Woodhouse On Jobs: 5/10. Must Try Harder.
Dunedin based ACT MP Hilary Calvert today gave Michael Woodhouse 5/10 for his comments in today's Otago Daily Times on job creation, saying he and the National Party still rely too heavily on government schemes to try to create jobs.
“Michael Woodhouse is right to say that job creation is largely the role of business. It is business, not government, that responds to consumers’ needs, creates jobs, and generates wealth,” Ms Calvert says.
“However the best thing government can do for job creation is to develop good infrastructure, create an environment in which business will thrive and otherwise stay out of the way.
“What government should not do is spend millions of taxpayer dollars on pointless ‘make work’ schemes such as the Job Ops and Community Max schemes lauded by Mr Woodhouse, especially when options, such as reintroducing the youth minimum wage, would achieve better results at almost zero cost.
“For example Job Ops will cost the taxpayer $55 million and, at best, employ 12,000 young people. Yet, reinstating the youth wage would cost virtually nothing and put up to 13,000 young people into work.
“I challenge Mr Woodhouse to truly back business by renouncing expensive schemes such as Job Ops and Community Max. If he does that, those looking for jobs in New Zealand might actually have something to celebrate,” Ms Calvert said.
ENDS
Government Should Cut Corporate Welfare
ACT Communications and IT Spokesman Hilary Calvert today criticized the Government’s decision to grant a further $50 million in ‘Technology Development Grants’ to high-tech businesses.
“These grants are nothing more than corporate welfare in which money is taken from taxpayers and awarded to whatever company the Government sees fit. It’s an outrage,” Ms Calvert said.
“Corporate welfare is an inefficient way to grow the economy, raising the costs to consumers while transforming business owners from entrepreneurs to lobbyists.
“Taxpayers suffer as they are forced to back a losing horse or worse, to hand over cash to a business that is stable, self-sufficient and that would have succeeded anyway.
“Business suffers as it creates an uneven playing field which sees some businesses get Government funds at the expense of others while also creating an unhealthy reliance on the Government for survival.
“Rather than waste taxpayers dollars on corporate welfare payments, National should instead focus on cutting regulation that restricts business growth,” Ms Calvert said.
ENDS
ACT Supports Stronger Victim Impact Statements
ACT New Zealand Justice Spokesman Hilary Calvert today confirmed that ACT will support the ‘Victims of Crime Reform Bill’ to first reading.
“ACT has long held the view that victims of crime should have the right to read their Victim Impact Statement in court without censorship,” Ms Calvert said.
“That’s why, last year, ACT submitted the ‘Victims’ Rights (Victim Impact Statements) Amendment Bill’, which would prevent judicial officers from amending or deleting any part of a Victim Impact Statement unless it was clearly untrue or defamatory.
“We would like to avoid a repeat of the tragic situation where victims or family members, such as Mr Gil Elliot in 2009, have had entire sections of their statement crossed out.
“While ACT’s Bill has far less scope for judges to amend a Victim Impact Statement than in the Bill introduced today, we believe it is still a step in the right direction which is why we will support it to first reading,” Ms Calvert said.
ENDS
Education: How good could it be?
Speech to ACT Upper South Conference, Christchurch
Sunday 14 August 2011
Thank you for inviting me to speak to you today. With your indulgence, I will take this opportunity to share with you some of my thoughts on a subject I hold dear - education.
The more time I spend listening to debate in Parliament, and reflecting on the laws being made, the more it seems to me that much of what Parliament does is make laws which try to deliver ever-increasing ambulances at the bottom of ever more identified cliffs.
What would make the most difference is a change in our education system. It is time to look at education as belonging to the people, not being an arm of the state, with its raison d’etre being somewhere between indoctrination for left wing ideology and a source of entitlement for school teachers.
Don will be telling you details of our policy over the next few weeks. Meantime here is my vision,
Education: How good could it be?
Imagine a country in child every child has a first class education. In which every day, everywhere, every student is receiving the best education we know how to deliver.
New Zealand can be that country. Three simple steps are all that it would take.
Most importantly, what parents and students need is recourse to what economists call the power of exit, the most powerful incentive for improvement. The freedom for parents to vote with their feet and move their children to a more successful or suitable school is one of the hallmarks of successful school choice, such as the system which has been in place in Sweden since the early 1990’s. The freedom to open, expand and close schools in response to demand is a key feature of such a system.
