"If the market is left to sort matters out, social injustice will be heightened and suffering in the community will grow." Helen Clark
In just over 30 days New Zealand will hold its next General election and it is clear from recent polls that there are 2 outcomes the majority of voters are hoping for:
No 1: they want a change of government. No 2: they want a change of direction.
The economic free-market reforms of the last few decades gave New Zealand a firm standing on the global stage. However, today OECD secretary general Angel Gurria believes the Government needs to do more to lift New Zealand's poor productivity performance.
Instead of working with business to achieve growth and job opportunities, Labour has destroyed business confidence and driven hard working taxpayers and business owners from our shores in droves.
The success of this election (particularly if one values greater personal liberty and prosperity and less government interference) will be determined more by the mix of the smaller parties. I say this because frustratingly, there appears to be very little difference between National and Labour.
And so, in this race of all horse races, what is the current form of the field?
Labour: Socialists and academics telling us how much we must pay them to tell us how to live our lives. Clark lost a lot of respect for not firing Winston for failing to declare party donations.
National: Initial high hopes for the new boy on the block have dampened. Failure to show clear principles or any point of difference from Labour. However, Key’s capitalist background could be useful to mend fences with the business community if elected. Certainly a better long-term option than the incumbents and a strong bet to take first place.
Act: Hide was the only MP who bought a complaint against Peters and in the process ratcheted up his credibility stakes. Hide & Douglas will be a formidable partnership in Parliament. The ones to watch this election.
NZ First: Fair to question anyone’s parentage if they’re stupid enough to back this charlatan. Deserves to pay for his own baubles.
Greens: Over 90% of voters objected to Bradford’s anti-smacking Bill and are unlikely to forget this on election day. With legislation like this they deserve the slide in the polls.
The Maori Party: Reverse apartheid didn’t work in Zimbabwe and it won’t work here.
Labour’s three terms in government has certainly been a busy one. One in three people are now on welfare (on what basis do these people deserve a vote?) and one in 50 workers is a bureaucrat. In fact bureaucracy has grown so much that Wellington now requires an astonishing 13.2 hectares of extra space to house them all.
Since 2000 the number of teachers in state primary and secondary schools has grown by 12%, while the number of education bureaucrats has grown by a staggering 40%. In the same period, the number of nurses and doctors employed in district health boards has grown by 28%, while staff numbers in the Ministry of Health have gone up by 51%. This result is simply woeful for anyone attempting to build a better life for themselves and their families here in New Zealand.
During the past 8 years, the fastest growing sector in our economy has been government administration with the total number of bureaucrats growing from 26,200 to 36,000. National’s John Key believes that Labour's Ministers have wanted to look busy, and have mistakenly equated activity with results. “They have long believed that issues are best resolved by getting an army of people to think about them and to produce more regulations.”
“The Labour Government has hired bureaucrats to do political work, as revealed by events in the Ministry for the Environment. The Government has been awash with taxpayers' money and has considered itself a spender of tax revenue rather than a steward of public money.” Helen Clark would tell you that Labour is a good steward of taxpayers dollars. She also said that she was comfortable taking ‘the honourable minister at his word’.
What socialists like Helen Clark and Michael Cullen fail to understand and appreciate is that capitalism provides the economic foundation to fund their welfare state. Anyone in business knows that the biggest threat to their survival is red tape and yet increasingly we just shrug and accept that that is part of life now in New Zealand.
Remember when the Resource Management Act was passed? There was a great hue and cry about the ridiculous concessions we would all have to make. However, years on, when we want to dig a sandpit for our child or cut a tree down in our own back yard, we simply shrug our shoulders and accept that applying for resource consent and paying some bureaucrat for the privilege is just part of what we have to do.
And that apathy is the poison in the well. Have New Zealanders been force-fed on B.S. for so long that they are no longer capable of independent, rational thought? Is the best we can offer mindless rhetoric? Automatic responses?
If you think you’re immune, try this. Read the following scenarios and make a mental note of whether your initial response is emotional or rational: You smack your child for playing up at the supermarket; laugh at a racist joke; wolf-whistle at a beautiful girl; smoke at a social gathering and bath a child that isn’t yours.
How did you fare? If your responses were automatic and you felt an overwhelming sense of guilt, check your premises. Is it possible you have simply bought into years of subtle social engineering underwritten by this Labour Government and its comrades in the United Nations. Perhaps this is why television programmes like Prime’s Emmy-award winning ‘Mad Men’ has struck such a chord with viewers. It is refreshing to revisit a time in history when they weren’t so shackled by political correctness, they could all call a spade a spade and there was no such thing as a ‘victim’.
Back in the 1980s we proudly led the world in economic reform under ‘Rogernomics’ (it is timely then that Roger Douglas looks set to make a return to Government). However under this Labour Government we have become icons, not of economic reforms and growth, but the ‘business’ of social engineering and politically correct legislation.
We have endured 9 years under a Labour Government – the damage inflicted on business and taxpayers will take years to recover from which is why the outcome of this election is so vital to our future economic prosperity.
Labour didn’t deserve to get elected last term and they certainly don’t this time round. Helen Clark’s arrogance and contempt shown over her refusal to fire Winston Peters is but one example why Labour must be fired.
Recent elections in Europe and South America are showing a clear swing to smaller, business-friendly governments and it is this direction that New Zealand must now follow.
If New Zealanders want to regain control over their own lives and futures, Government power and spending must be reigned in.
We must think very carefully about what we do want for the next 3 years. It is time to stand up for what is right, not what is easy and choose policies that will reward hard work and performance over poverty and dependence.
