The following are what I believe to be the critical policies to get New Zealand back on track and leading the world again. Seriously, at one stage little old NZ was top in the OECD, but that was so long ago there are few alive now who remember.
Keys to New Zealand success:-
1. Defence
The opposite of the problem the United States has, NZ does not spend enough on defence. NZ needs to raise its defence spending to 2% of GDP. I suggest it take the 1.1% of GDP it now spends, take that as a constant and on top of that use the balance to (a) set up a professional Coast Guard service and (b) establish a permanent and full-time disaster relief agency, both bodies to be part of the defence force.
Rationale: think about employment and training, many young people would get the opportunity to learn something and make a contribution. They are denied the chance now. Add to that a readiness to deal with poaching of the fisheries, search and rescue and a better earthquake and tsunami response.
2. Immigration
Freeze immigration until house prices stabilise. The exceptions; marriage and family reunification and refugees.
Rationale: numbers equivalent to the population of New Plymouth arrive every year and many of these new immigrants add very little, they're either too old, over educated or they scarper to Australia at the first opportunity. NZ needs to think very carefully about its immigration policy, to start with, the housing stock has to exist to accommodate them. That isn't the case right now, so Kiwis should put themselves first and halt immigration until housing construction rises.
3. Manufacturing
Back manufacturers in tangible ways and raise the profile of NZ's quality manufactured goods.
Rationale: NZ fools itself into thinking there is such a thing as free trade. Every nation protects its own, it's just that tariff barriers have been lowered.
I'll give you three examples of protectionism; (a) Japan and their vehicle registration which means it's very hard for a car or truck to stay on the road for longer than six years, (b) US defence procurement and the Boeing and Lockheed Martin et al tie ups, (c) Australia and its not letting NZ apples in or bananas from anywhere and its strange requirement for 'lock-out' on industrial machines that means all imported machines must undergo alteration before being put to work - they're all protectionist.
New Zealand has an anaemic economy, with too many service and primary sector businesses and not enough secondary producers.
Industrial sectors NZ should dominate but don't - land clearing, logging, shipping, transport, aircraft.
* Land clearing: NZ was at one time covered with forest but it is now largely farmland with some forest. NZ makes virtually none of the types of machines used to do this work. You'd think that with Africa and South America needing this type of thing that NZ would be there with boots on but it just isn't.
* Logging is huge in NZ. It does make Yarders for pulling logs off hills, and some stuff; wire ropes and the like, but the big brands are from Finland or somewhere else. Why? Oh that's because the Finns and others back their manufacturers.
* NZ has a long coastline and relies on ships to trade, but it doesn't make any cargo ships. Just super-yachts, which don't carry cargo.
* Trailers are made in Kiwiland, but no tractor units or trucks of any kind, name that big Kiwi brand of truck.....Scania, that's Sweden.
* Pacific Aerospace is NZ's only aircraft manufacturer, which is very strange when you consider that NZ invented powered flight and use aircraft extensively (Richard Pearse was the first to fly, not the Wright Brothers, the latter just had the better propaganda machine).
4. Crime
Bring back the death penalty for crimes that have an aggravating factor, like murder with torture, or serial rapists. Bring back hard labour for repeat offenders that are violent.
Rationale: It costs too much to incarcerate these criminals. Execute the bad ones, and work the almost as bad ones. Consider remote locations like building a road from Karamea to Collingwood in the South Island, and a rail line from Gisborne to Whakatane in the North.
5. Education
Take education seriously by making teachers teach.
Rationale: Since the 1970's the system has been skewed toward promoting able teachers out of the classroom and into management. If NZ wants to see better results, it must pay good teachers to stay in the classroom.
6. Social Policy and Full Employment
Anyone registered unemployed should be given a meaningful job.
Rationale: Anyone who wants to work should work. Those not registered or on a sickness benefit clearly either don't want to or cannot. One way of doing this - getting everyone a job - is to take all employers with 10 or more employees and pay them to employ people on the minimum wage, with the government topping up between that amount and a living wage. Rock and hard place approach, each employer would be told how many new hires they have to take, if they decline, any penalty interest on overdue sums to Inland Revenue would double.
7. Oil, Gas and other Minerals
Establish a State mineral exploration company, focussing on New Zealand and the Pacific Islands.
Rationale: NZ should be exploring all the time. There is a lot of oil and gas and other minerals in NZ, just no-one looks very hard. Take the Takaka Hill for instance, it has iron ores, marble, limestone, soap stone, but it is hardly mined. Parliament and the Beehive is made of beautiful marble from Takaka but if you asked at any school, the children would likely guess the marble was from China or Italy.
8. Political reform
Make government a lot smaller, return to first past the post elections and have fewer representatives and fewer state and public servants. Let people get on with their lives without the ever-present government meddling.