The second requirement, the second step, is for funding to follow the student, thereby making school choice a real option. This is not rocket science. Many progressive-thinking countries have introduced some form of school choice.
Britain is now rolling out major, much-needed education reform, basically enabling students to choose their schools rather than the other way around. Australia is already well ahead in this area, and its current Labor government is strongly pursuing an agenda of choice, performance-based pay and school accountability.
In the United States 2011 is being labeled the year of school choice, with 13 states enacting school choice legislation this year, and 28 states having legislation pending.
School choice, with funding following the child, affirms the basic right of parents to choose the best possible start in life for their child.
For many, our school system works perfectly well. Many bright and well-motivated students do well, whatever school they attend. High decile public schools and many independent schools produce plenty of high-achieving students, and well-off families can choose the school that will work best for their children.
The poorer parents are not so fortunate. They have no such choices. In low socio-economic zones families are condemned to low decile schools. Heralding as a virtue the right of a child in New Zealand to attend a local school, we condemn many of our lowest socio economic children to attending schools that no Ministry of Education employee would be seen dead in.
Both the Maori and ACT parties have embraced the concept of choice as a means of lifting education achievement. The 2009 inter-party working group, a creature of ACT’s confidence and supply agreement, recommended offering school choice to the five percent of lowest achievers and the top five percent of gifted children. This would at least be a start.
But it is not enough. All families should be able to choose.
And the last step. For true excellence, we need the third requirement, independent management.
For a top class education for all of our children we also need to allow schools independent management, allowing schools to innovate in teaching practices, pay and school organisation.
This proposal recognizes that the state is responsible for ensuring all children get a good education, but doesn’t need to run all schools. Parents wanting to set up schools are free to do so, with the funding each child brings, and the system encourages competition and performance improvements.
One of the most critical benefits of independent school management is that the school can not only choose the principal, but can then allow the principal to run the school on a best practice model, including the ability to hire, train and fire staff under arrangements deemed appropriate by the individual school.
It is common ground worldwide that the calibre of the principal determines the educational outcomes of the children. But the principal needs to be allowed to be in charge of the school.
I described these three steps as simple. But that does not mean they are easy. Dreams are rarely easy to turn into reality.
However we cannot afford to fail at this task. We cannot continue to let 20% of our children leave school without basic skills. One quarter of our young people are unemployed.
90% of people who end up unemployed or on low wage jobs have one uniting factor – they failed at school. The vast majority of the people in prison in New Zealand left school without a basic education.
And even more importantly, in all of these poor statistics we are failing Maori disproportionately. Of Maori who started secondary school in Auckland in 2004, well over half had left before completing five years, and little more that 10 percent went on to do any tertiary study. Across the country and across all ethnic groups, Maori have the lowest rate of achievement of basic numeracy and literacy standards and the highest rate of dropping out of school with no qualifications.
If we care at all about the education of our children, if we care at all about the number of our families who look to the state to support them on benefits, if we care at all about the wasted lives evidenced by the people who end up in our prisons, and if we care that we are failing children in new Zealand based on the colour of their skin, we simply much provide a first class education for all our children.
This dream is achievable, and it is vital for our future.
The ACT Party can help to make it happen.
Dare to dream. Party vote ACT.
Bad Policy The Real Issue For Milk Industry
ACT New Zealand Agriculture Spokesman Hilary Calvert today announced ACT’s support for a Select Committee inquiry into the price of milk but stressed that the priority should be getting rid of bad government policies that drive up costs.
“New Zealanders want transparency around the price of milk and ACT can understand that. But the real issue for the dairy industry is the cost heaped on farmers by red-tape and bad Government policy,” Ms Calvert said.
“ACT will campaign strongly on reforming the Resource Management Act, scrapping the Emissions Trading Scheme and reducing government spending, all of which will be of far more benefit to farmers and consumers than a Select Committee inquiry.
ENDS
More Taxi Regulation Not The Answer
The taxi industry compulsory safety measures – in force from August 1 2011 - are a prime example of the type of stupid, ill-thought out regulation that hurts our economy, driving up prices and forcing companies out of the market, ACT Transport Spokesman Hilary Calvert said today.
“Rather than allowing taxi companies and drivers to make their own security decisions, the Government took a heavy handed approach, legislating away their choice and forcing substantial costs on taxi owners making some operations unviable,” Ms Calvert said.
