New Zealand: Change Needed

At some stage New Zealand will implode. Everything will simply stop working, and it'll be back to basics. What went wrong? I explain it like this: New Zealand gave up the British Empire model which concentrated on national development above all else and adopted the US consumerist approach, and since then everything has gone downhill.

This is not to say that everything the United States does is wrong, they've developed a pretty impressive economy, and there's the rub, when adopting the American way foreigners often cherry pick. What consumers end up doing is buying lots of pretty things, and the hard work involved in building a complete infrastructure is avoided.

New Zealand is one such country. Any visitor to NZ will find a modern set-up; roads. bridges, ports, airports, cities, when you flush the toilet the waste runs somewhere and is treated, and when you turn the tap on fresh water flows limitlessly. Put your rubbish bin out on the right day and voilà, the contents are spirited away. You get the idea.

Thing is, almost all of this infrastructure was put in place during a time when it was hard to buy something. If you wanted to buy a car, you needed permission to do so unless you had overseas funds. And assuming you could buy that new car, you had to take the colour it was delivered in. As a result, secondhand cars could sell for more than new ones. This sounds really bad, right? In a way it was but the upside was a country got built in less than a hundred years.

I will illustrate using the example of the bridge I use every day, just down the road from where I live. It's a solid structure, put there back in the 1940's. The steel on it was made in London, how I know this is under the bridge I can see the name of the manufacturer stamped onto each beam. Yet the bridge was built at a time when it was hard to even buy a car to use that bridge.

Here's what I'm getting at, does anyone believe for a minute that that bridge can be replaced easily, even though I can now buy whatever car my heart desires? Which is better, car not so good and wonderful bridge, or luxury car and bridge falling down?

I won't be alive to see the inevitable, but my children will be and I'm worried about them. Things will go bad very quickly, it will be when the pipes in the ground expire, the bridges finally give up the ghost, when the roads become so potholed or congested you can't get anywhere. It will seem to happen all at once because all of these things were built at about the same time, so they will expire at about the same time.

What is the solution? Given that New Zealand has drifted for so long, the solution needs to be radical. I don't believe the current crop of politicians have it in them to make the hard decisions. What is needed is complete reform of the political process in New Zealand.

New Zealand can begin by reducing the size of government. At the central government level, there are currently over 40 ministries and departments, add to that other entities that are government owned or controlled, as well as local and regional government. This in a country of only 4.5 million people. No wonder nothing gets done, the only employment available is in endlessly planning what not to do (I'm being facetious).

Look at it like this; if California was to exit the United States, Calexit, it would likely form into six independent states, all being part of the newly independent California which would be the world's fifth largest economy. Any one of those six Californian states would be larger than all New Zealand. Has that sobered you up?

Reform New Zealand by taking the following steps; get rid of the Governor-General and instead elect a President and Vice-President who run the country like CEO and Deputy CEO (the President takes over the Governor-General's residence, the Vice-President gets Premier House). The President would appoint an advisory committee to oversee things, and this would replace the current Cabinet. The advantage of a system like this, like that of the USA, is specialist skills can be recruited that would not otherwise be elected. I wouldn't call them ministers however, but rather something like adviser or secretary.

Reduce the size of parliament from over 120 now, to only 60, do away with MMP, each member of parliament would represent a territorial electorate, elected on first-past-the-post.

Merge all those central government ministries, departments and agencies into eight, no more than ten departmental groups.

From a further eight, no more than ten industry groups, the job would be to design the framework for output, set goals and referee the game played within the economy.

Have a board running each sector and industry group, the majority on each board to comprise members of parliament, the balance directly elected from employers, unions, Maori, church, and members of the public.

Do away with all regional and local body authorities.

How would this work? There would be sixteen, no more than twenty state sector, public service and industry groups. Each sector group would, apart from running things, propose laws by referring anything to the President for signature. These become regulations within existing legislation. How many laws do you need for heavens sake? New legislation would need to be passed through parliament but I'd restrict their sitting days to one calendar month for this purpose. Laws could be sent down to the parliament from the office of the President, or arise from the sector groups, or the members themselves.

