Which party to vote for? New Zealand General Election 2023

I’ve been remiss in not offering my opinions on the political parties registered for this general election sooner, but I thought it was about time to do so.  I tend to spend a bit of time thinking about it, but basically it comes down to two sets of choices:

• Parties that will on balance take away more freedoms, tax and regulate you more, and overall increase the role of state in people’s lives, and demote the role of the individual over politically-defined collectives vs;

• Parties that will on balance increase freedoms, reduce tax and regulation, and overall reduce the role of the state in people’s lives, and increase the role of the individual over politically-defined collectives.

And:

• Parties certainly or likely to be elected to Parliament vs;

• Parties that certainly or almost certainly will not be elected to Parliament.

So below I have written an alphabetical review of each of the parties seeking to be elected under the party list, with a ranking of their likelihood to be elected to Parliament. My basis for review is whether the policies are libertarian, rational and whether the people behind it are to be trusted or ooze more turpitude than usual for politicians.

For those who can't be bothered reading so far, gere's my overall conclusion. 

Of the parties that are likely to get elected, ACT is the best of a fairly woeful bunch, and it’s primarily because of education policy and what looks like a bias towards less government. It’s far from consistent, and so much rhetoric is populist pablum, but it’s worth giving ACT its first chance to be the main supporting partner of National (which it didn’t achieve under John Key, as he could use TPM and United Future to get a majority). So, I’m reluctantly giving it a tick. Sure you could give National a tick instead, but it’s not a party that will move much towards less government and more individual choice and responsibility. It’s better than Labour, but that’s a low bar to cross. You could gamble with NZ First, but the idea Winston would pull National towards less government spending, less regulation and do anything substantial about pushing back against Maori nationalism is almost laughable.

If you don’t really care about a change in government you could vote for one of a few micro parties. Of them, the Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party is the most consistently libertarian because it has one policy, although it can’t organise itself to get close to being elected or indeed anything else. Of the rest, the New Conservatives might appeal to socially conservative classical liberals, but not libertarians. The other micro-parties are either blends of socialism with claims about freedom (primarily linked to the Covid vaccine, but also climate change and freedom of speech), or led by lunatics (Liz Gunn) or grifting shysters (Tamaki/Grey).

I will be hoping for a National/ACT government without NZ First, because it gives ACT its best chance to prove it can move the dial and make some substantial steps to implement reforms that are needed. 

In short:

ACT: Hold your nose and give a little less government a chance.

Animal Justice Party: Vegan fundamentalist nutters

Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party: Free the weed, but nothing else.

Democracy NZ: Conservative breakaway with an odd blend of anti-vax and anti-GMO, but it will fade away.

Freedoms NZ: Grifters Tamaki and Grey on their latest con.

Green: Blend of eco-authoritarians and commie post-modernists keen to sacrifice us all for the greater good, and if you don't like it why are you so full of hate and want the planet to burn and children to die?

Labour:  Union-tempered version of the above with a focus on much more gradualism.

Leighton Baker Party:  Pointless breakaway from the New Conservatives that is worse organised and is for social conservatives.

National: The anti-Labour party that primarily exists to obtain and hang onto power when Labour frightens or angers the public too much to stay in power, but only rarely and erratically reverses anything Labour does.

New Conservative: Social conservatism with some economic liberalism, yet with little to say about cutting state spending. A shadow of its former self having been decimated by the rise of multiple conservative micro-parties led by egos.

New Nation Party: Inconsistent unhinged blend of conspiracy, localism, lower taxes but more government spending. 

NewZeal:  Alfred Ngaro's conservatives for lower taxes but no plans for less spending. Why bother?

New Zealand First: Like dejavu Winston rises from obscurity to find new causes to advance, this time it's back to opposing racial separatism, transgender activism and to be tough on crime.  

New Zealand Loyal: Liz Gunn's mix of quackery and communism.

Te Pati Maori: Maori nationalist socialists

TOP: The party of clever leftwing policy wonks who aren't clever enough to work out how to get elected

Womens' Rights Party:  Feminist socialists against transgender post-modernism

The parties

ACT: Certain to get elected. Not at all a libertarian party, but the prime contender to pull a National-led government towards more freedom and less government. In its favour is a revolutionary approach to education, including decentralising roles and responsibilities, including what are in essence vouchers and charter schools for all. There is a tougher approach to welfare promoting individual responsibility, and what looks like a belief in significantly liberalising planning laws and a more rational approach to climate change policy. David Seymour’s rhetoric on reducing government waste ought to instinctively mean a reduction in spending, and a plan to lower and simplify income tax rates, although it is mild indeed compared with previous years. ACT is willing to take on the thorny issues of identity and governance around Te Tiriti, which has been ignored for too long. 

However, it is far from being all positive, the policies that are published are weak on some elements of economic liberalising. Water policy can’t suggest corporatisation, privatisation and user pays, but in fact is some bizarre blend of Muldoonism and its over-enthusiastic belief in PPPs (across far too many sectors). Sharing GST revenue with local government is also remarkably wasteful unless local government’s roles and responsibilities are pared back, otherwise the likes of Wellington City Council will just keep building or subsidising more entertainment and convention complexes. Those who rejected Covid vaccines, and the mandates and restrictions placed on people during the pandemic have fair reason to be disappointed in David Seymour’s comments during that period. Finally, it’s approach to personal freedom issues appears largely limited to legalising pseudoephedrine. It would be nice if it campaigned to reverse the absurd tobacco ban.  

There is a reason to support ACT, because no other party likely to be elected to Parliament will have MPs who, mostly, have instincts to put the state sector on a diet and to oppose Nanny State moves that National may just continue with.  However, it is entirely understandable why some might just find it too hard to swallow David Seymour’s pivoting on issues like housing intensification or vaccine mandates. For me, the number one reason to vote ACT is its education policy.  Education more than just about any other policy, is in crisis due to capture by bureaucracy and professional unions who want to take a monopolistic approach to how children should be educated. No other party can do something about this. I might be hopeful about reform of planning laws that could enable more housing, but I’m not optimistic about ACT on this. The cycle of politics in NZ is that ACT will likely peak at this election, especially if National is seen to do well by 2026, in which case this is the peak chance for ACT to effect real change. So on balance, a vote for ACT is defensible as a vote to give National a backbone on some issues.  8/10

Animal Justice Party: Certain to not get elected. Misanthropic lunatics with no chance of getting into Parliament. The party of mandatory veganism and those who want to equate domestic abuse between humans as the same applying to animals (including the emotional abuse of denying your dog its favourite toy – by the way you wouldn’t have property rights over any animal either). With policies to end animals in agriculture, it is fundamentally authoritarian post-modernist nonsense blending a benign hippie-level kindness with economic catastrophe and anti-scientific hatred of humans. The only good thing about the Animal Justice Party is it no doubt take votes away from the Greens, so go on and promote it among your more dull-witted Green supporters. 1/10

Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party: Certain to not get elected. The ALCP is just about legalising cannabis, so you could argue having one libertarian policy (and not wanting to increase the state’s role in anything else) means it is the purest libertarian party. You can’t be said to have “sold out” for voting for the ALCP, and for some legalising cannabis means more than anything.  A vote for the ALCP is making a statement about an issue most parties have chosen to ignore since the ill drafted referendum. However, it is just that one issue, and ALCP have little chance of getting in Parliament. Voting for ALCP indicates you rather don’t care about education, taxes, housing, environmental, economic or other policies.  These things matter so 6/10

DemocracyNZ: Certain to not get elected. Matt King’s breakaway party is a breakaway rural oriented conservative party. It prefers climate change adaptation to mitigation and looks to do little about reducing agricultural emissions beyond supporting scientific approaches towards doing so. It does seem to have a preference towards less regulation generally. It is in favour of more education choice and devolving some power. Otherwise, it is primarily about vaccine mandates, and parallels ACT and NZF on race issues. However, it does have an unscientific attitude to GMOs. The latter is irrational and odd. Still, it is likely to be relatively benign, except of course there is no plausible path to Parliament or even influencing it. It gets a 4/10.

Freedoms NZ: Certain to not get elected. Grifting megalomaniac Brian Tamaki and fellow grifter Sue Grey uses the word freedom, but freedoms are selective indeed.  Radical on lower taxes (but next to nothing on how to cut government spending), the big pushes are on compensating the vaccine injured. It claims to want to reject Nanny State but has very general statements about “better health and education. There is the touch of the conspiratorial here too, and it wholly rejects climate change and wants to significantly deregulate almost all regulation affecting the rural sector. Prosperity theology is grand-scale grift against the vulnerable and needy, and from a values point of view, someone who promotes this doctrine is not someone who believes in smaller government. Sue Grey in a different manner is a grifter of pseudoscientific nonsense, such as fear over 5G, and although I have respect for those who choose not to take the Covid vaccine, to talk of it being distributed as “genocide” says a lot about who is she and what she is about. This isn’t a party of freedom, it is a party led by confidence-tricksters who target the vulnerable.  It gets a 1/10.

