We are in the midst of New Zealands tri-ennial general election campaign. In our view, Dr Jamie Whyte, leader of the libertarian leaning ACT party has delivered the best speech of the campaign so far. It rips his opponents, but not in the crass manner of meaningless insulting slurs, but in a way which manages to make clear points on his party's philosophical and political positions. This is a clever, classy roast.
If ACT succeeds, New Zealand will have three more years of stable center-right government. If we fail, New Zealand faces the prospect of a chaotic left-wing Frankenstein government. It’s not pretty, but we should look at that monster. Part of the monster – the crazy tangled mess of hair stitched onto the scalp – is the Internet-Mana party. This is a party of hard-left socialists – Hone Harawera, Laila Harre, Annette Sykes and John Minto – funded by a convicted fraudster wanted for copyright violation in America. Their lunatic policies include shutting down all the prisons (perhaps on the suggestion of their fugitive sponsor).The rest of the speech sets out ACT's case to be included in a centre-right government and the specific policies it is promoting. In effect, Dr Whyte's argument for supporting ACT and the coalition of the right can be summed up as the option which represents the least of all the evils on offer.
In a televised debate, Hone explained that prisons are unnecessary because if boys are sent on Kapa Haka courses, they commit no crimes. If only they had Kapa Haka in Germany, Kim Dotcom would not be a wanted man! As I said to Hone at the time, it’s a very nice idea. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Why don’t you send all the boys for Haka training and then, after the crime rate falls to zero, we will close the prisons. In the meantime, let’s keep them open – just in case you are wrong about the transformative power of Kapa Haka. . . .
The Greens are the monster’s face, grinning inanely below its swivel-eyes. In the nicest possible way, they intend to force everyone to live as the Greens prefer. They will tax the things they don’t like, such dairy farming, and subsidize the things they do like, such as solar panel manufacturers.
The Greens are not so much a political party as a religious movement, worshipping snails and ferns and all that makes up Gaia, except us humans of course. For the Greens, humans fall into two categories: the helpless, who smart green politicians must save, and the wicked, who smart green politicians must stop.
In virtue, and intellect, Russel Norman and Meteria Turei are so vastly superior to everyone else that it is their moral duty to subjugate us.
The big flabby torso of the monster is the Labour Party. It was briefly a thing of beauty and strength. We have the Labour government of Roger Douglas and Richard Prebble to thank for the fact that New Zealand is not now a basket-case like Argentina.
But the Labour Party has gone horribly to seed. Nothing reveals this more clearly than its finance spokesman, David Parker – the man who now occupies the position once held by the great Roger Douglas.
Mr Parker fancies himself the smartest boy in the fourth-form. But he has not even the weakest grip on basic economics.
At the recent Queenstown Chamber of Commerce political debate Mr Parker explained his party’s desire to reduce immigration to New Zealand. He claimed that economic output requires increasingly little labour to produce. So immigrants cause unemployment. This nonsense has been peddled by economic fools since the invention of the weaving loom. In fact, I imagine it got started when someone first thought of killing animals with a sharp stick instead of bare hands.
For the sake of Mr Parker’s education, here is what really happens when workers become more productive. People produce and consume more. And not just more of the same, but entirely new things. Even Mr Parker has surely noticed that, over the past 30 years, as worker productivity and the population have both risen, unemployment has not increased.
Instead, we are consuming more than we ever have. And we are consuming better goods and services than ever before. Everyone, please, get your cell phones out and wave them in the air so that Mr Parker might understand.
Finally, we come to Winton Peters and his New Zealand First, the stumpy little legs of the monster. Little legs that remain idle for 2 years and 10 months out of every three years and then spend two months running around furiously kicking everyone in sight – foreigners, journalists, bankers, you name it: everyone except pensioners.
After all, it’s common sense. That’s Winston’s slogan: it’s common sense. I am not sure what “it” refers to but that doesn’t really matter. Because, as my old PhD supervisor used to say, “sense isn’t common”. And there is no better example of this fact than Winston himself.
Winston’s big economic policy for this election is removing GST from food. That would reduce government revenue by 3 billion dollars. But Winston has no plan to cut government spending by 3 billion dollars. On the contrary, he plans to increase government spending massively.
Where will he get all the money? Winston’s answer: by cracking down on tax evasion. Honestly. He claims that he can raise 7 billion by cracking down on tax evasion. That’s not sense, common or otherwise. That’s bollocks.
When a politician tells you that he is going to fund his spending promises by cracking down on tax evasion, you know he is either a fool or a charlatan. And Winston ain’t no fool.
I am not so sure about Winston’s main rival, however.
Colin Craig [Conservative] has a tax policy that no self-respecting charlatan could propose. He says that the first $20,000 of income will be tax free. Above that, he will apply some unspecified flat rate.
Imagine you wanted a $500,000 mortgage and you went to your bank. The lending officer says: “you’re in luck, we have a special deal on mortgages this week. You can get the first $250,000 at a zero rate of interest. On the second $250,000, we will charge you some other rate of interest.”
“What rate is that?” you ask. “Oh never mind that, for now”, the lending officer replies. “Just sign the contract and you will find out when the first payment comes due”. Only a complete idiot would sign the contract. And even the greedy and devious bankers of Winston Peters’ fevered imagination would not dream of making such an offer. Yet this is the tax policy that Colin Craig is offering the people of New Zealand.
It is all too easy to think that other people are just like you. I fear Colin Craig is putting too much faith in the gullibility of voters. . . .
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