Garth George: Time for political parties to concentrate on the basics

With the election only a matter of months away, it is time that the Government, and the parties who would like to be the Government, began to tell us what they propose to do about fixing the essentials, those things Governments by tradition have a sacred responsibility to provide.

The priorities for spending the money extracted from taxpayers are the defence of the realm, law and order, infrastructure, education, health, and the protection of and provision for those who cannot look after themselves (not those who can and won't).

While this Government has been concerning itself with such trivialities as legalising prostitution and legitimising civil unions, every one of the critical things has become unsatisfactory, if not approaching a state of chaos. And until they are attended to, everything else ought to be put on the back-burner.

The armed services, deprived of any real offensive capability, have been reduced to a peackekeeping role and, ill-equipped even for those, have lost their appeal to young men and women who might have chosen one of them as a career. The result is an almost crippling lack of manpower.

Granted, the Government has provided the Army with far too many light armoured vehicles, which it cannot man and which are of dubious quality; it has plans for rejuvenating elderly equipment, such as the doddery Hercules transports; and is planning to build some sort of all-purpose vessels for the Navy. But all these things, needed right now if not several years ago, are going to take ages to appear and in the meantime our Defence Force isn't even up to Third World standards.

I want to hear what the political parties propose to do about this - right now, not sometime in the future.

In law and order, the police force is in obvious disarray and the court system remains clogged to such an extent that justice is often not being done.

The deterioration in the police force is alarming. Day after day this newspaper receives from readers what appear to be genuine complaints about the way they have been treated, or have seen others treated, by police.

And no matter how many times they try to justify it, the top plods with the scrambled eggs on their hats cannot deny that it is mainly their obsession with revenue-gathering traffic enforcement that has turned a large section of the public against them. The really scary thing is that as public esteem for the men and women in blue declines so does the morale of the force and that leads to the loss of the good cops, often of long experience, who get fed up and decide it's not worth keeping on trying.

I want to see an election policy for a widespread reorganisation which, with appropriate resourcing, will restore our police to the status they once held as among the world's best.

Our infrastructure situation, at least in this part of the country, is sick, sick, sick and squeezing an extra $1.2 billion out of the motorist to make it better isn't going to make all that much difference.

The Australian Government spent $1 billion on roads in that nation's bicentennial year, 1988, and that's the sort of thing we have to do, even if it means using overseas contractors with imported labour to get the work done, as we did, for instance, with the Manapouri power scheme.

I want to see an election policy which will, if not get us ahead of the infrastructure play, then at least get us caught up.

The education system is chaotic and inquiries and committees aren't going to fix it. Failed educational ideologies perpetrated upon us by well-meaning fools have to be set aside, including the deeply flawed if not irretrievable NCEA. Education is the key to our future and the way it is going right now the future looks increasingly grim.

I want to see an election policy that provides a clear and simple way to ensure that our children are properly educated from kindergarten to the end of apprenticeships or university graduation.

In spite of all the money thrown at it and all the dedication of the professionals, the health system never seems to improve and the problem is obvious - a bloated and ignorant army of lay bureaucrats which soaks up a huge percentage of the health budget while running it into the ground.

I want to see an election policy that will trim all this wasteful fat from the health service - including a whole lot of so-called preventive medicine which prevents very little - and release hundreds of millions of dollars to be spent where it counts, particularly in efficient, professional hospitals and the best available medicines.

As for welfare, both the bills and the problems seem to get bigger while people with no concept of what it means to be poor or disabled tinker with the system as if those in need are mere pawns on the board of a political game.

I look for an election policy designed to provide a complete re-evaluation of what welfare is and a complete change of attitude towards how it is administered.

These are the questions which should decide the election and for which the aspirants should have believable answers. And I'll bet they don't and won't.