Green: Certain to get elected. New Zealand’s party of socialism is the anti-thesis of more freedom, capitalism, belief in the human individual and less government. The Greens want more government, more tax (now targeting not just when you earn or spend money, but also just owning property), more regulation, more government departments, and with the exception of a less punitive approach to drugs (except alcohol), there is almost nothing for anyone who believe in freedom with the Greens.  The Greens are also in the frontline of promoting post-modernist concepts of identity defining people as privileged or victims based on immutable characteristics, and of course have little interest in private property rights. Note the Greens want Treaty settlements to include private land, wanting the state to decide that your home has to be bought by the state when you decide to sell.  This is also the party that is uninterested in helping Ukraine fight Russia, but happily puts front and centre candidates that chant slogans about wiping Israel off the map. The Greens after all carry the foreign affairs stance of self-styled “anti-imperialists” who don’t care about wars waged by anyone anti-Western including terrorists. Moreover, the Greens are at the forefront of wanting legislation on “hate speech” and are keen to define that based on who is speaking not just what they say.  A vote for the Greens is a vote to pass more power over your life, property and the community to the state.  It gets a 1/10

Labour: Certain to get elected. Green lite, full of people who wish they could go more socialist, go more identitarian, go more government, more taxes, more regulation, more bureaucracy, but know it wont win them power to do too much.  I mean why would you bother? It gets a 2/10. 

Leighton Baker Party: Certain to not get elected. If you’re going to have a personality led party, it needs to be a personality that enough people like and know. In Australia, Pauline Hanson and Bob Katter have done it, with constituencies big enough to justify it. For a start, it has three party list candidates. If it crossed the 5% threshold, it wouldn’t have enough candidates.  It’s a fairly standard conservative platform, with a few good points, like wanting charter schools, one law for all, enshrining freedom of speech and to ignore climate change mitigation. Yet it also wants direct democracy for decisions like tunnels? Baker is a conservative in the bedroom, and if you can’t rustle up six candidates on the tiny chance you get 5%, then why bother? It gets 3/10.

National: Certain to get elected. The party of free enterprise and individual freedom is generally very poor at advancing policies that reverse the statist policies of a Labour Government, let alone shrinking the role of the state even incrementally, when in power. At this election National’s big pushes are around minor tax cuts, some spending cuts, but a lot of new spending. It’s difficult to see its education policy breaking the bureaucratic/professional union monopoly on delivery and avoiding performance measurement, and likewise for its policy on planning to gut the post-RMA regulation of land use that hinders housing, supermarkets and other development. There does appear to be willingness to turn back race-based bureaucratic and funding measures, towards need, and to place more personal responsibility alongside welfare, as well as repealing the productivity-sapping “Fair Pay” measures. It would be generous to think National would turn the clock back to the spending and regulatory environment of 2017, let alone 1999. Yes voting National stops Labour getting in power, but it primarily stops the march to the left rather than reverses it much at all. You could do worse, but a libertarian would want a lot better.  6/10.

New Conservative: Certain to not get elected. The New Conservatives have clearly been gutted by the plethora of micro-conservative parties. There’s not really a lot here in economic freedom, some useful principles around property rights, but a bigger focus on family.  Although I’m more conservative on abortion than many, granting personhood to fertilised cells is not compatible with individual freedom.  There is a space for this party to represent socially conservative economic liberals, but there isn’t a lot that shows them to be economic liberals, especially a big pledge of lower taxes with nothing substantial on cutting spending. 5/10.

New Nation Party: Certain to not get elected. Starting with anti-privatisation rhetoric, there is an interesting range of positions. It wants a written constitution to protect freedoms, which is fine. Leaving the UN is conspiratorial nonsense (you don’t need to leave the UN to ignore what you don’t like).  It wants a $25,000 income tax free threshold, and no tax on benefits, superannuation or student allowances, but again no policies to cut spending except a generic “reduce powers of central government”. Sure, reinstating oil and gas exploration is fine, but more “provincial” powers is not compatible with more freedom. Then it wants to investigate decriminalising cannabis. It’s quite a mix of opposing He Puapua, more health spending, more funding for tertiary students and effectively defunding RNZ and the media generally.  I’m generous giving it 3/10

NewZeal: Certain to not get elected. Alfred Ngaro’s personal project. Another conservative party, but with a few weird policies like enabling housing deposits of only 2.5% for first home buyers. There is little interest in lower taxes and shrinking government, so the real question is why would you bother? 3/10

New Zealand First: On balance likely to get elected. Yes we do all know Winston, the indefatigable face of next generation Muldoonism. Winston put National in power once, Labour twice. He pivots between economic nationalism, anti-immigration and toughness on crime, and this time is opposing Maori nationalism and separatism in the way only Winston can. He is also waging war on “wokeness” which he discovered a few months ago, just under six years after he chose to govern with the blatantly woke Jacinda Ardern and the woke-ultras of the Green Party. The problem is this, I can believe Winston didn’t know He Puapua was being developed when he was a Cabinet Minister because he is fundamentally lazy.  He spends two years out of Parliament barely saying boo, and when he IS a Minister he’s happy travelling and having his name linked to a handful of policies. If you think Winston is going to change policies, then I have a bridge to sell you.  Winston is a populist opportunist who has three times in 27 years been given senior Cabinet positions (and his floxham and jetsam of followers) and there is no evidence it has made any substantial difference to economic or personal freedom.  Yes he might get in, but he is likely to slow down reforms than accelerate them, so 3/10.

New Zealand Loyal: Certain to not get elected. Liz Gunn’s unhinged party that is also incapable of getting enough candidates to be represented adequately if it reached 5%. It’s easily the most conspiratorial party of all, not only is it anti globalism, but it is hysterically environmentalist. It is keen on quack remedies and a financial transactions tax. Anyone talking about Covid response as a “mini-Holocaust” is not just hysterical but vile. It wants to nationalise all communications and energy, so this is no party of individual freedom, but a party of a deranged mix of authoritarian mysticism and hysteria. It’s frankly very sad.  0/10

Te Pati Maori: Almost certain to get elected. TPM has morphed in the past few years into Hone Harawira’s Mana Party, led in the background by a grifter only surpassed by Winston Peters, John Tamihere. The “genetically superior” Rawiri Waititi and the “Tangata Whenua, Tangata Tiriti or the racists” classifying Debbie Ngarewa-Packer have made the party into a radical Marxist nationalist party. On the bright side, there are elements of its belief in self-determination that would be compatible with a small state, it is also the only party that would decriminalise drug use and possession, but on the other side is a strong belief that NZers need to judged based on their classification. You’re either people of the land (Maori), people that are allowed to remain because of Te Tiriti (forget if you are born here and have no other citizenship), and everyone else who is “dying off” and doesn’t matter. TPM wants more tax, wants private land subject to Te Tiriti claims and Mana Whenua would have first right to buy private land up for sale. This is also the party that thinks all countries should be friends with Aotearoa, including the one attacking Ukraine and including the ones that operate literal Orwellian police states (e.g., DPRK and Eritrea). Neither Marxism nor nationalist identitarianism is good for individual freedom, nor can you expect tired old “anti-imperialist” apathy towards leftwing imperialism. TPM offers little for freedom lovers, but a lot for people who think Zimbabwe offers lessons to follow. 1/10

TOP – The Opportunities Party: Almost certain to not get elected.  TOP’s priorities are a greater welfare state (putting everyone on welfare), a broader tax base, more taxpayer funded healthcare and public transport, and the reinstatement of the Southerner train from Christchurch to Invercargill.  A party of clever people who think they know what’s best. The highlight is wanting to treat cannabis like alcohol, but you could vote for the ALCP and not have the universal basic income policy for people who don’t want to work. It has no interest in liberalising education and of course like the other leftwing parties, wants schoolchildren to be able to vote. It’s main value to freedom lovers is in denying Labour 1 or 2 seats, so go on get your leftie friends to vote TOP.  3/10

Women’s Rights Party: Certain to not get elected. Feminism that is now driven by being gender-critical around trans-genderism. There’s a place for that debate, and the Greens and Labour don't seem to want it, but everything else is just another socialist party for more welfare and more regulation. 2/10. 

Footnote:  I'll be interested to see how leaders of all of the parties respond to the war against Israel from the Islamofascist Hamas. Labour has already disgraced itself and National has shown backbone.

