Sunday 1st November 2009
Q+A’s Panel Discussions with Paul Holmes, Dr Therese Arseneau, Dr Don Brash and Sue Bradford.
The full length video interviews and panel discussions from this morning’s Q+A can be seen on tvnz.co.nz at, http://tvnz.co.nz/q-and-a-news
PANEL DISCUSSIONS led by PAUL HOLMES
Response to Bill English interview
PAUL So what do the panel make of what Finance Minister Bill English had to say? Therese Arseneau, Don Brash and Sue Bradford
are our panel. Well let's deal with the housing issue first of all. He regrets but does not say sorry. Let's have a look
at this.
'Guyon: Are you sorry? Bill English: No it wasn’t wrong I stand by the decisions I made. Guyon: And you're not sorry.
Bill: Well I regret the impression that was created, and I regret any concern that caused particularly for my family but
also for my colleagues.'
PAUL So Therese has that whole housing entitlement allowance business damaged Bill English, or is it an inside the beltway.
THERESE ARSENEAU – Political Analyst
I think probably both actually, if I can answer it that way. I think in the short term it has hurt him politically.
PAUL Do you think?
THERESE Well I do in the sense that we're in tough times. He comes on TV and says we're going to have to take money from you
know basic services, or it looks like they're clamping down in terms of ACC and women on the DPB and I mean it doesn’t
look good in terms of the Minister himself isn't to type, but look he's got a lot of people down in the foxhole with
him. I mean in the same week you have Rodney Hide taking his partner off on an expensive trip overseas. I think overall
what's happened though is it's left an impression with the public, sort of a plague on all their houses ...
PAUL Or is it that it's so confusing people just go phssh – can't be bothered thinking about it.
THERESE Well I think people you're right, people in the beltway, the term that you use, it matters much more perhaps to people
in the beltway, but don’t underestimate how much it niggles at people if they feel they're elected representatives are
not being as careful with the money that they should be
PAUL Are they in the trough is what people worry about I spose. Do you think it's damaged him?
SUE BRADFORD – Former Green Party MP
Oh I think it has and I fail to understand why the professional media minders that will be around people like Bill
English very strongly, the Crosby Texters of the world as well don’t actually say to people like him, wouldn’t it be
good if you were just up front and apologised from your heart for what's happened. Just be really up front, he'd win so
much political kudos if he did that, and seeing that that was such a professionally managed statement that he made
there.
PAUL Don what do you think?
DON BRASH – Former National Party MP
Oh suspect it has damaged him, I think that’s unfortunately the case, but he's right, technically he hasn’t broken any
rules and the Auditor General's just confirmed that, but it certainly isn't a good look and I understand exactly what
Therese is saying.
THERESE The other issue here is that the rules need to be looked at. I mean I think they're out of step with what is acceptable
now to the general public.
PAUL Guyon was making the point that things aren’t always fair, that the Chief Executives seem always to be getting the
bonuses, always to be getting the pay rises where the benefits and the entitlements are reduced and tightened up. Do you
think the government's been fair Sue?
SUE Oh not at all, and they're heading absolutely down in this direction and I'm really worried by what Bill English is
saying this morning, particularly of course what he's saying about beneficiaries, and his total lack of consideration
for low wage workers, or for the 245 Bridgestone tyre workers laid off the other week. He's acting as if it's all solved
and it's not a problem.
PAUL Yeah but he makes the point though that you can't have people going on welfare for a prolonged period of time because
they cease to participate.
SUE Well that’s all very well but does he really want a society where people don’t get welfare? Is that the direction
National's going in? In for the people who are on the long term invalids' benefits, and he's not that up on the play
with benefits there I don’t think, cos I think he had some confusion, I think he was probably talking about Invalids'
beneficiaries, because the sickness benefit is a short term benefit and very tightly controlled and harassed. I think he
was probably talking about invalids, I'm not sure, but very worrying that they're proceeding with plans to cut back on
benefit entitlements and to harass beneficiaries further at a time of high unemployment.
PAUL Is there a sense the government really isn't being fair with people that while they might disapprove of the high salary
increases and so forth, it doesn’t stop does it?