Remember, the government is embodied in the office of the President, so there is no reason for the parliament to vote on any grounds other than what is in the best interest of the nation. Political parties may be useful to advance policy, but would be meaningless in terms of trying to defeat a government as that can only happen upon the outcome of the vote at the general election.

In practical terms let's look at transport and use that example to see how things would function.

The transport group would own and control all roads, ports, rail and airports. It could be overseen by a board of nineteen members, a chairperson, and eighteen other members, nine of whom, along with the chairperson must be elected parliamentarians. The other nine board members come from sector groups who hold their own elections; two from employers, two from unions, one Maori, one church, plus three members of the public voted for in the general election.

This group then sets about building and repairing the infrastructure, with the chairperson reporting directly to the President or Vice-President (CEO's). This is how to get something done. Think multinational companies and how they operate.

New Zealand would be better off with this structure. Citizens would have almost direct access to the top, and they'd get a vote in matters that directly affected them; if a bridge needed repair or replacement the locals would contact the area manager, who reports the matter to the area committee, then on to the board as a whole who sign off or reject the proposal. Decisions would be made in weeks, perhaps months, not the decades it sometimes takes now.

Politically, the President and deputy are forced to work with the parliament, but the House of Representatives becomes a body that chooses who will sit on the state sector and industry groups, the government is essentially the President and advisory committee and the President appoints sector group chairpersons.

The result would be a cost-effective way of doing things, as well as a speedy way of developing the country. General elections would be held every three or four years, with the sector groups voted on at the same time.  There would be no local body elections, and staffing could change, with general managers and area managers taking over from mayors and council CEO's.

Services would likely improve. Take healthcare as an example. Each city would no longer have a divided health board. The hospitals would be run by an area manager, reporting to a general manager and chairperson. Those employees would have performance pay based on their health outcomes. The risk is they may prune waiting lists to make it look like they're doing a swell job. But then it just comes down to how their performance is measured, and to eliminate possible anomalies.

The great part of this approach is that each state sector and industry group can be measured and a report card issued. Ultimately a report card can be produced on even the President, resulting in an overall negative or positive score. Clearly the state sector group led by the Auditor-General would need independence from political interference to achieve this aim.

The report card could be issued just before the general election, putting anyone standing for re-election on the spot.

Taxation would need to change. I propose that with this much smaller government, that GST be reduced to 10%, the same as Australia. Direct personal tax would stay the same, but I'd scrap Working for Families, which is the silliest thing I've ever seen. I'd make cigarettes cheaper, I don't see the need to pay poor people to smoke, just make the ciggies cheap to begin with (what I'm saying is that families on low earnings are paid for each child through Working for Families, and the parents then buy cigarettes at $30 a packet, why not make the smokes $10 a packet and do away with the middleman, Inland Revenue in this case).

Council rates would become property tax, paid directly to central government, it could even come out of each pay packet.

I'd scrap user pays. If you're a citizen or permanent resident, all government services would be free, including obtaining a passport.

At birth all New Zealanders would be registered and documented, being issued an identity smart card. This would hold all biometric information; health data, criminal history, test scores and the like (backed up in the cloud of course). When applying for work in the public sector, this card must be produced (not in the private sector this would breach privacy and not be valid).

The first thing this identity system would deliver is the ability to teach children based on their needs, and deliver Olympic medals. Using this system I'd have all children tested at age six, nine, twelve, fifteen and eighteen. The test would be of personality, dexterity, attention span, intelligence, muscle, physical dimensions (height, wingspan etc), stamina, speed, and overall health.

Then based on the result, children would be placed in classes (and schools) that best suited their needs and they'd be directed to sports that suited them as well. Tall to basketball and volleyball, fast to sprinting, supple to gymnastics, geniuses to mathematics, practical to engineering and trades. New Zealand has the Plunket book, why this has not been extended and digitised I have no idea, the country is sitting on a gold mine (get it, gold mine boom boom).