A poor critique of National's transport policy

It’s entirely in keeping with their philosophical bent, for taxpayer funded RNZ to publish as a lead article on its website, a piece by Timothy Welch, senior lecturer in Urban Planning at University of Auckland. It’s also hardly surprising that the taxpayer funded Spinoff has published the same article, as they share a common view of the world, which is predominantly sympathetic to the objectives and ideology behind transport policy in NZ since 2017. 

I am sure Mr Welch is a smart man, so it is pity that it seems to have been written in a rush because it is such a poor critique of the National Party’s transport policy. The views he expresses exemplify why I’m sceptical of urban planners. The very problems they seek to fix are in some considerable part because their predecessors had an overly simplistic view of the complexities of cities, economies and the wants and needs and preferences of human beings.  However, even more important is to understand that the philosophy of transport policy expounded by the Government, which also comes from some academia and is essentially the ideology promoted by the Green Party, which is to treat transport modal choices as a hierarchy that essentially devalues the personal preferences of the public relative to what the planners think is “good for society and the planet”. It devalues people’s time (by wanting people to travel more slowly), money (by wanting to tax them more for infrastructure and services they don’t use) and comfort (by wanting people to use less comfortable modes), in favour of choices that whilst certainly having merits in many circumstances, are for many users inferior to their own preferences (and do not reflect people’s willingness to pay).  What is worst is that much of the argument is based on overly simplistic rhetoric and claims that some of people’s choices are either morally wrong or based on them being “addicted” to driving.

So what about Welch’s article?

It was clearly written as a hit-job on National’s recently released transport policy, which itself has strong hints of central planning, command and control in picking projects it wants to advance, although these are mostly projects to facilitate faster and safer travel of motor vehicles, whether cars, buses or commercial vehicles.  Let’s be clear National is hardly advancing a free-market libertarian vision of transport, but it is a contrast from the view of the Greens and the Labour Government, which want to cut kilometres driven by cars and light commercial vehicles by 20% on average across the country (which in cities means much more than that, given the scope to cut driving in rural areas is much lower).  Just consider that, Labour wants you to drive 20% less, regardless of whether or not you have an EV.  Labour hasn’t quite swallowed the Green approach completely, as the Greens treat any road building as at best a waste of money, and at worst a crime against the planet which fuels people’s “addiction” to their cars (which they would only break away from if they were instead forced to pay for billions in subsidies for other modes of transport). 

Welch starts by claiming there is an old joke about “just one more lane” to relieve congestion, even though the main part of this proposal is actually about building intercity 4-lane highways between major centres, in the manner of countries like Finland, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Denmark, the UK and Ireland. Sure there are a few proposals that expand urban road capacity, but in none of these cases does it involve adding lanes to roads recently expanded. For example, New Zealand's first motorway - Johnsonville to Tawa, has the same number of lanes today as it did when it opened in 1950.  Maybe the old trope of the Greens that lanes just keep having to be added isn't universal after all?

He claims that National wants to build a four-lane highway from Whangarei to Tauranga for $6b when the $6b claim is only for four projects that cover only a fraction of the route (noting 205km of the route is already motorway/expressway with 177km remaining). He ties himself up in a rough calculation to say it couldn’t cost $6b, when he could have simply read the policy document in the first place.  It literally proposes $6b to four-laning Whangarei to Port Marsden, Warkworth to Wellsford, Cambridge to Piarere and Tauriko West SH29. 

He then claims that “The opportunity cost of these projects also needs to account for those who don’t – or don’t want to – drive a car”.  That begs two questions, why? And how don’t they? None of these projects hinders people who don’t want to drive, indeed building new highways offers opportunities to improve cycling on existing routes, and can support faster and more efficient bus services, and improves the amenity of towns bypassed for walking and cycling.

Furthermore, what is the opportunity cost of using funds collected from motor vehicle users (fuel excise and road user charges) to pay for roads? He would have a point if Crown (general taxpayers’) funds are being used to pay for them, but it is the opportunity cost of using ANY taxpayers’ funds? It takes money away from people spending on their home, their kids’ education, books, food, investing for their retirement. It doesn’t need to account for those who don’t want to drive, anymore than it needs to account for those who don’t want to consign freight by road. If people don’t want to drive they can catch scheduled bus services between Whangarei-Auckland-Hamilton and Tauranga, they can fly and if they are keen they could bike, but there is a curious blindspot among some planners about intercity bus services. They simply pretend they don’t exist because they see rail as the holy grail of virtuous, environmentally friendly transport, but it’s a shame they actually don’t want to pay for it out of their own funds.

He critiques National wanting to scrap light rail proposals for Auckland and Wellington, but then gets it wrong saying “National argues that additional motorways and tunnelling in Wellington would be more cost-effective”. National is proposing no new motorways in Wellington at all, but rather a second Mt Victoria Tunnel (which is not a motorway) and improved approach roads to it. 

The policy says “National supports bus rapid transit and bus priority lanes for Wellington to make it easier to get into and around the city. A duplicate Mt Victoria Tunnel will allow for greater bus access to the east, bus priority lanes on the roads leading to the tunnels, and much more free-flowing traffic through the tunnels, including for buses”. So did he just blank-out that National actually thinks bus rapid transit is better in favour of agitprop that it’s all about motorways, when literally no motorway is proposed?  Furthermore, the current LGWM Mt Victoria Tunnel proposal doesn’t include light rail anyway, but bus rapid transit.

Welch continues by claiming that light rail is “fast, efficient and equitable”, yet the LGWM proposal for light rail to Island Bay would still be slower than driving and slower than the current express bus service from Island Bay, because it would stop frequently.  It wouldn’t be efficient because it could never recover its capital costs, and it would be much worse in recovering the costs of operation compared with bus services. It wouldn’t be equitable because its eye-watering cost would be paid by ratepayers and road users throughout Wellington even though most would never use it (and it would, if LGWM is to be believed, significantly uplift land value along the corridor thanks to that subsidy).  He compares it to Sydney’s Randwick and Kingsford lines recently opened, even though the NSW Auditor Office notes that the project, originally costed at $2.1b ended up at $3.1b and that the project benefits have had to be revised downwards. Of course Sydney does have a population greater than New Zealand

Welch continues by claiming buses and trains produce about 80% less carbon emissions per passenger kilometre than cars, which is entirely dependent on patronage. Trains and buses with few people on them are not exactly environmentally friendly, and it is highly dependent on type of vehicle.  A plug-in hybrid has lower emissions per passenger km than a diesel bus. Bear in mind the ETS internalises the costs of climate change by putting a levy on the price of fuel, so motorists are already paying for the emissions they produce, and that price will be rising over time. In short, policies to reduce emissions are incentivising people to change behaviour, it’s just that it’s not enough for Welch.

Welch makes the claim that “Given the observable realities of the climate crisis, many have questioned the logic of leaning into road expansion as a policy, especially at the expense of efficient public transport”.  I’ll let you speculate on who the “many” are (and let’s leave aside the abuse of the term “efficient” again), but the whole basis of this is a widely cliché’d claim that “More roads encourage more traffic and more driving, often leading to even worse congestion”. Bear in mind that the bulk of the National proposal is for intercity highways to be upgraded and be faster and safer and have more capacity, and is not about congestion.  However, the “build more roads, watch them fill up” claim is neither universally applicable, nor takes into account a key element – price.

Most roads in New Zealand carry traffic volumes at a tiny fraction of their capacity, because the mere presence of a road doesn’t generate demand beyond what origins and destinations generate for personal or freight transport. Sure, expansion of an urban highway, especially one parallel to a public transport route, without any price signals to reflect cost and capacity, can encourage more demand and relocation of housing and businesses to reflect the lower generalised cost of travel.  Auckland has witnessed this as its population has increased and motorways improved, this has reduced travel times and encouraged more use of them. However, this is not a problem if the roads are paid for by those using them and price signals are set to manage demand.  This is where Welch is being wilfully blind because

“National will also introduce congestion charging as a new tool to help reduce travel times in our congested cities”

Congestion charging can mean new roads can be built and not get congested, it can mean motorists pay more to use roads as a scarce resource at times of peak demand and less when there is plenty of capacity.  Congestion charging is supported by the Greens (albeit as a tool to punish motorists), but it would do more to reduce emissions than building boondoggles. LGWM estimates congestion charging could reduce car trips into central Wellington by 8%, but you can speculate for yourself as to why Welch doesn’t celebrate this and rethink his narrative. Bear in mind also that the Labour Government received reports on Auckland congestion pricing in late 2019 and has essentially sat on it for three years, and Phil Twyford actively opposed Wellington congestion pricing when he was Minister. 