“This decision should have been left to the taxi companies and drivers themselves as it did not have unanimous support within the industry. Those that valued a particular security measure could install it and those that didn’t see it as necessary could go without. Customers could then choose who to travel with based on the security and service offered.
“But instead we now have this legislation that takes away choice and costs us twice: first through increased taxi fares and second through the loss of jobs as compliance costs drive taxi companies out of the market.
“But the Taxi Federation, who was behind this legislation, is still not content. It is now calling on the Government to shut out its new competitors by clamping down on legislation allowing private hire firms – which are not subject to the compulsory safety measures – to operate.
“This is self-interest gone mad. It is clear that this call is nothing more than a desperate bid by the Taxi Federation to maintain its market share with absolutely no regard for customers and it should be dismissed accordingly. The Government should not have listened to them the first time and should certainly not repeat the same mistake again,” Ms Calvert said.
ENDS
Early last year, the Taxi Federation called for compulsory security measures in taxis to which National’s Transport Minister Steven Joyce agreed. The Government passed legislation which, from August 1 this year, requires all taxi services to have security cameras, a 24 hour call centre and duress alarms. As a result the Taxi Federation now says many taxi companies are dropping the title of taxi and becoming private hire services to avoid the cost of the changes. Private hire services work for a set fee and must be prebooked.
Anti-Smoking Bill An Affront To Basic Rights
ACT MPs Hon Heather Roy, Sir Roger Douglas and Hilary Calvert are taking the rare step of issuing this joint press release explaining why they voted against the Smoke-free Environments (Controls and Enforcement) Amendment Bill on Thursday. They do so because they believe the constitutional implications of the Bill are greater than its content would suggest. They note that the Bill violates the basic right to freedom of expression.
“Section 14 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act protects the right to freedom of expression. This Bill violates that right. The right to display legal products in a store is basic,” Hon Heather Roy said.
“The fact that the Bill of Rights has been ignored by Parliament is a disgrace. That the transgression was ‘minor’ is irrelevant. Either we uphold the basic rights of all New Zealanders or we descend toward a society where rights have little meaning. It’s no surprise that among recent international attempts to ban or restrict smoking is that spearheaded by North Korea’s Kim Jong-Il. We are hardly keeping good company,” Ms Calvert said.
“The law is yet another tedious example of nanny-statism and political correctness. Parliament is interfering in the lawful activities of ordinary New Zealanders to advance the agenda of anti-smoking activists. That is a travesty of what Parliament is supposed to be about. I fear the activists won’t stop till they’ve achieved complete prohibition,” Sir Roger added.
“Smokers have rights too. We support their rights. We don’t like smoking, but we don’t believe it is for us as MPs to say whether people should smoke or not, much less whether they may display a legal product or not. That our Parliament deems it fit to interfere in people’s personal lives, as it did on Thursday, saddens us,” the MPs concluded.
Private initiatives are the way to go
A group of business leaders have teamed together to create and fund a new group called Pure Advantage. Pure Advantage is dedicated to helping New Zealand make the most out of green growth opportunities. I think this is a great example of how private initiatives respond to both opportunities and community needs.
The launch of this group is simply another reminder that the Government doesn’t have to do everything for New Zealand. We are a country populated by people both willing and able to think and act for themselves. We can cope just fine without an all-encompassing nanny state.
Pure Advantage is a group of leading New Zealanders who saw an opportunity to improve New Zealand’s environment, economic prospects, and living standards. They have seized this opportunity - I think that is commendable.
The advantage of private initiatives like Pure Advantage, vis-à-vis Government initiatives, is that participation is optional. Not all New Zealanders will agree with Pure Advantage’s aim and because it is private they can make this clear by not participating. They can vote with their feet. Compare that with Government initiatives such as the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) where participation is compulsory; the only way New Zealanders can vote with their feet on the ETS is by voting ACT this election.
A further advantage of private initiatives is that they only work if they have community buy-in. This encourages competition of ideas and competition between groups trying to meet society’s needs, making it more likely that an efficient solution will be found. Compare this with Government initiatives such as the ETS: a small group of people in Wellington get to force a futile scheme onto all New Zealanders regardless of whether it is efficient and regardless of whether those forced to participate want it.
I wish Pure Advantage all the best in their endeavours – I have just one request: please don’t be tempted to lobby the Government for more regulation.
