of Wanganui and elsewhere over the next 20 weeks. I need your support in doing that. His re-election is important not only for Wanganui but equally for the National Party. For the Wanganui district to continue to progress and develop it is vital that you have political representation that can produce real results in the new MMP environment.

An environment that requires people with clear views on the objectives they seek and the ability to work with others to achieve it. Consultation and co-operation to achieve progress is the new order of the day. Whether we voted for it or not the voters of this country opted by referendum for a new political system in this country. It is clear that this system will only work through consultation, dialogue, negotiation and, above all, a clear sense of objective.

We demonstrated such clear objective in the recent budget. It's a balanced budget that few, if any, other developed country could produce. The balance we sought was between tax cuts, social spending and the repayment of debt. Of the $15 billion new money we allocated for the next three years we earmarked $8 billion to the repayment of debt, $3.7 billion to social areas like education, health, family support and so on, and we allocated $3.3 billion in tax cuts.

A reasonable balance between clearing up the mess of the past in repaying debt, giving relief for the present by giving tax cuts, and by preparing for the future by increases in areas like education, training and family support. I repeat, to make progress under MMP members of parliament will need not only to set clear objectives, but also to have the ability to gain the support of others to carry their goals through to fruition. I want to spend a few moments on MMP and repeat some of the advice I gave yesterday. Although the '96 election is over four months away pressure is mounting as people seek to determine how the first election under MMP will go.

After you vote will individuals have improved security or chaos? That is one of the central issues of this campaign. MMP changes the rules. The most important and far-reaching rule it changes is that voters no longer directly elect the Government unless a single party gains more than 50 per cent of the MPs.

What happens now is that the voters with their two votes elect local MPs and they vote for the party of their choice on the list. The list vote is the most important because it will determine the number of MPs each party has. The practical implications of the change are enormous and it is apparent that a large percentage of voters, including many journalists and commentators and I suspect many MPs, do not really understand the full implications of the change.

That leads to the most important point in forming a coalition government. The coalition should be formed not on personalities but on the policy content that the parties can agree are in New Zealand's best interests. To reach that position will often require 'give and take' but then that happens within parties now anyhow. The next point to make is that it is foolish for commentators to be dogmatic in advance which parties may form a Government after the election and it is equally foolish for party leaders to emphatically proclaim who they will or will not be prepared to work with after the election.

After all we, the political leaders, don't deal the political hand that has to be played after the election. That hand is dealt by the collective choice of the voters and it is up to political leaders to then produce the best government they can for New Zealand. This is the approach I have followed since '93 and it's worked to provide stable, forward-looking government. I can hear someone say "but what if two or more parties have absolutely different policies on certain key issues?"

The answer is simple. Such differences may make it impossible to form a coalition. But equally when the party leaders sit down after the election they may find that an acceptable accommodation can be reached or they may decide that the issues should be put to one side and left there for another time while a coalition is formed on the other important issues where there is broad agreement. Let me look at some specifics. Take two key issues like education and health. If you listen to the political debate you could be led to believe that the differences between the parties are huge and unbridgeable.

All parties would sign up to the goal of providing New Zealand with a world-class education and health system. There is agreement that both should primarily be provided by the state but with room as in the past for private provision. For education we all want top-quality professional teachers with the necessary school buildings and facilities. For health the details are naturally different but the same general approach applies. In both areas the limiting factor is always how much money can be spent and that is determined to a large degree on how well the economy is performing.

I have cited the above not to say there are no real differences because there are, or to pretend that it will be easy because it won't, but to show that leaders need to understand and accept the new responsibility thrust on them with MMP and not lock themselves into impossible positions or outdated attitudes. An example is Helen Clark's extravagant statement that she "would rather commit suicide than enter into a coalition with National"! That is the type of outdated thinking that serves neither her party nor New Zealand well. Labour will not be government in their own right yet Helen Clark had ruled out all other options and I guess her frontbench didn't want to be in Opposition forever.

Hence the move against her leadership. We've shown that it is possible with clear leadership to maintain good government and economically coherent policies while managing electoral change. None of this would be possible without a successful economy. To succeed in today's world requires excellence. Let's not stifle excellence because it means some do better than others. That is a fallacy and it destroys the very things that are great about our nation. Consider some of the realities of the old so-called egalitarian New Zealand. Only the Government could broadcast television programmes.

A wait of three to six weeks was normal for a business telephone. You needed a doctor's prescription to buy margarine and the law banned carpets manufactured from anything but wool. You needed a permit to subscribe to an overseas journal. The Government determined how many hens a commercial poultry farmer could keep and they determined the price you could pay for them. Equally strange was our determination, until recently, to prevent by law people shopping at the only time they could shop - the weekend. Manufacturers were secure in the knowledge that a protective government would keep any hint of foreign competition from upsetting their cosy arrangement.