Welch then rightfully points out that EVs are a small proportion of the fleet, yet ignores the significant growth in hybrids and plug-in hybrid vehicles as well, which cut emissions by between 55% and 85% respectively on average. In short, the light vehicle fleet profile is one of lowering emissions, and this is likely to continue as such vehicles get cheaper, and the secondhand import market’s share of hybrids grows so much.

Then we get Welch’s weirdest comment:

“EVs require the same amount of road space and, due to their increased weight, potentially cause more road damage. But EV owners don’t buy petrol, which means they don’t pay excise tax – the same tax that pays for expanding roads”

The differences between EVs and petrol and diesel powered cars in terms of weight are insignificant in terms of road damage, this is why there is one rate for road user charges (RUC) for vehicles under 3.5 tonnes.  Around half of road damage costs are due to the effects of weather, and most of the rest are due to heavy vehicles, a few hundred kilogrammes of additional weight in a car are not important in terms of road wear. The bigger error is ignoring road user charges RUC by weirdly saying EVs don't pay excise tax (on petrol), but then neither do diesel vehicles.  EVs used to be liable for RUC, but have an exemption until 1 April 2024. Assuming the exemption is not extended, EVs will start to pay on a per kilometre basis then. This comment of his is fairly pointless.

Finally Welch claims the policies are akin to those from the 1950s and 1960s, which is perhaps an overly simplistic view of the time. In the 1950s Wellington had its biggest expansion of electric passenger rail in the country’s history to date, with construction of the line through the middle of the Hutt Valley and electrification to Upper Hutt, along with the development of Tawa that followed EMU service introduction to Paekakariki from 1949.  Yes governments did embark on gradual motorway building, but did so in a haphazard manner (Auckland’s North-Western Motorway didn’t even extend all the way to the city until 1983), largely responding to a public that preferred driving to the monopoly local authority owned and operated bus services, which suffered from regular strikes, lack of capital spending on new vehicles and poor quality of service (e.g. exact fare requirement in Auckland for many years).  It was also hardly car-centric when central government for decades taxed the importation of new cars by up to 60% or simply restricted the numbers permitted. This saw the price of cars inflated above market prices, and the fleet remain much older and less safe than it would have been otherwise. This didn’t completely end until 1998.  

There is nothing behind the claim that the road building of the past made transport “less efficient and less equitable”. Indeed the 1950s and 1960s were also dominated by a law that prohibited freight being moved more than 30-40 miles in competition with railways, because Welch’s predecessors in the world of planning thought they knew best how freight should be moved about in NZ.  The shackles of regulation on freight and passenger transport, and tariffs and import restrictions on vehicles were thrown off in the 1980s and 1990s making transport significantly more efficient. The idea it would be more efficient for motor vehicles to be using the Great South Road to travel between the Port of Auckland and Waikato, than the Southern Motorway is just ludicrous.  There are sound arguments to be made that the highly invasive motorway building through central Auckland did not take into the opportunity costs of the land used, which could have encouraged an alternative approach such as tunnelling or redirecting through traffic towards the west, but the simple point is that the past saw enormous inefficiencies and costs to safety and the environmental because one set of planners decided they knew what was best.

There are reasons to criticise the National transport policy. Who knows what the net economic benefits are of the proposals? Why isn't there a bypass of Te Aro for Wellington? Is Waka Kotahi the right structure for undertaking so many operational and regulatory activities? What should be the future of road user charges and fuel duty?  Should Kiwirail be split to encourage more rail operators to come to the market? What are the barriers to competition in various transport markets?  It's unclear how road safety will be addressed, and are there too many road controlling authorities? Is Auckland Transport performing efficiently and responsive to the needs of transport users? What about the public transport funding framework implemented by the Government.

Unfortunately Welch’s rant seems like an ill-focused take that could have just come from the Green Party press office. I expect he can do better than just ‘cars and roads bad, trains and trams good’.

Is National's proposed water reform enough?

I've been critical of the Labour Government's Three Waters' proposals, primarily because of the bizarre excessive centralisation, the opaque accountability and the lack of any serious measures to link the provision of water services to consumers. The co-governance element has little value and is only an inching forward of a ideological agenda to change public sector governance from one monopolised by liberal democratically elected politicians to one shared with appointed tribal elites.  It is the wrong solution to the right problem.  Besides, it was the hard-left, in the Alliance, Greens and the post-Douglas Labour Party that stopped water reform in the 1990s, so why trust them now?

If it were up to me I WOULD take water off of local government, I'd vest it in companies, owned directly by ratepayers, required to make a profit and transition income away from rates, towards user fees (even if it is a flat fee).  The bogeyman of privatisation, so carefully cultivated in the 1990s, and spread through the education system and much of the media is so stultifying that even ACT is quiet on it, but I think water SHOULD be privatised by handing it to property owners.  Inevitably these companies would merge and acquire one another, going from around 60 to around 10 or fewer, but that should be led by the market, not by Cabinet directed by the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) and its consultants. For all of the best will in the world, the odds they know what the optimum structure of the water industry should be, are remote. 

It's fair to say the two biggest reasons people are opposed to Three Water are co-governance and loss of local control. 

Regardless of the various theories behind what people think co-governance is, the fundamental point is that it introduces Iwi appointments of half of the members of a selection panel, which itself selects the Board members for the four water entities (which have boundaries that appear to look like they suit some Iwi boundaries, rather than the structure for the water industry).  There is a point that there is traditional Mana Whenua governance of waterways, but fresh, waste and stormwater infrastructure is not about that.  It is quite different to have power over the use of waterways that might feed a water treatment/reticulation system, or may receive waste/stormwater, where there is a genuine interest in the use of the resource (and discharge into it) and the infrastructure feeding it. Indeed I think there is LESS accountability under co-governance, as it is easier for Mana Whenua to hold water entities to account if they aren't part of the management of them.

The loss of local control I care relatively little about. Local government has in so many cases demonstrated that it is incapable of taking a long-term view of water infrastructure, and certainly is uninterested in concepts like user-pays, asset management and other ideas that, I suspect for too many local politicians, are either seen as a "neo-liberal free market" conspiracy, or something confusing to rip off ratepayers. 

So National has proposed the following:

Councils (TAs and unitary authorities of course) will need to deliver a plan for how they will transition their water services to a new model that meets water quality and infrastructure investment rules, while being financially sustainable in the long-term.  The Minister of Local Government will approve such entities.

It essentially means that structural reform will be led by local government, not the DIA and Cabinet, and it gives local government flexibility to determine how best to set up institutional arrangements that will be financially sustainable in the long-term.  It seems difficult to see how this can be achieved without being entities that are politically at arms-length, that are guaranteed revenue from either user fees or a proxy for user fees (hypothecated water rates for example, particularly for stormwater services).  Commercial Council Controlled Organisations may be obvious, but it seems likely that Councils will need to cluster together to be viable.  Central Hawke's Bay, Hastings, Napier and Wairoa have talked of this, but I suspect there needs to be a lot more of that, perhaps no more than four such entities in the South Island and eight in the North Island.

Finally, there is provision for the Minister to step in if Councils are slow in providing viable proposals, which seems appropriate, although you might wonder what happens if a Council that wants to merge its services with others that don't want it.  It has potential to get messy, but options can be developed for this.

Supporting the Water Quality Regulator to exclusively target water quality. It will also cover wastewater and stormwater, with a goal to reduce or eliminate contamination of local beaches and waterways.

It isn't unreasonable to have oversight of drinking water quality, but the inclusion of waste and stormwater is odd, as this is a function of regional councils. Should regional councils lose this function?  If not, will the regulator cover others who discharge waste into waterways?  If regional councils are to retain responsibility for waterways and water catchment, then shouldn't they be expected to perform these functions, and if not, why should they have these functions?  It seems overkill.  The Water Quality Regulator should best just focus on water quality, but it also needs to be moderated itself, so it doesn't seek standards that are excessive.  There are also questions about how it will operate in relation to the water entities.

National will establish a new, independent Water Infrastructure Regulator within the Commerce Commission to work alongside the existing Water Quality Regulator (Taumata Arowai). Water services will be regulated under Part 4 of the Commerce Act, alongside other essential infrastructure such as electricity lines.

This is economic regulation and is effectively a way of ensuring oversight of the new water entities not overcharging or over/under spending on water infrastructure.  It is encouraging to treat them like electricity lines companies, although a lot of work is needed to establish the value of the regulatory base of those assets.  It seems odd that it would report to the Minister of Local Government, it would be more appropriate to report to a Minister of Infrastructure (who also looks after energy and communications).  

BUT..

National is terrified of the p. word. 

The public ownership of water is not up for debate. Councils will not be able to propose water service models that involve privatisation. National’s plan is to return water assets to their rightful owners: the local communities who paid for them. We want local, public control and ownership of water assets, and that’s what this plan will deliver.