DON Well speaking Paul as a director of one of the SOEs, we've certainly been told in no uncertain terms by the Minister of
SOEs, no increases in directors' fees this year, or for some time. So I mean the government has in fact put a stop to
many of those increases, and Sue talks about benefits, I mean there's been an explosion of people on the invalids
benefit over the last decade. It's very hard to see why that would be the case, we haven't had a great war, we haven't
had a polio epidemic, nothing which has driven a massive increase in incapacity, and yet there's been a very big
increase...
SUE It's the aging population actually.
PAUL Well one of the very important parts of that interview was his commitment not even to consider any changes to the age
of entitlement for superannuation and so forth. Here's what he said about this.
Guyon: As long as you are Finance Minister you will not increase the age of eligibility for superannuation? Bill: 'Well
the Prime Minister speaks for the government and he's being absolutely unequivocal that as long as he's Prime Minister
there won't be changes in entitlement to National Super.'
PAUL They won't go near it will they? Don Brash do we need once and for all a debate about superannuation?
DON Oh I don’t have any doubt about that at all. It's been a debate which the Retirement Commissioner has been talking
about for some considerable time, and as the Treasury's forecast this week, if we leave New Zealand super entitlements
exactly as they are we're faced with either cutting back drastically on other government spending, or sharply increasing
tax. Now if we sharply increase tax we slow down our growth potential as a country, accelerate people going to
Australia, and basically say we'll never catch Australia.
PAUL Therese I spose they're terrified of the politics of toughing super, going near super, and of course waiting in the
wings is Winston Raymond Peters – he's the elephant in the room.
THERESE Yes exactly and could very well benefit from as you say the politics of this. But look I think it's actually really
important for the New Zealand public to go out and actually read the document that Treasury put out. Now it's actually
quite a readable document and it's not just about finance, it is the ultimate in strategic planning for this country,
and we are facing some very difficult challenges and we need to make choices. We have a population bomb on our doorstep
where the percentage of our population who are going to be over the age of 65 is increasing by 150%, and even over 85 is
going up 400% by 2050. So we do have a social contract in terms of super, that the people who are working now will get
super, be looked after when they retire, but you know what this document also point out is what about the ethics of
indebting the future generations, and what we're looking at now is per capita debt of about $4000 per person. What some
projections are is by 2050 that will be $400,000 per person.
PAUL You are of course are head of the 2025 Task Force which aims at getting New Zealand up to the level of Australia in
terms of income and so forth by 2025, what are the options for us?
DON How long have we got Paul? I mean the reality is, we will not catch Australia on current policy settings, that’s
absolutely crystal clear. Since the early 90s we've been growing at roughly the same speed as Australia, but the gap
which emerged between the late 60s and the early 90s hasn’t been closed at all, and in fact if we're gonna close it we
have to roughly double our growth rate per capita over the next 16 years. We won't do it on current policies
PAUL It's frightening, it's a nightmare.
Response to JUDITH COLLINS interview
PAUL Welcome back to Q+A, where with the panel after Judith Collins. Any concerns about those extended powers for the Police
and so many other groups as well. Are you bothered?
SUE Me, I'm extremely bothered, I mean this is heading straight down the road towards a Police state, and one of the
biggest long term threats I think our country and countries around the world face in the wake of what's going to happen
with recession and the impacts of climate change and wars over things like water and oil, is I think the danger of the
rise of fascism. Now the sort of powers that this government is extending to the Police and to many other bodies, to me
lay the groundwork for a not so democratically minded government as we have at the moment, to go down that track.
PAUL I understand so, but we're up against evil evil people, evil manipulative greedy nasty people.
SUE But we have to look at the human rights and the legal rights of the whole population and not just focus in because you
can always take that as far as you like, and fascist states do, take it to he ultimate point. We're after criminals,
they call it criminals, often they’ll be political people like some of us that they’ll be after and that really scares
me.
PAUL I think somebody's made the point this week that the right to silence is now being denied to three old nuns who might
be protesting about the treatment of whales.
SUE Exactly.
