[ad_1]
Election 2020
The leaders of the five main parties in Parliament shared a washed-out podium for the first time in the election campaign, with the exception of NZ First’s Winston Peters, broadcast live from his bus tour of the South Island. Tim Murphy reports.
This was not a debate. It was more like individual rounds of golf than a game of tennis: shots were fired but not returned, and each politician for himself.
Winston Peters of New Zealand First couldn’t do it, stuck somewhere on his campaign bus at the top of the South Island, while the other major party leaders who had been in Parliament had just expired, one by one. , at a Business NZ virtual conference in Auckland.
Another MP now leading a party, Advance NZ’s Jami-Lee Ross, missed the cut, but MC Sean Plunket didn’t apologize for that.
It was a pretty sterile affair at the Hilton Hotel in Princes Wharf, all masks and disinfectant for the 20+ media and some sponsors and organizers in a meeting room, and a man with spray and wipes eliminating the physical and political presence of each speaker from the podium before each new leader appeared.
Peters was at a self-imposed handicap, beaming from what looked like a darkened motel room (or was it the war room aboard the Handbrake One, the field bus?), But none of the leaders could get any answers or lives. of the disintermediated online audience.
The task was to set the economic and trade policies of their parties, but the speeches ranged from highly specific (Act’s David Seymour) to ad hoc (National’s Peters and Judith Collins). No one showed up in an imposing manner and as Peters physically walked in, most of the rest just called him on the phone.
David seymour
The energizing bunny of politics, Seymour discussed ACT’s two founding purposes (for entrepreneurs and independent thinkers, and to make a difference in public policy), three areas in which New Zealand needs a policy change (to get real about our Covid public health response, an honest conversation about our fiscal track record and “how to grow stronger and better”) and five points learned from the Taiwan pandemic response, which ACT would emulate.
He asked the Government to make premature victory laps, to National for “touring the country announcing expenses every day,” he highlighted the Resource Management Law as a priority objective of the Law, he promised to do better for the fifth of the kiwis that leave school “functionally illiterate” and remove the restrictions of the Office of Foreign Investment on the entry of capital to this country.
“I hope,” he told the invisible business audience, “that you give your party vote to ACT to raise the level of the debate in Parliament and we come out stronger, as winners.”
James shaw
Shaw, restrained and perhaps even embarrassed after his brush with the scandal for lobbying for $ 11 million for the Taranaki Green School, arrived armed with a tight three-point presentation, focusing on the country’s infrastructure deficit, the need for a export-led recovery and focus. on government finances. He also brought a new idea, daring to “choose a winner”, and it was not the Green School.
He listed the long-term challenges “that are not going to go away just because we are in the middle of the Covid crisis. We have to flood the economy with equity … I would say we have a responsibility to guarantee future generations every dollar of that stimulus. it addresses long-term challenges “such as inequality, the built environment and climate change.”
Shaw’s “winner” was what he called “electronic transportation.” This was beyond the Teslas electric cars of this world. New Zealand had startups that could help develop “very small electric planes that could help decarbonize aviation” and also electric ferries and ships that would use technology learned from the America’s Cup.
“The Green Party has shown that we are a credible, stable and responsible partner of Labor,” and aimed “not only to return to Parliament, but also to be part of the next Labor-led government.”
Winston peters
Peters was not in the mood for the Greens in office, although he did not name the party in his slightly jarring broadcast from the south. “New Zealand needs a moderate force in government. This country has a bad habit of being distracted by waking problems.”
He used wake up a bit as well as “mindless ideology” and reached a crescendo in the end, exhorting business people in boardrooms and offices: “Don’t fill the country … that’s what this election is about.”
Of the speakers, Peters was the “Ok, Doomer.” He said that the economic crisis was not only the worst of his life (75 years) but also that of his parents, except for the two world wars.
However, he leaned back in search of answers. “What would Roosevelt have done? What would the smart governments of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s have done?”
“My party does not underestimate the global consequences and the implications for governments and central banks to do business.” To help New Zealand return to being the export leader it once was, the country needed smart fiscal policies and the strength that NZ First had achieved in three crises during this administration.
His bus tour had emphasized how bad things seemed for people in communities across the country. “Some of the things that I’ve heard have been incredible, out of this world.”
Judith Collins
The national leader was late, delaying the live-streamed event for a few minutes and giving those on the line an elevator music interlude. “Hello everyone. Thanks for joining us today. I know you are somewhere.”
Collins has been relatively low-key in her eight weeks as a leader and was solid here, not really sparkling but talking and beyond her grades and pinging Labor on the border issues and Shaw on the Green School. His main focus was the extent of the debt and the kind of spending that the government has made during the economic crisis: “$ 500 million every week in wage subsidies, a Hastings Hospital of Christchurch Hospital, every week is another large public hospital that it is not being built with that money it is being borrowed. “
The Reserve Bank injected the equivalent of a billion dollars a week into the economy, and the debt increased from 20 to 40 percent of GDP, “equal to the construction of 50 new hospitals.”
“We can no longer have this cheap morphine line in our bloodstream. It must end. It just cannot continue.”
However, he later delivered on some of National’s spending promises – rebuilding the $ 500- $ 600 million Hastings Hospital, roads, tunnels, the second Waitemata port crossing, and schools in between – warning businesses that don’t worry about what could go wrong. “We can seize the opportunity. The people of New Zealand understand that it is actually a moment for vision. All parties understand that we are going to have to borrow. My plea is that we not only spend, but that we borrow as we would to our own businesses. “
In a play on Muldoon’s old line ‘don’t leave the country worse than I found it’, Collins assured the business audience: ‘We are absolutely determined to leave New Zealand, when we leave the office, a better place than the we found. . “
Jacinda ardern
Ardern was the last, and then he had the benefit of a press conference at the end. He stuck to his script, literally, perusing the speech notes and bringing up details of the Labor Party’s big border and immigration announcement to reserve 10 percent of isolation and quarantine spaces for migrant workers and other returnees that the economy needs. .
His government’s response to the crisis “will be based on the elimination” of the virus and will aim to prevent a return to a Level 4 blockade by acting quickly and without relying solely on restrictions. A business activity index for July had shown a 1.2 percent rise in that month last year, so New Zealand had made headway ahead of the August outbreak in Auckland.
The Prime Minister listed steps the Government had already taken, including making apprenticeships free and speeding up RMA elements while “writing the manual.” She believed the elections were about how the country could be “as successful in our economic response as it is in our health response.”
Labor would launch a “strategy to attract investment … Now is the time to sell our history to the world.”
Always good with a catchphrase, Ardern spoke of feeling a “double duty” to restore the economy while simultaneously overcoming challenges like climate change and housing.
And to sign, he borrowed one from Joe Biden. “It’s not just about rebuilding, it’s about rebuilding better.”