Even Rob Muldoon once considered selling minority shareholdings in Air New Zealand.  This is a pathetic surrender to left-wing scaremongering.  What is actually wrong if one or more Councils say they want private capital to invest in their water infrastructure, in a corporate model that pays dividends?  This would access new capital, and with an economic regulator there is no risk of any form of "profiteering" that Marxists claim would occur under this?  Have a backbone why wont you?  National did, after all, part privatise electricity generation and retail companies, why be scared, or is it up to ACT to propose allowing this?

Finally, what about user pays vs. rates?

The policy essentially leaves this open, so it could be user fees or could be rates based, but rates would need to be hypothecated. The only issue is that if Councils choose to go the user pays path, should there not be means to regulate Council rates downwards so they don't use it as a chance to maintain rates levels as well as user pays?  Why should only water entities have fees regulated, when Councils should have rates regulated more generally?

Conclusion

The proposal has merits, in fact it IS arguably enough. Just.  It lays the groundwork for water being treated as a utility, a service for consumers, and it is difficult to see how the entities that Councils propose can be viable for borrowing large amounts of capital if they are NOT commercial in some form (even in the form of consumer trusts), and it would seem easier to deliver long-term financial sustainability if there is user pays rather than rates (which are, after all, still Council determined).  However, I can imagine it might be necessary to be heavy-handed in making Councils set up entities that will be able to borrow and manage the enormous infrastructural uplift required. It also seems unlikely that central government can avoid putting significant amounts of taxpayers' money into uplifting the infrastructure deficit, but only on a one-off basis.  I suspect the end point in a few years will be around a dozen water companies. 

The fear of privatisation is pathetic, weak and disappointing, when there should be no reason to not argue for the right of local authorities to choose privatisation if they wish.  I know it's there to fend off the even more pathetic, scaremongering hysteria from the left, which will be amplified by idiotic leftwing journalists, but if you believe in local empowerment (!) then let it include the private sector. After all, most of the country's electricity lines companies and all telecommunications are delivered by the private sector, how is the party of business so terrified of it?

Still is it better than Three Waters? Yes, it is.  It has at least some requirements around performance, and oversight. It gives Councils a short time to get their act together to set up entities that will meet water quality requirements, and infrastructure investment requirements.  It is less centralised, at first, and offers more opportunity for some innovation locally, and ultimately both central government regulators will direct the water entities to deliver.

Sure it isn't what I would do, but it has the potential to get not too far away from what would be a good model for the water sector.  

Don't like the government? Blame the National Party

For the second time in over 20 years of MMP, the left has got, pretty much, what it wanted in a government.  This time, a Labour Party led by a complete neophyte (Jacinda has never sat in Cabinet, never been a junior Minister), with a caucus inhabited by unionists and ex.public servants, with the Greens (led by an ex. Marxist student activist - yes I remember him at university) and Winston the country's leading political whore-monger (look how he , will lead a leftwing government.

This government is already opposed to capitalism (although mind-numbingly can't work out what system means New Zealanders produces goods and services that get exported or sells services to tourists to pay their way in the world).  It is keen on identity politics and not only believes that climate change is damaging New Zealand, but that New Zealand reducing its emissions will make a difference to it.  This is pure scientific nonsense, but there's more.  This government believes that child poverty can be solved by giving people more of other peoples money for having children they can't afford to raise, and that it is not up to people to be responsible parents.  This government doesn't even realise that the biggest problems it campaigned on in the election, such as housing, healthcare, education, river pollution and welfare, are almost nothing to do with capitalism, but rather government intervention.

The problem with housing is primarily due to local government, applying the Resource Management Act, to constrain the supply of housing, in part to meet the new urbanist ideological objectives of densification that is the dominant philosophy of urban planning departments in major cities (not just in New Zealand, but also Australia and the US cities with the most expensive housing).  

The problem with healthcare is that there is little relationship between what consumers want and what they are able or willing to pay for, as politicians, not the market, drive the supply of healthcare.

The problem with education is that it is centrally driven and only recently has been opened up to additional competition, so that it can be innovative and meet the diverse needs of students and parents.  The new government is completely beholden to the producer interests of the suppliers of health and education, who in education in particular, are completely uninterested in being rewarded on performance.

The river pollution problem is a failure to apply private property rights, which could be applied to adjoining land owners including Iwi, to provide a framework to control water quality based on the self interest of multiple private owners of the rivers.  However, this government wants to kneecap one of the country's leading industries, even wanting a debate about "how many cows" there should be.  Why would anyone think they would know how many cows there should be, when they don't know how many of anything there should be, when it should be a matter of supply and demand?

The child poverty problem is a failure of the welfare state, which has never been so generous to people who want to have children, but can't afford to pay for them.  It is also the failure of policies that inflate the cost of living, primarily for housing (see above), but also the regular increases in GST, fuel tax and tinkering with the energy market (albeit not on the disastrous scale seen in Australia and the UK).  

Yet what real difference will be made?  Nine years of National saw little done in any of these areas, housing belatedly had some movement recently, charter schools were a start that was far too little too late, and National just fed the middle class welfare addiction that Helen Clark started.

This government wont do much different from National (yes you'll see uneconomic railway and tram line built instead of motorways), the difference is this lot actually believe in what they are doing.

You see the National Party has been a very poor promoter of the free market, private enterprise and individual freedom.

After leading a courageous government that started tackling welfarism and waste in government, Jim Bolger lost all sense of courage to do what is right and for no sound political reason whatsoever held a referendum on electoral reform that would obviously make it more difficult for one party government (and certainly was being backed by the left because they thought MMP would give them more power, and they were right).  He then led a chaotic government for two years with Winston Peters, before resigning and the final year limping on with Jenny Shipley.  Jim Bolger, remember, cut his teeth in being a Minister under Rob Muldoon, the most economically socialist government to date.

John Key got elected on a platform opposing the high tax, big government philosophy of Helen Clark and spent more, and how much really changed?  Was the welfare state reduced?  No.  Did the state's role in education get scaled back? Hardly.  Was the planning system liberalised?  Only for the government building roads.  Did corporate welfare get scaled back?  No, the opposite.  Yes there was some partial privatisation, but the fundamental causes of the housing crisis were barely touched.   John Key with Rodney Hide's help implemented Labour's local government policy on Auckland, creating a behemoth of a bureaucracy, with more employees than the councils it replaced, spending more.  Of course National also funded the multi-billion dollar underground rail fetish in downtown Auckland, which will never make a single dollar of operating surplus to pay for it.

What New Zealand now has is a government that believes in something, most of it is at best misguided, at worst destructive and ignorant, but it IS driven by philosophy.  A philosophy of "we know best" of "problems are best fixed by throwing money at them" of "climate change can be changed by whatever we do, and if you question it you're evil" of "a person should be judged by their identity group/s and intersectionality of them, not what they actually do, experience or think" of "you are a means to an end".

National only offered a diluted version of this, a half hearted "it's all going well" belief that "we're entitled to rule".  It didn't offer anything different, anything new and never challenged all of the assertions on poverty and the environment spouted by the left.

So while Bill English might say he is leading a "strong opposition", what is he actually opposed to?

The new government is just National with the courage of the philosophical convictions in implementing essentially the same policies, on steroids.

Do you really think National would reverse anything Labour is about to do?

Don't fear Winston

I am wholly relaxed about a government of which Winston Peters is a part, not just for the reasons outlined by Peter Cresswell, but because his bite is actually rather small when compared to many of those who despise him.

For a long time, Winston Peters was the second coming of Robert Muldoon, except of course when it came down to it, Winston wasn't that interested in turning back the clock of the reforms of Roger Douglas and Ruth Richardson (except that he wasn't keen on privatisation).  Despite his rhetoric, after all, central government privatised its shareholding in Auckland Airport in 1998 while Winston was in government.  

He isn't an acolyte of environmentalism, in that he doesn't believe in sacrificing prosperity and wealth to engage in what is virtually nothing besides virtue signalling about climate change.  In that sense, he is much less toxic than the Greens, who combine welfarism with environmentalism and the glorification of identity politics.  Winston has NONE of this (although his willingness to buy votes with the elderly could be described as a form of welfarism).

So the so-called rightwing commentators who think a National-Green coalition is a good idea are demonstrating how utterly beguiled they are with the image of the Greens and ignoring the substance.  Either a National-Green coalition would kneecap the Greens on principles and policies, causing them to splinter and disintegrate below the 5% threshold, or (more likely) a National-Green coalition would be led by the Greens pushing climate change, getting the baubles of railways and tramways that will cost hundreds of millions of dollars a year for many years to come in losses and continuing the slide towards identity politics that National has done nothing to reverse.  Furthermore, it will encourage more welfarism.

