A Time for Truth

The Haps

If the state of the world makes you want a drink, ACT’s Nicole McKee just introduced legislation to make that a little easier. Licensed venues have been sandbagged by misdirected puritanical wowserism for too long, and she has struck a blow for common sense.

Alcohol harm is a real problem, but well-run licensed venues actually reduce it compared with off-license drinking. When people from Invercargill can object to a bar opening in Auckland, something is very wrong. Amongst a dozen other sensible changes, Nicole’s legislation says you need to live in the community to object. This idea featured in another ACT MP, Parmjeet Parmar’s, member’s bill.

Last week Brooke introduced legislation to fix the broken Holidays Act. The week before that David Seymour’s changes to make overseas investment consents simpler came into effect. Most weeks, you can find a tangible example of ACT quietly doing the hard stuff to make this country a better place to live.

A Time for Truth

The last big oil shock, in 1979, shook New Zealand free of a broken economic model. Muldoon tried to preserve the fortress economy beyond the edge of reason, and when the dam broke it didn’t just sweep him away, but an economic model where the numbers no longer added up.

Could something like that be happening again? Well, a lot of the same factors are in place. The Treasury says the Government ought to save about $4 billion each year to allow for a GFC/Earthquake/COVID-type shock every ten years. However, the Government is borrowing about $8 billion. Those figures are averaged out for good years and bad, but there is about a $12 billion hole in the Government’s finances.

There’s also a lot of frustration that the economic model isn’t working. The average person’s pay stretched as far today as it did in 2019. We’re not used to the doldrums, we’re used to things getting better, so people are looking for other ways to get a pay rise, like changing countries.

Those who say New Zealand today is more divided than ever ought to look up Bastion Point, or the Springbok Tour. We may not be that divided now but we’re as divided as ever since.

Back then people were frustrated with the political system: even when he got fewer votes than Labour, Muldoon still won. When third parties got twenty per cent support, they still only won one or two seats. A lot of people doubt MMP was the right answer, but it’s the answer we got because what we had wasn’t working, either.

Roughly the same conditions are in place as the early ‘80s, and now comes an economic shock to make a time for truth. Free Press readers likely know all this history, it led to changes that ultimately gave birth to the ACT Party.

Those reforms set New Zealand up to remain, by a big margin, the second wealthiest country in the Southern Hemisphere.

There’s another ending to the story, though, that could begin by the end of the year. Labour, the Greens, and Te Pāti Māori are already advertising their solutions.

The $12 billion hole will get bigger after their election promises, but they’ll fill it in with new taxes, especially on capital. The Baby Boomers did well out of asset prices, they’ll reason, so let’s level the score. To their thinking, which is zero-sum, it would be immoral not to.

The productivity hole will be filled by a combination of boondoggles (Green Investment Fund), and working less. You might not actually earn more, but you’ll have more ‘rights’ in the workplace so it will seem more worthwhile. Free Pressreaders know none of that will work, the Government will waste taxpayer money on shysters and the labour market will seize up. But it might get them elected a couple of times.

They’ll ‘unite’ New Zealand under a ‘shared understanding’ of te tiriti, also known as our way or the highway. They’ll make the political system less frustrating by telling people who disagree they’re troublemakers. Remember Ardern’s ‘Disinformation Project?’

Those are all resolutions to long-built-up problems that New Zealanders could easily choose. Oil shocks, especially Irani ones, have a history of setting off overdue change in New Zealand.

Of course, those changes would be a recipe for a bigger, colder version of Fiji. We’ve never had more to play for when it comes to promoting a New Zealand in line with its true origins: a nation of settlers who came to the frontier for a better life.

We are united by equal human rights, and our desire to make, rather than take. If we didn’t have those values in our DNA, then we wouldn’t be Kiwis. Our ancestors would have stayed where they came from.

We don’t just need to keep the bogies out this November, we need to win the central battles over New Zealand’s soul, perhaps sooner than expected. We hope you’re with us, if you get it we need you to stand up.