Newman Speech Extract - Sunrise Rotary Club
Monday 4 Apr 2005
Dr Muriel Newman
Speeches -- Other
All the signs are there that the 2005 general election is just around the corner: select committees with no work, the
new speaker losing control of the House, and Helen Clark getting rattled. An election will probably be called after the
budget, before the downturn in the economy worsens.
Last week's Colmar Brunton poll signalled the beginning of the sea change in New Zealand politics with a ten percent
swing towards the number of people who feel the country is heading in the wrong direction. This turn-around, with
pessimists now outstripping optimists, is bad news for Labour but good news for the opposition.
Having said that, the National party has no cause for complacency. Their claim that they can govern alone, not only
smacks of a born-to-rule arrogance, but is simply not credible.
In all the years that MMP has been used to choose governments around the world, there hasn't been a single case of one
party governing alone. Any new government will be made up of a majority party, which wins most of its seats at
electorate level, and a minority party, which wins support through the party vote.
Under MMP, voters have two votes: their `electorate' vote for the candidate who will best fight for their electorate,
and their `party' vote. The party vote can be given directly to a minor party, or to one of the two old parties. The
problem with giving it to one of the major parties is that it can lead to disastrous outcomes, as shocked National Party
supporters found in 1996 when National used their party vote to give them New Zealand First.
In comparison, centre right voters who have used their party vote to support ACT have ensured that our New Zealand
Parliament continues to have representation from a Party that relentlessly campaigns for lower taxes, less welfare, a
reduction in crime, more choice in health and education, improvements in family law, and one law for all.
Although ACT has never been a party of government, without a doubt, the power of our ideas has influenced the direction
of the country. For example most political parties are now promising time limits on Treaty claims, we even have left
wing MPs calling for tax cuts, and the Family Court is now far more open than it would have been if ACT had not pushed
for reform.
It is interesting to see that in the present political party battle over the allocation of the Electoral Commission's
$3.4 million of taxpayer funding for television and radio advertising time, the two old parties are colluding, claiming
that the lion's share should go to them. They understand that parties that are able to dominate the nation's television
and radio waves during an election campaign will dramatically increase their voter support. As a result, they are very
keen to marginalise parties like ACT.
What is even more bizarre about this debate is that censorship rules have been put in place, that prevent political
parties that are only allocated a pittance of taxpayer funding, from being able to purchase advertising airtime
themselves from their own budgets.
As a former Assistant General Manager of Michael Hill Jeweller, a Whangarei-based company that became a household name
and one of New Zealand's most successful retailing companies through television advertising, I find the situation, where
the major parties have conspired to prevent smaller parties from sharing with voters their vision of the future of the
country through electronic media, absolutely unacceptable. I look forward to the day when both taxpayer funding of
electioneering and this extreme form of censorship - like the recent proposal to ban television reporting of parliament
- are scrapped.
The decline in our sense of national well-being, that is at the heart of the rise in pessimism about our future, is
being driven to a large extent by the nation's pocketbooks. New Zealand families are amongst the most indebted in the
western world and the recent interest rate rise and petrol tax increases have hit them hard.
High interest rates, high taxes, high petrol prices, high house prices, high student loan debt and high consumers costs
- caused by Labour's massive regulatory zeal - are causing financial pressures across the board.
In particular, the present record levels of sustained over-taxation have pushed our national surplus to over 5% of
gross domestic product (the country's total production of goods and services) for the first time ever. As a result, more
and more working families are feeling impoverished, but rather than giving the $7.4 billion surplus back to those who
earned it through tax relief, in a cold and calculating move, Labour is seeking to disguise the surplus.
For the last 15 years - ever since the last Labour Government was found to be using cash flow accounting to cook the
books and hide a massive deficit - governments have been using accrual accounting practices as a means of keeping them
honest. Now, in order to hide the surplus, Labour intends to change back to cash flow accounting.
The reason for this planned deception is no doubt so that in the lead up to the election, in response to calls for tax
cuts to give the surplus back to those who earned it, the Prime Minister can claim that the country can't afford it.
But the reality is that tax cuts are very much affordable. ACT's proposals to reduce top personal tax rates of income
tax from 39 cents and 33 cents in the dollar down to 25 cents, to cut the 19.5 cent rate to 15 cents and lift that
threshold to $38,000, and to cut company tax from 33 cents to 25 cents, would cost just over $5 billion dollars. The
last time New Zealand's taxes were reduced significantly was in the eighties, when the top rate of tax was cut from 66
cents in the dollar to 33 cents. Within two years, the amount of tax collected at the lower rate exceeded that collected
at the higher.
Lower taxes now would create a dynamic growth effect that would become the catalyst to reducing the 30 per cent
standard of living gap with Australia. Surely that is a goal worth fighting for!
Finally, I worry that another three years of Labour's politically correct agenda will irreparably damage the `Kiwi
way'. Already their social engineering has undermined the family, which is one reason that I suspect they are
unscrupulously spending a whopping $17 million on the feel good family advertising package that is presently being used
to promote their Working for Families election year bribe (that doesn't even need to be applied for) and which, on
analysis, works out to be no more than a simple inflation adjustment!
Their costly promotion of privilege for Maori has deepened the racial divide in this country with their ill-advised
Foreshore and Seabed legislation now creating a brand new Maori grievance industry.
Small business continues to be attacked with a plethora of anti-business laws and regulations that are undermining
competitiveness, including the Employment Relations Act, Accident Compensation, Occupational Safety and Health, the
Resource Management Act, and now the new Building Act. These are making it more costly and more difficult to do business
in New Zealand and it accounts for why so many enterprising Kiwis have taken their innovations offshore.
But Labour's pathological desire to control our lives is most obvious when it comes to the erosion of our personal
freedoms. That is now under serious threat, and the introduction of anti-smoking laws to treat smokers like second-class
citizens is just a first step in using the socialist `divide-and-rule' strategy to pit one group of New Zealanders
against another.
However this is only the tip of the iceberg. Soon there will be new regulations outlawing smoking at home, then laws to
ban the smacking of children, and to restrict the supply and purchase of alcohol, fast foods, health foods and
alternative medicines.
If the Labour Party is returned for a third term, there is no doubt in my mind that this country that we all love so
dearly, that grew strong on our number 8 fencing wire pioneering spirit, will be transformed into a socialist
stronghold. I hope voters who value the freedom and choice that we all so much take for granted, recognise this before
they vote!
For more information visit ACT online at http://www.act.org.nz or contact the ACT Parliamentary Office at
act@parliament.govt.nz.