After all, it is the National Party that is willing to sell out its principles for power (Muldoon 1975-1984 being the most egregious case study).  The Greens are a party of principles and policy (the wrong ones in my view, but still).

That's why I'll be more comfortable with Winston calling the shots over National or Labour.  National doesn't lead the fight against leftwing ideas or concepts touted by Labour and the Greens and their supporters, it just plays personalities and fear.  

Winston may contain the growth of identity politics, he wont sign up to mindless environmentalism (even though he has policies that might feed into it) and he wont embrace welfarism on a grand scale.   OR he may just get a Cabinet post and go away.

In either case it is better than the Greens driving public policy.

NZ election result: winners, losers

First the biggest loser:  

You, that's assuming you're not seeking to extract other people's money from the state.  

You, if you believe that freedom of speech matters, and that there shouldn't be a Harmful Digital Communications Act.

You, if you believe that you own your body and shouldn't be criminalised for what you put in it.

You, if you believe that government should stick to justice, law and order and defence, and should not be involved in the delivery of health and education, that it should not seek to be parent to everyone and should not respond to all of the calls to impose "social justice" (a euphemism for "take money from people we don't like and give it to people we do").

The news from overseas sources makes New Zealand seem like it still basks in the age of the reforms of Roger Douglas and Ruth Richardson.  However, that's only because if you look at subsidies, protectionism and regulatory rent-seeking, NZ looks better than Australia and the US.  If you look at taxation, NZ is much simpler than most economies.  Yet, that relative position doesn't make NZ a free-market haven, and certainly not on personal freedoms.  

So what about the parties?

National, optimistic but too soon to tell will think it won, and to be fair Bill English did shake off his reputation as the biggest loser as a party leader in generations.  He did it by being evasive, by focusing attention on his rival's spending plans, even though his own plans are not fundamentally different.  It is on form, as a party that doesn't really reform anything.  Riding on the back of an economy that gains from the reforms of the 80s and 90s, on high commodity food prices and the spending power of new migrants, its approach to most issues is not to change much.   At best it does seek to cut taxes, but at worst it rolls back virtually nothing Labour does.  The middle class welfare package instituted by the previous Labour Government was kept.  Yet, in an MMP environment the Nats did successfully frighten people into turning out and voting for it.  It deterred ACT supporters from voting ACT (and indeed some NZF supporters too).  Being in a position to get a fourth term is an achievement historically, but you have to ask for what?  Does National exist primarily to stop Labour et al from doing stuff?  The number of National supporters keen on governing with the Greens tells you exactly that.  Principles don't matter, the role of the state doesn't matter, nor is there interest in pushing back against a culture of dependency and statism.  National exists to stop Labour, this time we'll see if it worked.

Labour disappointed but too soon to tell  thinks it has won, because it could conceivably lead government with the Greens and Winston Peters.  Yet it did so mainly by consolidating the vote on the left.  It decimated the Maori Party strategically, it presented a leftwing manifesto and took the Greens back to its core.  Yet the widespread "Jacinda-mania" star status proved to be for little effect.  Few National voters were convinced that a young woman who has never had a job in the private sector, and has never even been a Cabinet Minister could be Prime Minister.  Labour did win the media narrative (along with the Greens) about relative child poverty and river pollution, all without much scrutiny about the statistics (or the causes or better yet, the solutions).  It has a chance at power, but has a long way to go to attract votes from groups other than public servants, beneficiaries, students,  Maori and Pacific Island voters and unionised workers.  It hasn't broken through in most regional towns and cities, nor significant parts of Auckland.  Yes Jacinda has almost done it, but if she does become PM, she'll be getting wagged by the tail of James Shaw and Winston Peters, and that is NOT a winning position to be in.  

Winston Peters won (I mean really, he runs it, it is his) lost seats, but is the master of political positioning.   Seriously, he has won, whilst Bill and Jacinda slut around him for the next few weeks.

 He puts himself in the centre, whilst being a populist who embraces the left (more money for pensioners and opposition to privatisation) and the right (sceptical about immigration, sceptical about higher taxes and opposition to identity politics by race if not nationality).   He leads the only truly fungible MMP party, in that he could support either main party and no longer would he really upset his base of supporters (like he did in 1996, but only because he broke up from the Nats to oppose them, and misjudged that his supporters cared about policy - when they are largely driven by gut emotion).  He'll get a good job and do little with it, he'll give a bunch of ne'er do wells (most of whom couldn't hope to get a job as "highly paid" as an MP) employment, and he'll one or two totemic legacies.  One might be the economically ridiculous idea of relocating the Ports of Auckland to Marsden Point, better would be a referendum on the Maori seats.   Winston won and why are you surprised?  He knows MMP better than anyone else, and no other politician is willing or able to replicate him.

Greens never really lose and were hit fairly hard, not least because it showed itself to be the party of welfare cheats.  Jacinda-mania attracted the airheads back to Labour, but it showed itself to still be a ginger-group of hard-left finger-waggers whose main instincts are to tell people off, tax what they don't like, subsidise what they like and virtue signal.  The good news for the Greens is that they still get an easy ride on most of their policy positions, particularly the constant false claims that "action on climate change" will save lives, the war on fossil fuels and their obsession with identity politics.  The media still loves them, even given the Metiria scandal (which actually exposed their fundamental belief that everyone owes everyone else a living).  Yes the Green Party has never actually been in a coalition, but it is very very influential and relies on new cohorts of optimistic state worshippers being recruited year on year.  

ACT lost badly in part due to the Nats successfully scaring voters on the right to voting National, but also because David Seymour moved too far away from having a coherent position on issues.  He was seen as backing National, but whether it was too hard for him to get traction on multiple issues or he lacked ground support to campaign, the only policy that got a lot of publicity was in increasing teacher pay.  ACT once had a coherent less government, lower tax position that promoted more competition in public services, was tough on law and order and rejected identity politics.  Yet Seymour couldn't break through with such a message.  The brand is mixed, he made statements about abortion which would alienate some, but he tried hard.  ACT needs to work out who it is targeting and what message it is giving.   There is a gap on the right, one that will open up large when a certain Maori ex. National MP finally retires.  ACT can't fill much of that gap, but it sure can grab some of it.

Maori Party is nearly finished as Labour branded it as National's patsies, which was unfair.  Maori are smarter than identity politics warriors fighting "colonialism" as Marama Fox implied. It will probably remain for some time, but looks like it is slipping back to be another Mana Motuhake.  It would have a chance if Labour gets power,  with the Greens, as it could position itself as the Opposition for Maori again.  However,  its real future is threatened by a referendum on the Maori seats, which if it includes Maori who choose to be on the general roll, could completely render the Maori Party obsolete.  

TOP did well for being led by a vulgarian.  For all of the rhetoric, TOP had policies based on a philosophical position, not simply "evidence led".  The philosophy was to penalise asset ownership as a solution to a market failure, rather than address the supply side element.  Everything else it stood for was a redistributionist/environmentalist agenda that competed with the Greens and Labour.  Gareth Morgan got the party attention, but also turned off many.  He topped it off by blaming voters for being selfish and stupid.  What more is there to say?

United Future has no future

The youth didn't turn out in the magical numbers to vote for the left, and if they did turn out they were not a single bloc (who is?).  After all the left is the mainstream.  Besides housing (which has become a problem because of the enviro-left approach to planning, through the RMA and the application of new urbanism to city boundaries in Auckland and Wellington), the narrative about child poverty was from the left (Beth Houlbrooke from ACT was hounded down when she suggested people on low incomes should not have children they expect taxpayers to pay for), the narrative around the environment was partially a banal question around "should there be fewer dairy cows" (the sort of nonsense seen in adolescent level policy debate).

What now?

Winston will make his choice, either Bill English will get to have three years of do little, conservative (literally) government.  Otherwise Jacinda Ardern will suddenly find she has gone from MP to PM without even having sat in on a Cabinet meeting, with Winston wagging her dog and the Greens on the sidelines providing confidence and supply.  I am uncomfortable with the latter, primarily because culturally the bent of Jacinda will be to support more identity politics based on race and sex, less freedom of speech and fewer private property rights.  Not that the Nats are practically better, but Labour and the Greens actually believe in state power and collectivising people over individual rights and individual responsibility.

ACT needs to refocus

For those who think government does too much, who think individuals alone or with others should have more power and responsibility to find solutions to the problems of today, there is little to offer.   The best hope might be for ACT to be in Opposition, regardless.  To campaign more clearly on principles, which should be around private property rights, everyone being equal under the law (including the abolition of Maori-only political representation), opening up education to choice and diversity, tackling the culture of welfare dependency, opposing state subsidies for business, more taxation and more state ownership.  ACT should firmly come down on limiting the scope and powers   of local government, on ridding central government of wasteful politically-correct bureaucracies and taking on identity politics.   Yes it should support other parties when it comes to victimless crimes, but there should not be a unified view on abortion.  It should be tough on real crime, tough on parental responsibility, but also take on measures that governments have done that increase the cost of living.  This includes the constraining of housing supply, and immigration policies that mean new migrants utilise the capital of taxpayer funded infrastructure, without actually paying for it.

