Apology for stranded pregnant Kiwis during lockdown, fourth Covid vaccine dose passes into law and trains in the UK grind to a halt with strike action in the latest New Zealand Herald headlines. Video / NZ Herald
OPINION:
The Tauranga byelection has confirmed the opinion polls. National and Act can win the next election. Together the two parties got 66.59 per cent of the vote. Labour with the Greens support got a disastrous 25.21 per cent.
Governing in 2023 will be very challenging. Act has been preparingby announcing policy. National is saying what it won't do.
Labour is putting 82 per cent of all adults on some form of income support. National leader Christopher Luxon says "I'm not dreaming up a policy to reform welfare". He is promising to increase benefits.
At a time of full employment Labour is running a deficit. National's finance spokeswoman, Nicola Willis, says "I'm not proposing cuts of any sort."
Dr Shane Reti, National's health spokesman, says health's "many stakeholders" are too "exhausted" to undertake any "large structural change". Labour's centralised health reforms will be retained. The Māori Health Authority will not be abolished but "folded in".
Luxon is a "big fan" of minimum wage increases, as long as the economy is growing enough to sustain them.
National Party leader Christopher Luxon and deputy leader Nicola Willis. Photo / Mark Mitchell
In Opposition, National has supported much of Labour's agenda such as the gesture of climate-change policies. Those subsidised Teslas are being charged by electricity generated by burning coal from Indonesia.
The Arms Act has not stopped the gangs from having guns.
National voted with Labour to override local town planning. Both supported the Child Poverty Act that has not stopped a record number of children living in motels.
The policy National has announced is what every party in opposition says. Oppositions have promised to get tough on gangs going back to Norman Kirk promising to take the bikes off the bikies.
Every party says it is going to get rid of government waste.
Adopting Act's policy of charter schools by itself will not solve the crisis in education. Pupils are graduating unable to read or do math. Even in the best state schools education standards have slipped.
National's only significant promise is to restore price stability as the Reserve Bank's sole remit.
In effect, National is promising to be a Labour government under new management. No matter how good the management, if the policy is flawed, it will fail.
A major reason why Labour's policies are failing is Labour is placing at the heart of government a radical and unworkable reinterpretation of the treaty as a partnership. Luxon says he also believes that the treaty "means partnership".
Luxon has tried to have it both ways. He has also said he does not believe tino rangatiratanga meant co-governance. But he is not opposed to co-governance on a local level just in national policies. Luxon then complains Labour has not explained what co-governance means.
National could set the agenda for the next election by explaining exactly what co-governance means.
Either the Treaty ceded sovereignty, protected property rights and gave everyone, Māori and non-Māori the same rights of citizenship, or the Treaty is an agreement to co-govern the country in partnership with a self-selected elite.
The Crown is everybody, Māori and non-Māori. It is totally unworkable to have Māori on both sides of a partnership. Minister Willie Jackson says we have a new form of democracy where he negotiates in secret co-governance just with iwi leaders. Who represents the country?
When only half the partnership is accountable to the electorate, New Zealand is no longer a democratic country. Instead, one partner is like a New Zealand House of Lords with its only qualification being birth.
If National adopts Labour's reinterpretation of the Treaty as a partnership, then in government National will be just as paralysed as Labour. The Treaty zealots in the civil service will destroy the Government.
National's great boast was its claim to be the party for all New Zealanders regardless of class, race, religion or gender. Every previous National leader would reject the idea that Queen Victoria agreed to co-govern New Zealand in partnership with 500 odd Māori chiefs.
Luxon believes that he can fudge the treaty issue. Jacinda Ardern avoids the issue too. Both Luxon and Ardern come from marketing backgrounds. He was a brand manager. Her degree is in public relations. They both believe it is the sizzle not the sausage that matters.
Marketing can win elections. It worked for Ardern twice. It has worked for Luxon in Tauranga. If the next election is just a battle of the brands National will win. National then just needs to agree the Treaty is a partnership and Luxon/Willis can lead a Labour-lite Government in coalition with Te Pāti Māori.
If National wants to be a government that promotes free enterprise and personal responsibility then the party needs to issue policy that reflects these principles. A good place to start would be declaring that the Treaty settled sovereignty, protects property rights and establishes equality of citizenship.
• Richard Prebble is a former leader of the Act Party and former member of the Labour Party.