To the Government, I say the vast majority of Kiwis are capable of looking after their own interests and organising themselves voluntarily to deal with the problems and opportunities that exist in the world. We don’t need you to do it for us.
You can find out more about Pure Advantage at www.pureadvantage.org.
Open Letter to New Zealanders on Youth Rates
Click here for a larger version of this letter.
Click here or on the image for a copy of our Youth Wage Q & A.
We are writing to urge all New Zealanders to support the reinstatement of a youth minimum wage.
There are 41,400 young people out of work – enough to fill Westpac stadium and then spill onto the pitch. An estimated 12,000 are unemployed as a direct consequence of the abolition of the youth minimum wage.
Youth unemployment is the highest level it has ever been - even after taking recession effects into account - with 27.5 percent of 15-19 year olds unemployed. That equates to almost one in every three young people out of work.
While unemployed our young people are scraping by on the dole. But the more insidious problem is not the money. The problem is that, while unemployed, they are missing out on vital work experience – experience that would benefit them for years to come.
Unemployment robs people of their sense of self-respect and self-sufficiency. There is no dignity in sitting around and waiting for a weekly welfare cheque.
That is exactly what the scrapping of the youth wage forces those 12,000 young people to do.
Abolishing youth rates; the consequences:
Why did abolishing the youth wage push so many young people out of work? Surely it gave youth a more liveable wage?
No, it didn’t.
When given the choice between an older, more experienced worker and taking a punt on an inexperienced school-leaver an employer will, more often than not, hire the older worker. It’s simple – you get more experience for the same wage.
In abolishing the youth wage the Government forced young people to compete with experienced workers, placing youth at a serious disadvantage. Despite declining rates of overall unemployment, youth unemployment continues to rise.
An entire generation of young people are growing up without the work experience that the generations before them have benefited from. The 16 and 17 year olds that are unemployed today will tomorrow become 19 and 20 year olds who have never held a job. They will continue to struggle to find work.
This is a cycle that has to stop.
Reinstating youth rates - the consequences:
ACT has fought tooth and nail for the youth wage to be reinstated. We submitted a Private Members Bill in 2010 which would effect change and curb youth unemployment. National, Labour, the Greens and the Maori Party voted against this. Since then youth unemployment has skyrocketed.
Reinstating the youth wage would allow young people to get a foothold on the job ladder. Most of us will remember our first job - most of us will also remember that it probably didn’t pay too well either.
But we all remember our first pay rise.
The key to getting a pay rise is work experience – it is this experience that is now out of reach for so many.
Reinstating the youth wage won’t shuffle jobs from old to young – it will create new jobs. Employers that currently can’t afford to take on an extra staff member as they would have to pay them $13 an hour may now decide that they can afford to take on a young school leaver at, say, $9 an hour. This creates a new job; it doesn’t take one away from a person already in the work force.
ACT believes it is better for a young person to earn a wage and to get vital work experience than for them to stay at home on the dole.
National, Labour, the Greens and the Maori Party disagree. They support a law that locks young people out of work.
Think about this every time you walk past a group of young people in the street. One in three is out of work. Keep count – it quickly adds up.
If you want a brighter and more productive future for our young New Zealanders, support ACT.
ACT to make a difference.
Speech to ACT Scenic South Regional Conference
Speech by Hilary Calvert MP to the ACT Scenic South 2011 Conference
Mercure Leisure Lodge Hotel
Sunday, 19 June 2011
The only stable state is the one in which all men are equal before the law. - Aristotle
Today I want to talk to you about some of the principles the Act Party holds dear by highlighting two major issues that are important to all New Zealanders.
First I want to talk about our policy of one law for all, a principle that has been alive and well at least since Aristotle’s days.
The second issue I want to canvass is how we improve our standard of living generally, but with particular reference to employment at the beginning and end of our working lives.
An underlying theme is that sometimes the best-intentioned measures end up harming the very people they were meant to help – the law of unintended consequences.
ONE LAW FOR ALL
ACT’s bottom-line support for One Law For All has been criticised by some as Maori-bashing racism.
This is to completely misconstrue Act’s position.
In 1840 the British Crown signed a Treaty with Maori. Under Article III the Crown granted Maori “the rights and privileges of British subjects”. By implication this includes the right to be treated equally under the law, a right which is guaranteed by the Bill of Rights 1689.
Over the years the Government on behalf of the people did not give Maori equal rights – courts ruled against them on dubious grounds and settler governments confiscated land illegally (eg in the Waikato 1860, Raglan golf course in 1940s).
