Election 2020: Fierce exchanges in the debate of young voters

By RNZ

Housing and climate change caused the most heated exchanges at the TVNZ Young Voters Debate yesterday, a far more colorful event than last week’s debate between Labor leader Jacinda Ardern and national leader Judith Collins.

Kiri Allan of Labor, Simeon Brown of National, Chlöe Swarbrick of the Greens, Robert Griffith of NZ First and Brooke van Velden of Act clashed in a lively evening hosted by Jack Tame.

Sometimes it seemed like an Allan, Brown and Swarbrick show, in which Van Velden and Griffith barely spoke.

Tame’s first “cheesy question” concerned what the respective parties would do to ease the financial burden on younger generations.

Allan said the Labor plan was to make sure “every dollar we invest is in things like sustainable futures.”

Brown’s line echoed what has been heard from other politicians at National this campaign: a focus on stimulating the economy with a short-term tax cut and increasing jobs.

The Greens had six policies to help young people, but Swarbrick focused on a guaranteed minimum income: $ 325 per week.

Van Velden had a flaw in Labor’s Covid-19 recovery plan and its debt levels, comparing the impact his loans would have on future generations to “child tax abuse.”

That earned him a strong and angry reprimand from Swarbrick, who called the comment “disgusting,” before launching into the issue of child and family poverty.

Swarbrick’s lack of enthusiasm for van Velden’s response seemed to be reflected in the crowd, whose responses to the Bill candidate were tepid throughout the night.

Griffith claimed that his party’s plan was the only one where “someone doesn’t lose.”

The next topic was housing.

Brown’s view was that the cost of housing was an issue, but he focused on the Resource Management Act: “We’re not just going to reform it, we’re going to burn it down and replace it.”

He got into an argument with Allan, starting when he accused Labor of stopping “the construction of more houses in Ihumātao than they have actually built through KiwiBuild.”

Tame asked the candidates a yes or no answer question: Should house prices go down?

Swarbrick was the only one to play ball with a straight answer: yes, he said, they should.

The rest could not give a direct answer.

Brown’s answer amounted to no. Allan wanted them to be “more affordable” and van Velden said they should “stay where they are.” Griffith said that “either the median salary goes up or house prices go down.”

Allan said Labor’s approach to dealing with housing problems involved increasing housing supply and affordability, outlining his party’s progressive homeownership scheme.

Tame moved the discussion from housing to rental: “How would you make sure tenants have warm, dry houses?” He asked van Velden, whose party opposed healthy housing for rental housing.

“Not only are there enough houses. If we had more supply on the market, we would have better quality houses because people would want you to come and rent,” van Velden said.

He went on to say that he thought the real problem was that people spent more than 50 percent of their income on renting.

She proposed getting rid of the RMA, which would allow building more, more houses, and lowering rents.

Swarbrick had proposed to him to reform the RMA by Tame and took the moment to criticize Brown’s comments about Ihumātao, saying “apparently, we have to build all the houses on stolen land.”

That got a good reaction from the crowd, who responded to him all night.

Griffith had a small chance to outline NZ First’s position on housing before the issue shifted to climate change and the spotlight shifted back to Swarbrick.

Tame challenged her on the effectiveness of the Greens in government, to which she replied: “We have had more actions on climate change in the last three years than in the last 30 years combined.”

Brown stepped in only to be challenged by the number of roads his party planned to build. He took some photos of the Labor climate record, including leader Jacinda Ardern’s comment on the “nuclear-weapon-free moment.”

Allan defended her party by mentioning national leader Judith Collins’ plans to cut climate legislation, before she and Brown got into another argument.

Van Velden opened his response on climate change with “I am an environmentalist,” prompting laughter from the crowd. But he called for a “sensible climate change plan” and said his party would include agriculture in the Emissions Trading Scheme with a price on carbon.

Griffith spoke about the weather and said that NZ First would include everyone in its approach. It wouldn’t make the worst greenhouse gas emitters pay more, but it would subsidize them to transition to more climate-friendly practices.

He also snuck into a comment on the New Zealand Defense Force, while under Ron Mark, being the first defense force in the world to recognize climate change as a problem, allowing it to invest in solutions.

The last big topic of the night was student debt, something most of the assembled crowd had on them.

Much of the attention was focused on Labor’s free fee scheme, and its plan to eliminate parts of it.

Griffith promoted NZ First’s dollar-for-dollar repayment plan on its debt. The problem is not free education, it is debt free [education] because that’s what makes people uncertain. “

If someone worked in New Zealand for the same length of time their degree took to complete, NZ First would later write off the debt, he said.

Tame concluded with a series of quick questions: “I know it’s really annoying when people in my position wrap complex problems in binary questions, but that’s what we’re doing.”

The crowd thanked him and Tame launched into their questions.

The most memorable reaction was Swarbrick’s response to “Should we remove the statues of historical figures who consider themselves racist?”

“Put them in a racist garden.”

Soon after, it was all over, as Tame pointed out that only 68 percent of people under the age of 30 voted in the last election.

With just 19 days left until the election, so far 72% of 18-29 year olds have registered to vote.

– RNZ