As the Labour government has a clear majority, I wouldn’t be entering into any formal agreement with the Greens. Why would you?
While I accept James Shaw has done a good job as minister, you wouldn’t want a return of Eugenie Sage.
For the next three years, my hope is for clarity and stability. We’ve had enough problems with covid-19 to last forever.
I realise there are issues with health, welfare and housing, but I’m not qualified to comment.
The areas I want to see addressed are rural connectivity, RMA reform, workable freshwater regulations, migrant labour and a dedicated trade minister.
The $60 million Labour has promised for rural connectivity is much-needed. The structure of the package is excellent.
The Resource Management Act needs urgent reform. It is a leg rope on the economy.
We also need some sense in the freshwater regulations, and maybe with Sage out of the equation good sense will prevail.
As I can’t see our borders opening for months, we need access to foreign labour.
I’m totally relaxed about the Government borrowing, especially considering the interest rates we currently enjoy.
Feds played an astute game pre-election, they’ll be able to represent the rural sector well.
The lesson I took from the election result was the power the provinces have.
Taking our Wairarapa electorate as an example, it is historically a safe National seat. Its majority to National just two elections ago was 6771. Currently, Labour holds the seat with an election night majority of 5411. That tells me that in just nine years ,12,182 people in the Wairarapa alone have stopped voting for the National candidate and voted for the Labour person instead.
The party vote comparison is even more dramatic. National has lost 18,925 supporters over nine years.
A problem in the Wairarapa has been that for 15 years we had National MP’s that didn’t demonstrate a great interest in the electorate. This election, however, we had a good National candidate who ran a strong campaign.
Kieran MacAnulty was a Labour list MP based in the Wairarapa since his election in 2017. He’s worked hard, made every post a winner and been rewarded accordingly.
He’s a person for the future; young, hard working and extremely bright with a sense of humour. He’s spent three years on the Primary Production Select Committee, and so knows the industry and the issues.
The achievements of Labour candidate Jo Luxton in Rangitata and Anna Lorck in Tukituki were also considerable.
Provincially, National had a loss of support of around 40% in seven electorates. They have problems.
As I’ve written previously, I believed Simon Bridges did a good job as leader during an extremely difficult period. The squabbles that followed his sacking were obscene.
The election campaign that National ran was a shambles from start to finish. Heads need to roll at board level, as well as from leadership.
The party’s policies didn’t resonate with the electorate and some had me wondering. Creating a dedicated border agency was one. I thought that given the size of the current problems our border protection was excellent. That occurred because people from a range of departments worked together for a common purpose. Creating an agency for covid-19 and then having to disband it once the problem was fixed didn’t seem smart.
In addition, both National’s leader and deputy had cases of foot-and-mouth that were ridiculous.
Pillorying the obese seemed an own goal and as the scriptures say, “let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”
I also believe that Kiwis are over the petty points scoring that was yesterday’s politics. Call a party to account – sure, present alternative policies – definitely, but cut the snarky, petty, bitchy rhetoric.
In my view, National displayed a lack of credible leadership that didn’t reflect the electorate. The policies were lacking and the campaign was rubbish. The provinces voted accordingly. National should learn from that.
For a start, although there was considerable rhetoric about National being a party of the provinces, their actions didn’t reflect that. To me the zero-carbon legislation was ineffective, simplistic and city-centric, but National supported it, hook, line and sinker.
ACT was the only party that didn’t.
Likewise, the gun laws were unworkable and again aimed at the urban, liberal voter who wouldn’t know a rifle from a trifle.
Again, National fully supported the legislation obviously thinking the Auckland urban voter was more important than those in the provinces.
ACT didn’t support that legislation either.
National have only got a short time to get their stuff together, otherwise ACT will be the party of the right, leaving National wallowing around the centre.
I’ll be watching with interest.