Many New Zealanders became concerned about the way the government was behaving.
We tried to redress earlier wrongdoings and to show Maori the respect they should always have been able to take for granted.
But we made serious mistakes while trying to correct the wrongs. The law of unintended consequences struck.
If we want to honour the treaty, correct the historical property issues and pay proper respect to Maori we should:
- Repeal special laws – all issues should be resolved by general agencies under universal principles (eg breaches of Treaty should be resolvable at law under Article 3 – if Labour had let this happen in 2004 with Ngāti Apathere would now be no Marine & Coastal Area Act.
- Review how agencies deliver on general principles – everyone has a taniwha at the bottom of the garden and legislation/courts/agencies should be able to deal with them sensitively and in the right context. We do know how to deal with spiritual issues – we deal with them all the time when we sort out what to with consecrated ground for example the cemetery that is in the way of the proposed dam at Beaumont.
- Allow for majority to prevail while having regard to the rights of the minority. The disaffected can bring issues to the attention of the majority and demand a fair hearing.
- Remember that Parliament as the House of Representatives is supreme, and has full power to make *and unmake* laws (Constitution Act 1986 s 15)
We did a reasonable job trying to sort out treaty settlement claims.
But then we went completely down the wrong track.
We created a separate class of New Zealanders with special rights that applied only to them.
Sometimes we kept the rights in place long after they had fulfilled their purpose.
In 1867 the government created four seats reserved for Maori to bridge the gap until enough Maori met the property qualification then in place. Although only intended to last five years, this ‘temporary’ measure is still in place, but expanded, despite more people of Maori descent standing for general seats than for reserved seats.
It is interesting to compare our history concerning Maori treatment with our history concerning another section of society who were not always treated equally - women.
We have also reached the conclusion that we should have women treated as equal citizens – we legislated for women’s suffrage in 1893; Otago was the first University in the British Empire to admit women students by right; we brought in widows’ pensions, the Married Women’s Property Act, the Domestic Purposes benefit.
But we did not try to give women special seats in parliament, or give them special quotas at university or special laws that allowed them to occupy public land and charge their neighbours for walking on it.
What held women back was a lack of equal opportunity – nothing else.
We dismantled the unfair barriers and women are doing the rest. When I entered law school, women made up 10% of the roll. Now the majority of law graduates are women and women are taking their places as judges and senior counsel and partners – without having to rely on positive discrimination which, positive or not, is still discriminatory.
MARINE AND COASTAL AREA (TAKUTAI MOANA) ACT
This is example of what can happen when the process goes wrong and also a time when the government went against the overwhelming will of the people as expressed to a government review and a select committee.
If the issue of customary title had been left to the courts in 2004, there would be no fear and loathing on the high-tide line.
The new law gives Maori the right to go to the High Court to ascertain the extent of their property rights in the foreshore and seabed.
This was the right thing to do. It is also where the new law should have stopped.
Instead, the Government gave some Maori special rights that are denied to all other New Zealanders.
- Iwi can avoid the court process by negotiating privately with the Crown. Political negotiations almost always lead to political outcomes. Justice will take a back seat as deals are struck that would never have made it through the transparent court system.
- The new law gives customary titleholders the right to override resource management laws that apply to everyone else. It creates a special ability to fine people and to charge any amounts for use of some resources.
- Iwi can unilaterally declare that a part of the foreshore is a sacred site, a wahi tapu area and then stop others from going on it, rather than using current law to protect special and historical sites.
The National Party knew this separatist law went against all they stood for.
National’s concessions were made for political reasons, and now we all need to know:
How much more are the two major parties willing to concede in exchange for the Maori Party’s support?
I spent some time in the impoverished and strongly Maori Far North talking to Northlanders about what is holding many Maori back.
Up there many pakeha feel that Maori have not had a fair go.
They are concerned that Maori are still not getting the same chances as other New Zealanders. Too many Maori are forced to attend inferior schools, receive sub-standard medical treatment, and end up entangled in the welfare net with little hope of escape.
One hundred and sixty-one years after the Treaty was signed there are still proportionately more Maori in prison, unemployed, in ill-health or earning less income than the rest of us.
But instead of focusing on these issues, Parliament has been tied up with legislation giving special rights to Iwi over the foreshore and seabed. The Marine and Coastal Area Act will do nothing to address the issues that really matter. It will divide us even further and advance the separatist agenda.