What Winston does as his possible swan song is of minor interest, what matters is there being a party that stands up for something different.  For now, only ACT can do that.

Harmful Digital Communications Act indeed

Turn away for long enough and I find the NZ government does something outrageous to curtail freedom and to expand Nanny State, sure enough it has with the Orwellian sounding "Harmful Digital Communications Act".  Even if I supported it, if I was a Minister getting that title passed over my desk by a Ministry of Justice manager, I'd have tore a strip off of her or him for having had a complete lack of any education in either literature or history to give ANY legislation such a title.

The purpose of the Act as well has shades of Big Brother:

"to deter, prevent, and mitigate harm caused to individuals by digital communications; and

provide victims of harmful digital communications with a quick and efficient means of redress"

It's a curious post-modernist trend for laws to be created not to protect rights based on well worn principles of individual rights and freedoms, property rights, contracts and torts, but to "prevent harm" - to have laws to sanitise life so that "everyone" is protected.

However, the term "harm" doesn't mean physical harm.  There is no need for new laws covering an actual infringement of your body (although the digital dimension does justify ensuring laws protect your property and covers contracts and torts), for such laws exist - in abundance - including ones to protect you from yourself.  The harm being covered is, what "The Flight of the Conchords" would say are "hurt feelings".

Being offended, is to be harmed.  To be distressed by what someone else has said, is to harmed.  This goes beyond defamation, which is - indeed - damage to one's property in the form of your reputation. It's an almost childlike drive to make everything structured and inoffensive.  In the UK, it came out in its most absurd form a few months ago with the National Union of Students Women's Conference saying:

"Some delegates are requesting that we move to jazz hands rather than clapping, as it's triggering anxiety. Please be mindful"

I didn't make that up.  If someone is a little bit upset, then everyone else must conform to avoid upsetting that person.  It's the radical so-called "progressive" identity politics champions being manufactured by post-modernist university departments out of air headed students raised on this form of Newspeak. 

So the Harmful Digital Communications Act is about "serious emotional distress".  It is now a crime in New Zealand to make someone else upset, digitally (now now!).  I know I did that when I separated from my wife, thankfully I didn't do it by text message today, or I might be in trouble.

However, let's see how you might get into trouble, because Amy Adams, the National Party, the Labour Party, the Maori Party, NZ First and much of the Green Party thinks your freedom of speech should be curtailed, in case it distresses someone.  Kudos to ACT's David Seymour for standing up to it, and indeed Russel Norman, Gareth Hughes, Julie-Anne Genter and Steffan Browning for having thought about it.  

I know this legislation has had much coverage online for what's bad about it, but it deserves constant attention, and every single MP who voted for it needs to be exposed for their moronic endorsement of it.  It's a disgrace to all who voted for it, and if anything indicates clearly how utterly incompetent they are in being able to apply principle and concepts to problems and issues, it is this law.

I encourage all to push the boundaries of this law to expose this incompetence.

Libertarianz and a new liberal party?

Unfortunately I can't attend the Libertarianz conference this weekend, not the least because I left NZ seven years ago and haven't looked back.  Unfortunately because it promises to be the best ever, largely because the political environment for a political party that explicitly believes in less government and a smaller state has changed, dramatically.

You see the primary political debate today, as it has been throughout the last century, is the role of the state.  Leaders of major parties try to evade this, because politics has become, to a large part, an exercise in show business, slogans, imagery and trivia.  Rare is there in depth discussion about policy, philosophy or principles, but often is then commentary about politicians' backgrounds, their empathy, how they speak, look and whether they care.

With the rise of television, a medium primarily of entertainment, politics has become the dark science of the sound bite, of imagery.

However, it isn't just about that.  The internet has opened up the opportunity for anyone to comment on politics, to write or talk about it.  That has started to change political discourse, so that what people see and read is not just what the mainstream media wants them to see.

For those of us who seek to advance a consistent stand for less government, both in economics and in people's private lives, politics in NZ is at a turning point.

ACT has shrunk to a rump that is unlikely to be sustainable, and is led by John Banks, a man from the past, with a past that is simply not credible in advancing smaller government on both economic and social matters.  As Peter Cresswell said, its principles are sound, but its policies and strategies have failed to come close to sustaining a party that builds a core support of those who do not want the automatic answer of a politician to any issue of the day to be "I'll pass a new law" "I'll spend some more of other people's money".

Libertarianz has never managed to pass an electoral threshold to make it more than a dedicated club of people who simply couldn't stomach compromising their principles.  Both the presence of ACT, and the very low probability of electoral success, saw Libertarianz largely ignored, perpetuating that lack of success.  Indeed, the two most successful outlets for libertarian ideas and policies have not been the party, but the radio shows hosted by Lindsay Perigo in the 1990s and most recently Peter Cresswell's excellent blog.

So what now?

Maybe this is what I would say if I had a chance to talk to the conference this weekend...

NZ politics is dominated by political parties that share one philosophy - statism - the belief that the state should intervene, should spend other people's money, should borrow on their behalf, should pass new laws and regulations, and that there is no principled reason why it shouldn't do so.

The mainstream media echoes this.  All too often journalists ask politicians what they would "do", not "do you think the government should do something about this" or "should the government get out of the way"?  The education system is dominated by statists, nurtured by leftwing unions and academics, who all sign up to a carbon copy set of beliefs.  At best capitalism is seen as a necessary evil, but along with that are the post-modernist identity politics, the neo-Marxist belief that people are defined by their race and sex, and most recently even religion and body size.  

The legitimate concerns over pollution have been transformed into an all-encompassing religion of environmentalism, where evidence is skewed to suit a particular monologue - that man is a disease, pollution is ever increasing, that key words like "nuclear" "genetic engineering" "fossil fuels" are all placed in a basket of horror.  Where legitimate concerns are exaggerated, where evidence contrary to the monologue is ignored and the message is given that without massive state intervention in the economy and people's private lives, the environment will be destroyed and so will humanity.   

Have no doubt, environmentalism is the hijacking of universal opposition to pollution and appreciation of nature, to embrace an almost misanthropic desire to control, to attack capitalism, to grow a paternalistic, regulated state that tells people what to do, what not to do and takes their money to penalise what they don't like (e.g. flying) and support what they do like (windfarms and railways).

The Greens, of course, the ones carrying the banner for this.

Never is there a problem that doesn't demand a new law, or for more money to be spent on it. 

Behind the smiling faces of bright eyed bushy tailed people who claim to be speaking for what is clean, what is good, what is right and to help the poor, are people who sometimes tout xenophobia (if you doubt me, see how they talk about foreign investors, and how that parallels communist parodies of capitalists), who claim to use science and evidence, but peddle scaremongering.  I remember in 1999 Jeanette Fitzsimons said it was the last Christmas when we could trust a potato.  The genetic engineering armageddon hasn't happened, more than a couple are only wishing the global warming one does.   Most recently has been scaremongering about mobile phone transmitters, purely on perception. 

 

They believe in big government, with the small exceptions of scepticism about unlimited state surveillance powers and drugs, it is a party that thinks the state is people.  It sees children as not the parents' responsibility, but everyone's.  It sees people not as individuals, but as races, as sexes, as sexualities, as classes, as labels.  A party of Marxists, nationalists and even misanthropes.  People who believe the way to help people is to give them more of money taken from other people.  People whose contradictions are endless.   

I'll take one favourite of mine.  CO2 emissions should be cut, they say, but foreign ships carrying freight to and from NZ, that visit several ports along the NZ coast, shouldn't be allowed to carry freight between NZ ports.   Even though a ship that is travelling anyway emits hardly any more pollution carrying some freight from say Lyttelton to Auckland, it shouldn't be allowed.  Why?  Because the Greens sympathise with the workers on board those ships, as they aren't paid as much as NZ seafarers.  So the Greens, who say they believe in the environment, and believe in jobs and say they aren't racist, would rather have more pollution to shift freight, would rather deny Filipino seafarers jobs that are, rationally, better than others they have, all to protect their well above average salary (i.e. rich by their measure) union mates.

It doesn't take long to get down to what they really believe.  The Greens want more and more laws, more and more of your money and to spend more and more of it on their pet projects.  Precious little of it is about freedom, and for them the state is your friend, even when it is telling you what to do, spending your money on what you don't want and frightening your children with talk of Armageddon. 

