Mike Hosking: Maybe the new Government's not the end of the world after all

Opinion

Who saw a tyre stewardship fund eh? But there it is, part of your new Government coalition deal.

Hopefully, given we now have a bit of detail, we can move past what really has been in many areas - especially social media - a pretty ugly time. So far, this election has been reduced to some sort of blood sport with winners and losers and lots of abuse flying in both directions.

Governments should be for all of us. We don't have to agree with everything, in fact we'd be mad if we did.

But given we are a moderate country, surely what we have learned over the years is that no matter who runs the place, post the mad days of Muldoon of course, so in other words, in the modern economy and a professional political environment, what we have learned is we do okay. And this agreement gives us no real reason to believe, if it sticks, that the world is ending.

And there is a bunch of stuff in there that will receive some broad-based and popular support.

For example, as I said yesterday, the Government putting money back into the Super fund again is good news. A lot of people will argue the minimum wage needs to be higher than it is, and here's a good example of why this Government isn't as radical as its opponents might want to make it out to be.

They want the minimum wage to be 20 bucks by 2020, that's three years away, and it's already over 16. So we are hardly talking radical change here.

They want to plant millions of trees, who's against that?

Free driver training at school is a reflection that schooling is changing and skills for the real world are increasingly important - 70 per cent of jobs require a licence and yet only 40 per cent of applicants have one, so join the dots.

Free breast screening for women up to age 74, are you arguing against that? Free doctors for under 14s, I'd personally suggest the worried well will flood the medical offices of the country, but it'll be popular.

A comprehensive register of foreign owned land, now that won't achieve a lot, it's just a number. Like we discovered, only 3 per cent of house sales were to foreigners, but there's a call for it, and it's an easy thing to do.

And that's the thing about governments in moderate countries. They're not all right, and they're not all wrong.

Between National and Labour they've soaked up so much of the middle ground where so many of us reside politically. If you look with an open mind, there is always a decent amount there to - at the very least - not be overly bothered or freaked about.