I had the privilege of driving the first nail for the house that is being built at St Aidan's Church on corner of Ascot and Remuera Roads.
The house is underway for the next two weeks. Pop in. It's a great community feeling working on the House.
Here's Shona and her family for whom the house is being built.
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I found me staring down at me in a disembodied way that I had never before experienced. Lindsay Mitchell (many of you will be familiar with her outstanding work on her blog) is a brilliant artist. I found myself seeing me like I have never seen myself before -- it was really me. Lindsay knows me well and so captured me in her work.
Lindsay is an amazing woman in many ways. Here's just one. After the birth of her children she decided that she would paint. She hadn't painted before. She bought the brushes, paint and canvas, and some books and started painting. She stuck at it. She made mistakes and she learnt. She got better and better. She made more mistakes. She learnt some more. She kept at it. She is now a nationally acclaimed artist.
Lindsay teaches me that we can't begin to imagine what we are truly capable of. Perhaps we are great artists, singers, business people (dancers?), but we aren't because we never set our mind to it, believe that we can do it, and really stick at it.
Success never comes easy. But I suspect mostly we don't even try. We just assume we can't do things. Lindsay showed me tonight that we are capable of much more than we think we are. We let our minds limit ourselves to what we can and can't do too easily.
It's the same in politics and for our country. Most NZers now can't imagine being richer than Australia. And so don't try. They accept where we are. I can imagine being the richest country in the world. Once I can imagine it, I can start figuring out ways to achieve it.
Can you imagine it? Really imagine it? Good!
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I was nervous about jumping out of a plane at 15,000 feet. I had found bungy jumping quite scary. The hard thing wasn’t the jump itself but inching to the edge of the platform to make the jump. I was helped a bit by being interviewed at the time on TV by Paul Henry for AJ Hackett’s “This is Your Life”. I didn’t want to show too much fear to the viewers sitting at home on the couch!
There is some primitive part of your brain that screams to you: Don’t go any nearer to the edge, you could fall! The rational mind is telling you it’s okay: plenty of people have made the jump and it’s quite safe. But my mind was not comfortable inching out on the edge.
So how would it go at 15,000 feet. The night before I pictured myself hanging onto the aeroplane’s hatch like grim death unable to let go.
Strangely, it was a piece of cake. The primitive part of my mind clearly has no concept of 15,000 feet! The earth is just so far away that it can’t process it. We have climbed trees and mountains for hundreds of thousands of years. The danger of falling is coded probably in our DNA. Our evolutionary past doesn’t include jumping out of a plane at 15,000 feet.
So I just rolled out. There was no sensation even of falling. Nothing was rushing past for the senses to detect – other than the air. We fell at 200 km/h but didn’t feel that we were moving – just floating above the earth free as a bird. It was a fabulous feeling. We fell free for 60 seconds with Matt pulling the rip cord at 5,000 feet.
I loved it. It was exhilarating and exciting and there is nothing else like it.
I find myself in idle moments looking up at the blue sky and wispy clouds remembering the day I fell 10,000 feet through it. It’s something else.
The pic is from ACT’s January hui and is of ACT’s three leaders. Roger Douglas, Richard Prebble and me. With election year upon us, we are ramping up the activity with our planning, organisation, candidate selection and policy development. I have been amazed and impressed with the people of talent and ability who have stepped up to help. It’s truly humbling and has left me wondering why ACT can attract such talent. I believe it’s because we have a well-developed political philosophy and principles that we stick to. No other party does. They are rudderless choosing policy on the basis of what sounds good, appears popular and is politically expedient. Only ACT bases its policy and political position on what is right.
ACT’s is the philosophy of individual freedom and personal responsibility. It’s the belief that people should be free to make their decisions and that government’s prime role is to uphold and protect people’s rights, not use state power to boss people around. ACT’s philosophy recognises that social order and human co-operation occur spontaneously and freely when governments leave people free to make their own decisions and their own way in life, and, indeed, that order and co-operation are undermined when the state power is used in an attempt to compel people to a pre-ordained overall outcome.
ACT’s philosophy is known as Classical Liberalism. It is best summed up in the phrase, “Free to Choose”.
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Whale Oil has offered up some policy suggestions for ACT.
Whale Oil’s suggestion is to "get radical" and have “5 totally obnoxious policies to 95% of the electorate but that will appeal to 5%”. He provides two policy examples: the death penalty and hard labour for vandalism types.
Whale Oil is right: ACT can afford to be radical. We are not hunting the ground that National is trying to occupy by cuddling up to Labour Policy. MMP and our small size allow us the luxury of sticking to our classical liberal principles and coherent policy.
But Whale Oil is thinking of policy – like many do – as a means of winning votes and support. That’s important, of course, but it’s not enough. We are in politics not just to win a place but to make the country a better place. That means we actually want our policy implemented. And we want it to make it a significant difference.
Here are the criteria I laid out at our January Hui for our policy bottom lines:
1. Significant to the future direction of the country, i.e. worth campaigning for;
2. Saleable, i.e. vote catchers;
3. Unable to be ruled out ahead of the election by National and, ideally, Labour, but not something they would do without ACT.
4. Implementable by an MMP party, i.e. simple to implement by a junior party and able to be judged as implemented by voters and members.
The criteria look beyond the election to policy implementation and policy’s benefit to New Zealand. I believe that we need to look to what we are going to achieve after the election to determine our campaign strategy. ACT party members and supporters are achievers and expect their party to achieve, not just talk politics.
Let’s run Whale Oil’s suggestion for a return to the death penalty as a policy past the criteria. Let’s put to one side the debate about whether state execution is or is not a classical liberal policy. (For the record, I don’t support the death penalty.)
1. Is it significant? Hardly. Assuming you could get the policy implemented, would a return to the death penalty make New Zealand a better place? I don’t think so. It would be hugely divisive and I doubt a return to the death penalty would serve to lower violence in New Zealand.
2. Is it saleable? I am sure there are plenty of New Zealanders who would vote for such a policy.
3. Is it unable to be ruled out by National, or Labour? It would certainly be ruled out by National. The first question to John Key following ACT’s announcement would be whether he agrees with a return to the death penalty. His answer would surely be that the death penalty would never be reintroduced while he was Prime Minister. I am sure Helen Clark would say the same thing. That would make ACT totally irrelevant. What’s the point of voting for a party with a policy that rules it out of any position of responsibility with all other parties?
4. Is it implementable? No. Hard to see any likely scenario where Parliament votes for a return to the death penalty. So how could ACT campaign with any integrity on a policy it can’t implement? It can’t.
Now let’s run ACT’s Taxpayer Rights Bill past the same criteria:
1. Is it significant? Hell yes. If we had capped government expenditure in real terms these past nine years, government would be spending $9 billion less than it is now. That’s a lot of money. And no money would have been cut from government’s budget – it would have just been capped. Those savings would compound each and every year and taxpayers would get a genuine say about how much they are taxed. That’s significant.
2. Is it saleable? That’s tougher. We know they’re keen on tax cuts and are against government waste. It’s ACT’s job to show that the way to have tax cuts that are sustainable and to force better government budgeting is to cap government.
3. Is it unable to be ruled out by National, or Labour? Difficult to see National opposing fiscal discipline – even if they would rather not apply it to themselves! And I imagine Helen Clark would even agree to capping expenditure if it meant squeezing out a fourth term!!
4. Is it implementable? Sure. The Bill’s written and ready to go!
The example run past our criteria summarises the thinking going on behind ACT’s policy development and campaign strategy.
We are working on a statement of our philosophy, our manifesto, and our key policies for Election 2008.