Of course Labour has done a lot of that as well, for much longer.  Between the Greens and Labour it's purely a matter of degree, but I recall when Helen Clark said "the state is sovereign".  She didn't think there was anything that should stop government and politicians from doing as they think is best.  It simply made me realise what drives Labour politicians today - the desire to tell people what to do, to change society by passing laws, by spending other people's money, but most of all the cold, humourless, finger pointing oppression of the suppression of free speech.  The willingness to call anyone racist, who dares question special treatment on the basis of race, or sexist, anyone who doesn't want to introduce quotas for women on boards, has infiltrated our universities, our media and the state sector, and has been a method to deny debate and to debase argument, whilst smearing those who question in like a Red Guard from Maoist China.  Phrases like "cultural safety" have spread a climate of fear in some institutions.   A belief that people should never be offended, never be upset and that the state should police this has been one of the more insidious developments in the last twenty or so years.  It parallels the demand for faux respect of young thugs who gleefully lash out violently at those who look at them the wrong way, as if everyone should be ultra-vigilant about their behaviour and language to not offend these empty esteem-less flowers.

Being able to be open, honest and unafraid of offending people is the hallmark of a liberal society.  Labour has cultivated a culture that has eroded that.  Dare criticise Islam without being labelled an Islamophobe.  Dare criticise Maori organisations or Maori specific initiatives without being labelled as racist.  Dare criticise calls for laws to enforce quotas for women on corporate boards, or to challenge the DPB, and be called sexist.   It's not just intellectually lazy, it's aggressive, confrontational and authoritarian.  Name calling is not an argument.  The left do it all the time, we must resist doing so, unless the facts speak for themselves.

Labour's saving grace is to have courage of its convictions, meaning that almost every Labour government makes changes that endure.   It is a point those of us who want to advance freedom should grasp.   However, for the good that Labour has achieved - and most of us may look back at some of the dramatic changes pushed through in the 1980s - it has also given birth to a welfare state that has promoted and sustained intergenerational dependency, it took the just cause of redress against historic state racism and property theft to create a new taxpayer funded Maori elite, to which it is blasphemy to challenge or to hold accountable.

Labour is driven by the desire for state intervention, by the desire to change people through government, and has been responsible for so much corrosion of individual responsibility, of pride in individual success, of promotion of moral relativism and envy, that it is simply the Greens diluted.

How about National then?  What a relief so many of us felt when it was 2008 and finally we said farewell to Helen Clark, as she was about to embark on a new job, in New York, ending world poverty, on a US$500,000 a year tax free salary, travelling first class and staying in five star hotels.

However, the euphoria didn't take long to end.

The National Party, like ACT, has founding principles that I can largely agree with, but in reality it is a party with one single purpose - to be in power.  With the exception of three years when Ruth Richardson saved the country from bankruptcy, National's legacy has been at best to slow Labour, at worst to preside over a mammoth growth in the state that would make any socialist blush in the form of Think Big.  Right now it is, once again, the party of fiscal incontinence, with a new Think Big focused on building roads and a state broadband network.  National brought us the Resource Management Act, and sees reform of it largely to allow it to embark on its Think Big programme.  National sees the criminal justice system as going only one way, with new laws to allow stop and search of anyone, to allow search of property without a warrant.   National can sometimes throw us a tax cut, can sometimes ever so courageously try to sell a minority stake in a power company, it might even reverse the powers given to local government.

However, for all that, there is little sign National will advance real reforms to liberate planning laws by supporting private property rights, luke warm interest in opening up education to choice and liberating it from centralised command, control and rent seeking from teaching unions.  National is building, once again, the corporatist state, with fervent state intervention and investment in telecommunications.  It wont dare touch the Maori corporatist state or the race based electorates.   Beyond all that National offers absolutely nothing on personal freedom.   It wont even contemplate questioning the war on drugs, despite such radical forces as The Economist calling for an end to it.   It's behaviour on law and order says all you need to know - little respect for the presumption of innocence, little respect for due process.   To National, the people the police question or arrest are not "their" people, they are probably guilty anyway, so aren't really deserving of sympathy.

For a party that's meant to be about aspiration, individual achievement and respect of freedom and private property, this is contemptible.

Beyond all that, we have two race based parties, born from the belief that Maori, as a people, must have parties that mean the state specifically looks after them.   Parties that embrace the corporatist Maori elite, parties that believe that it is racist to have a colourblind state, that it is racist for an election to mean one person one vote, that it isn't possible for Maori to be individuals, and to not want Maori statist politicians to represent them.

No other party offers anything that consistently supports less government, less tax, more freedom, and a presumption that the answer to policy issues is not for government to do more.  

That's why we should.

ACT failed because it sold out principles for populism, for bending as the wind blew and so being a party like every other, slippery, slimy and more interested in power than principle and policies.  It is as good as finished.

Libertarianz failed because it has been unable to gather momentum for ideas, for principles and sell a convincing message about less government.   Quite simply not enough NZers believe in a future without the welfare state, without universal basic education and healthcare, and they aren't convinced that capitalism, free markets and most of all, individual initiative, can be an effective as well as a moral substitute for government.

There are good people in the National Party, people who do believe in less government.   They may mean that, in the long term, there is some hope.   However, they are in a party that exists to straddle the mainstream.  They face opponents who embrace the state, who talk of "investing" other people's money and passing new laws, and of being modern and "reinventing" politics, when virtually all of them are just rehashing statism, again and again.

Those good people in National are our allies, but National will not and cannot be a sufficient platform in itself for disseminating liberalism.   

So what do I mean by liberalism?

It isn't the leftwing definition, whereby it means being liberal with other people's money or being a moral relativist about crime.  It doesn't mean letting murderers and rapists out of prison in a handful of years because it wasn't really "their" fault.  I am using it as a synonym of libertarianism, classical liberalism or whatever you want to call it.  

I mean belief in less government.  The belief that government can't and shouldn't pick winners in the economy.  The belief that the state sector's role in the economy exists primarily to protect law and order, enforce contracts and protect property rights.  The belief that state welfare should not incentivise its usage as a choice, rather as a last resort and that those who wish to help those less fortunate should be encouraged to do so, with their own money.  The belief that the state shouldn't dominate the education system, but allow it to flourish with diversity, variety and choice, so parents choose and their choices are reflected in where the money goes in the system.  The belief that healthcare policy is not a choice between a paternalistic centralised state system or the broken US corporatist/state system.   Finally, the belief that pensions and retirement cannot be guaranteed by a ponzi like state scheme.   I do not fear foreign investment, but embrace the idea that state owned enterprises should be privatised, perhaps by handing out shares to taxpayers as well as sales to cornerstone investors.

I also think that the basis for a free, secure society is rule of law, which means reviewing all criminal laws, to decriminalise or abolish victimless crimes, including reviewing drugs policy.  A point that needs to work with welfare, education, health and even ACC policies.   The Libertarianz policy of legalising drugs needs to answer real concerns from parents that it will mean schools are awash with brain damaging substances - one of the answers is to look at Portugal.

It means that the rule based RMA, driven by local planners who just think they know best how your property should "fit in" to their grand ideas, is replaced by a property rights based framework, so that what you do and don't do with your property is based on how it affects the rights of others to do the same with theirs.

I also think that monetary policy's role in the recent financial crisis needs to be investigated and the fundamentals of monetary policy reviewed.

A new party needs to come up with some clear messages.  It needs to defend capitalism without shame, it needs to take on every attempt to create a new law, a new regulation and a new tax, with arguments based on principle, experience and reason.   It needs to harness the natural scepticism most people have of politicians and bureaucracy.  

After all, would people really expect their MPs to buy their groceries, their clothes, their holidays?  Why should they trust them to buy them homes, their healthcare, their pensions and their kids' education?

Why should the future of Maori be defined not by what they themselves achieve as individuals, as employees, employers, entrepreneurs, parents, as people - but by what the government gives them in money, jobs or "rights"?

The new party will not have the policies of Libertarianz, not because they are wrong, but because they are unrealistic in a Parliamentary term for a small party.  What we need is a clear statement that the new party will vote consistently for steps to reduce the size of the state in its non-core functions, that it will support fiscal responsibility, so that a tax cut means a spending cut, that it will support property rights and enforcement of real crimes, but not creating new crimes just on the whim of the latest outrage.  It means rejecting Think Big whether it be roads or railways, broadband or solar energy.  It means supporting steps towards individuals having more choice in health and education, and weaning people off of welfare, by making it easier to start up and sustain business without the state wanting its share from day one.

It means changing the terms of the debate. 

It means arguing for less state, not more, for the state to do what it is meant to do well, and to leave everything else to businesses, voluntary groups and individuals.

and to do so proudly.