PAUL Don Brash are you worried by the extension of these powers to the Police and to other agencies?
DON This is not a territory I'm very familiar with Paul to be frank, but I take the Minister's point that this is something
which has been in gestation for five years, the Law Commission's been working on this, the Deputy Chairman of the Law
Commission pointed out that this is – as the Minister said – a codification of existing powers under one piece of
legislation.
PAUL Extension.
DON Well as I say, he claimed it was not.
PAUL The Pork Industry Board can now come into your premises get all your IT records, detain you, rub you down, search you,
use reasonable force.
DON I'm quoting on they Deputy Chair of the Royal Commission, who says there are not additional powers in this law, this is
codification of existing powers, whether that’s right or not I don’t know.
THERESE I think you need to put it – not just look at any one of these pieces of legislation but put you know the three
different areas all together, and look in a democracy it's a careful balancing act about protecting the rights of the
individual and the good of the whole, and we have a Bill of Rights, and we have signed up to conventions, international
conventions about these rights.
PAUL Once the Police get busy with you, process begins. You could be entirely innocent and then you’ve gotta start fighting
the Police, you’ve gotta through process.
THERESE Well the point I was gonna make Paul is that actually the Attorney General, Chris Finlayson, actually signalled that in
particular the DNA the sampling DNA piece of legislation is in conflict with our Bill of Rights.
PAUL He thought it was.
THERESE Well inconsistent, and the point is that we need to take that seriously. When we hear that from the Attorney General
that something is inconsistent with the Bill of Rights that is important, and let's be specific there – what it means is
the problem was lack of judicial warrant and so when we're inconsistent with the Bill of Rights I think the point then
becomes we need to be really careful that we keep an eye on it, that it is carefully monitored and that we look back at
it say in four or five years time and see if the Police are overreaching their powers.
PAUL Because what we are doing really is giving so much judgement now to the Police that used to be provided by the court.
SUE And of course Ms Collins makes it sound as though we should have endless and total faith in our Police's ability and
willingness and capacity to follow the rules, and we know very well...
PAUL Of course you do. But there is an appetite to do something about the gangs though isn't there?
THERESE I think these measures will be politically popular, I do think they will be politically popular.
PAUL Alright, the week ahead, we are looking at an announcement on the Foreshore and Seabed Act this coming Wednesday, what
do you think we might see Don?
DON Paul, I don’t know frankly. I think back in 2004 when I was in politics, I think the National Party got it wrong, I
think we should have in fact supported the right of iwi to go to the High Court, as I say I think we made that mistake,
but we're not there now, we've actually got an act in place, clearly the government is committed to getting rid of that
act, but what they put in place instead of it I do not know. It's a very tough political issue.
PAUL So Iwi Kiwi was wrong?
DON No no, I don’t for a moment think that.
PAUL Do you think the price though that the Maori Party got for the coalition, the price must be repeal?
SUE Yes absolutely, but what's scaring me about this is (a) what will the Maori Party get beyond repeal, what will they
actually get, and secondly what are they selling off. I mean I think the worst thing the Maori Party's done yet has been
their support for the ACC legislation that started last week. They are selling out totally their own people.
DON To the Select Committee Sue, to Select Committee only.
SUE I truly hope that it doesn’t go past there, but that an what happened with the Maori representation on the Auckland
Super City Council here, those two things have really undermined the credibility of the Maori Party.
PAUL No the Maori Party was formed because of the Foreshore and Seabed Act.
SUE So what are they going to get, it's very interesting to see.
PAUL Therese what do you think they're going to get?
THERESE I don’t know either, is it going to be the right to go and test it in the courts, or more likely I think probably a
political solution. This is I think probably the most important purely political issue that this government is going to
face, and it is the bottom line for the Maori Party, extremely important, it'll be interesting to see how it plays out
in terms of Maori Party supporters, National Party supporters, a lot of people who liked your Orewa speech, it'll be a
real test I think of political leadership in this new government.
PAUL We shall see what we shall see, and Sue your hair was beautiful in your valedictory speech, I have to say to you.
THERESE And your speech was beautiful as well.
ENDS