Separatism will not keep Maori out of prison or in the workforce.
So what’s the alternative?
We can implement policies that bring New Zealanders together. That’s one law for all again.
A Government that borrows over $300 million a week and refuses to cut spending hurts everyone – Maori and non-Maori.
New Zealand will prosper again only if we get government spending under control, and let our entrepreneurs and industries create high-paying jobs.
In short, we must take New Zealand off the separatist path and focus our energy instead on creating a successful and prosperous nation.
IMPROVING LIVING STANDARDS THROUGH EMPLOYMENT
It used to be said in farming circles that if dairy, sheep meat and wool prices ever peaked at the same time New Zealand would be the richest country on earth.
Well, they have. We’re not. But we should be, if not the richest, at least well up in the top quartile of the OECD.
This week our neighbours in Canterbury have had to contend with yet more rumblings under their feet. It must be terrible to live with the constant fear that any shake might be another disaster on the scale of the two big quakes, and we can only admire the courage of those who stay to keep the city running.
In addition to the human cost there is also a financial cost to us all. The effect on the national economy of the big shakes so far has been in excess of $20 billion. If we are to do justice to the people of Christchurch by reinstating our second largest city we must take a firm line with some of our sacred cows.
THE PENSION
John Key has said that the pension age will not go up while he is Prime Minister. But we should all admit that the age at which people become eligible for New Zealand Superannuation will need to gradually increase to ensure that the cost of the scheme remains fair to younger New Zealanders.
This affects Dunedin people more than most, given the high ratio of seniors in the city. It’s time that we stopped dumping people into retirement when they can work and want to work. Someone who was 60 in 1960 was old, but today’s 60 year-olds have had a dream run compared their parents: no war, no depression, no hunger –and they can expect to live another 20 or more years in comparatively good health and mobility.
We need to stop treating seniors as if they were past their use-by date. There’s many a good meal to be had from mature beef.
Some countries allow people to defer their pensions until a later age in return for which they receive a larger annuity. We should look at new paradigms rather than relying on policies designed by the first Labour government for our grandparents.
EMPLOYMENT
At the other end of our lives we have an issue of youth unemployment.
In this regard I would like to mention the role of youth rates in keeping young people out of work.
It’s vital that this issue doesn’t disappear from the radar screen because it would be so easy to deal with it without Bill English having to lose a night’s sleep.
The tragedy is that 44% of New Zealand’s unemployed are under the age of 24. Nearly 28% are in the 15-19 age group where unemployment has more than doubled since Labour abolished youth rates in 2005.
Forcing employers to pay school leavers the same rate as more mature workers is a substantial barrier to getting many of these young people on to the first rung of the career ladder.
ACT wants the Government to allow employers to pay youth rates. This is apparently an “extreme” policy.
In 2007 John Key said in the House that he thought that a Youth Minimum wage is good for young people.
On May 11 2011 I asked him in the House whether he supported Paula Bennett in her opposition to youth rates when Labour’s abolition of youth rates increased youth unemployment by 12,000,
He replied: “I think that we all admit that and accept that one of the factors for youth is the rate they are paid.
“Yesterday in the ODT we saw an article entitled “Indications youth minimum wage not ruled out as policy option”. This article explained that in March the Government ruled out supporting Sir Roger Douglas’ bill to allow the reintroduction of a youth minimum wage. Now the Government has said they will not rule this out as a policy option.
Maybe this is because as The Honourable Kate Wilkinson said “National is always willing to listen to good ideas”. We the Act Party remains ready willing and able to provide good ideas for the government.
CONCLUSION
Ours is a potentially prosperous and socially homogenous country which could be the envy of the world if we would just stop shooting ourselves in the foot.
We are subject to the vagaries of world markets and we have inherited a legacy of racial injustice that has generated resentment in some sectors of our community.
We face some challenges in social policy and we have to solve those by managing our costs and increasing our revenue, just as households have to – in fact, the research suggests that New Zealanders have heard the message about borrowing and spending less much more clearly than the Government has!
Despite all this, ACT is positive about the future. We must give centre-right New Zealanders the message that a party vote for ACT will return a National-led government with a steel spine comprised of a team of ACT MPs who will give John Key and his colleagues the support they need to deliver a stable platform of equality before the law and economic sanity.
Thanks to ACT, the future has never looked brighter.
