Labour's Jacinda Ardern and National's Nikki Kaye on why they should be voted in for the Auckland Central seat.
JACINDA ARDERN
There are some questions you get asked more than others on the campaign trail. Sprinkled amongst the unexpected (like "are those your real teeth?") is the most common of
them all "why you?" It's a fair question. From the voter's perspective, every three years they are presented by a group of enthusiastic politicians, waving signs and pedaling their wares. But underneath all the political paraphernalia, there are some massive differences between us, and these differences have become one of the most striking features of this campaign.
I don't believe it's enough for political candidates to expect support because they have, or will, work hard. That should simply be a given. Instead, we should be talking about what it is we will work hard towards. What is our vision, and how will we get there? For me it's simple. What are we doing to strengthen the city's economy, to be real guardians of our beautiful environment, and are we taking everyone with us?
We know already that we are in a bad way economically, and as the producers of roughly a third of the countries GDP, when Auckland suffers, we all do. Unemployment is high for Maori, Pacifica, and our young people in particular. We've had our credit rating down graded, and we have a deficit of $18billion. We need a plan, and a much better one than selling our assets.
If we want to grow jobs in Auckland, we have to start helping the people that create them. We should be supporting our exporters (and Auckland has too few) as our countries job creators and encouraging greater investment in the productive economy. And if we are to become the high tech city our Mayor wants us to become, we should bring back a research and development tax credit while we're at it- which is exactly what Labour will do.
I want to throw in a pre-emptive statement here too. Time and time again on the campaign trail I have heard candidates from the National party scaremongering people about Labour and business. All I can say is this- look at the record. We are the party that had amongst the lowest unemployment in the OECD, a status we maintained while raising the minimum wage 9 times in 9 years. We had the strongest continuous economic growth since world war two. We lowered the company tax rate for business, and achieved the top rankings for the ease of doing business survey amongst our overseas counterparts.
What is scary, is a party that stands back while countless kiwis join the dole queue, flee overseas, and struggle to survive.
Racing to the bottom isn't part of our plan for Auckland nor is mining our way to prosperity, or spending $10 billion on new highways. Of course decent infrastructure is critical to our city, but we need to start future proofing ourselves by kicking off projects like the city rail link. Labour has already said it would re direct funding from the holiday highway to the rail link instead, and make sure we get Auckland moving. Support for rail, in this case, means funding it. Anything less from National is just rhetoric.
The rail link isn't just about productivity, it's also about our environment. 35% of this city's emissions come from vehicles. Improving public transport will improve our air quality, reduce our reliance on oil, and give people choice. We need the same focus on our water quality too. While National's environment policy basically consists of just measuring how dirty our waterways are, ours says lets stop measuring, and start acting. That will take leadership, water quality standards, and action from local government, and not in almost two decades time as National has proposed. Put simply, we are guardians of this place, it's our job to leave it better than we found it.
But what about our most precious asset of all. There are over 200,000 children living in poverty in New Zealand, and plenty growing up in Auckland with a pretty poor start in life. It's time we acknowledged that a good proportion of these kids are growing up in the homes of solo parents reliant on the DPB- they are raising their children on $288 a week. If we are going to address child poverty, we cannot ignore this issue, and the importance of improving access to healthcare and education for our youngest and most vulnerable. (you can read our full plan on this issue here)
This city has enormous potential, but Labour and National have two very different plans. I guess then in considering them both, my final plea before the election would be a simple one- your vote on the 26th of November isn't about the next three years, it's about the next 30 years and the kind of city and New Zealand we want to leave for the next generation. We can't afford any regrets.
Jacinda Ardern is on Facebook and Twitter @jacindaardern
NIKKI KAYE