What we had wasn't choice. It wasn't opportunity. It was a country in which the authorities were afraid to let people think and act for themselves. And New Zealand consumers had less choice than those in any developed country. There was no incentive for businesses who served them to do better - because the customers had nowhere else to go. Politicians and others justified it by saying they were protecting New Zealand jobs. But it simply didn't work. Consider the New Zealand of today. Between 1991 and 1995 exporters facing tough global competition produced new jobs at nearly twice the rate of those with domestic sales only. When the barriers were torn down, the best enterprises lifted their game. They showed what they were capable of.

New Zealand workers, New Zealand consumers, New Zealand industry were the winners. I'm enormously proud of the advances New Zealand has made. Faster than any other country, New Zealand has moved into a new dynamic world. The latest issue of Time magazine carries a report of the successful economies in this year's Global Competitiveness Report issued last week. You will be proud to know that New Zealand came third after Singapore and Hong Kong and just in front of the United States. What we have developed is a culture of enterprise. I see instances of it, big and small, all around the country. And I see many of the people who are making it happen here in this room tonight. Conspicuous achievers, those who won't settle for second best, are the reason why the country has reached the stage it is at today. Let's thank them for delivering us out of the woods.

The fact that the economy is healthy enough to be embarking on tax cuts, to be launching a carefully considered social spending programme to make our communities safer healthier, more cohesive and better educated, to be repaying debt faster than at any time in our history is all due to one factor. We would have no wealth to share as a nation if someone wasn't generating it. We would have no security if the economy wasn't performing to meet the demands we make of it. We have dismissed the old bogeys of size and distance that we used to hide behind and have become full participants in the world. As successive governments have pulled down the barriers people such as yourselves have recognised that the answer lies in being as good or better than the best in the world. And that has brought benefits for everybody.

We didn't legislate to secure economic growth in the '90s that is more than twice the average of the entire 15 years beforehand. It was newly liberated New Zealand enterprise that got stuck in and fuelled growth. It is not the Beehive alone that can secure growth paths that will see real average New Zealand incomes 50 per cent better in another 15 years. It is the performance of New Zealand business. There is an expanding and developing manufacturing base in Wanganui and the farming community is becoming focussed on the question of how to extract the maximum value out of the post-Gatt round of trade reform.

And the reforms that are coming through the reduction in trade barriers through the APEC process. Dairy farmers have had a successful year and will enjoy a record payout for the past year. Beef farmers are at the other end of the scale and have suffered from one of the worse years in recent memory. Wool prices remain low but in recent weeks there has been a welcome and strong upward movement in lamb price in Britain and Europe. Prices are up around 40 per cent on where they were a few weeks back.

So, as often is the case, we have a mixed picture in farming but in my view bad prices are coming out of the bottom of the cycle. That said I know it's going to be a very difficult year for many farming families. The only political party that has a real and historical interest in farming is the National Party. Others seek support by trying to exploit grievance. What your party has and will continue to do is to improve the business environment farmers and other businesses work in. Wanganui is looking to the future with confidence and I congratulate the Mayor and councillors for their commitment. Today, for example, I have seen your new world class events facility at Cooks Gardens which is an outstanding example of what a community of purpose can achieve.

Another example, the historic centre of Wanganui compared with ten years ago is remarkable, and I understand one of the catalyst investments into your Main Street/Old Town development involved several million dollars of foreign capital. This example of foreign investment is worth putting in context. I am informed by the entrepreneurs who helped kick off the revitalisation of Wanganui City's historic heart in 1990 that they were quite simply unable to get local or national capital to invest. Either the money wasn't there, the attitude wasn't right or New Zealand investors simply were not interested.

The outcome was the promoters went out into the international marketplace and found offshore investment partners - and they are continuing to do this. I therefore invite you all to remind your friends, neighbours and associates if they start believing the fortress New Zealand theory that they look in their own backyard at what positive international investment alliances can achieve. The simple fact is that New Zealand's economic future is dependent on international investment and marketing alliances that often come with it.

We must not retreat into the old fortress New Zealand mentality that some promote. The result of competition is of course excellence in performance. An excellent example of this is the Boat Club in whose hall we are meeting tonight. At the New Zealand Rowing Championships in March 1996 the Union Boat Club won the New Zealand Premiere Women's Eights title for the first time in this club's 120 year history. The crew I am told comprised four Wanganui women, two originally from Hamilton, one from the South Island and one from Switzerland.

They came here presumably because of the city's natural advantages. As I said to you, much has changed and mostly for the better over the last few years. All that is left for you and me to do is make certain we continue the journey. The political structure has radically changed with MMP but the direction of our journey has not altered and to ensure we stay on track I say to you here tonight vote Peter Gresham, vote National.

In other words tick National twice.

Thank you.