Rationale: structure NZ more like a multinational company. It has only 4.5 million people but a bureaucracy more suitable to a country with ten times the existing population.
9. Taxation reform
Reduce GST to the same rate as Australia, reduce the excise tax on cigarettes, scrap tax refunds like Working for Families which favour a certain few.
Rationale: keep it simple with a GST rate that is easy to calculate and apply, and does not act as a disincentive to consume (lower prices). Thresholds could be lowered from the $60,000 now to $30,000, bringing more into the tent who must pay GST. With cigarettes, the poor have few pleasures and they're increasingly going to more harmful drugs, like meth and alcohol.
Then Working for Families sets poorer families with children apart, they are more favoured than anyone else. The young and childless along with the rich of any kind, subsidise the lower earners with kids. Here's a radical idea, how about not taxing that much to begin with and let people just get on and make their own choices. Hmm? Working for Families simply funds someone's TAB, booze and tobacco budget. It's cynical vote buying and both Labour and National are guilty.
10. Promote NZ
Establish a 24 hour news service and broadcast on cable television in the USA and Europe. NZ has brilliant documentaries and newscasters, the rest of the world needs to see them, and they then learn and buy our stuff.
Rationale: most of the world forms its opinions from what they see on the TV and the rest of the world sees very little of NZ. The cost of setting this up could be quite cheap, just sell off TV2 as a commercial channel and put TV1, both state owned, onto the news and doco format. Or buy TV3 when they next go bust and do the same with them, sell of the profitable radio stations (or float them on the NZX) and put the TV3 channel over to news and doco. A deal could be struck with the excellent Maori Television for content.
11. Sport
Get all children into sport, whether cross-country running or chess, what that sport is doesn't matter.
Rationale: When it comes to sporting potential, someone good at something finds the sport fun. NZ needs to find what children are good at and support them. Right now, finding that right sport is a grab bag of wrong-headed thinking.
Take every child from birth, blood test, register them then test at age 6, 9, 12, 15 and 18. Test for everything, then send them to the right class and the right school and the right sport.
NZ has many Steven Adams out there, I know as I played basketball alongside them, they need developing and promoting. Why is NZ not all over this?
12. Infrastructure
Build infrastructure and do not favour one sector over another.
Rationale: the Kaikoura earthquakes remind us how fixated NZ has become on one form of transport, in this case road transport. NZ was caught with its pants down, State Highway 1, the national road is blocked and now how to move stuff? Air is expensive, rail blocked as well and little or no coastal shipping. That is a serious headache for anyone living in the South Island.
But NZ can't just stop there; the sewer pipes will need replacing, bridges right across the nation are in the same boat as the sewer pipes. People may remember that when the rail network last went bust, the government subsequently got it up and running but had to put in a huge amount toward repair or replacement of the rail bridges. That work was due and rail is a lot older than the road network. By my calculation thousands of NZ's road bridges, which are largely managed by often poorly governed local authorities, will be due for major upgrade or replacement in about 20 years. This is an expenditure far more serious than the ballooning retired population. Being brutal about this, at least the oldies like me will one day die. But when those bridges collapse, that's it, NZ will be finished.
The chickens are coming home to roost, get those prisoners to work.
13. Maori
No more handouts via the treaty settlement process. Offer semi-autonomy to certain tribes.
Rationale: bulk fund the noisy tribes. See if they can hack it on their own. Don't allow them to raise taxes, an army, or conduct foreign policy, but let them be like Wales. Wales is part of the U.K. but still a principality.
The benefit for NZ would be winning first, second and third place at the Rugby World Cup. That wouldn't happen of course as the IRB would ban NZ, that kind of thinking is for the 'home' nations only (just joking, NZ'd win first, second, and third of both Rugby World Cups - Union and League). And think about two things, change the national anthem to be only sung in Maori, that way it sounds acceptable, and change the name of NZ to Aotearoa, initially Aotearoa New Zealand or Aotearoa Kiwiland. NZ'd enter the Olympics ahead of Australia, which is key I think.
New Zealand, why call a country New when it isn't, and Zealand when that's a territory in the Netherlands; a country that supposedly 'discovered' NZ but the discoverer didn't set foot on land, he ran away when the Maori killed one of his men for having the temerity to invade. Do you see my point? NZ is not Dutch and does not run away.
Kiwis are not that imaginative with names I know, hence Short Vly (sic) off the road between Blenheim and Nelson, at least the signwriter had a sense of humour. Plus too many Bull Creek, Small Creek, Long Valley, and of course the very imaginative North and South Island because New Ulster and New Munster was too complicated. Don't get me started on all those places called N****r something, usually called that after a black Labrador, which are traditionally called N****r (watch the Dambusters movie from the 50's if you don't believe me). When it comes to naming things, Kiwis are not at all imaginative, so Aotearoa makes a lot of sense as it's easy to use. Like Zimbabwe is better than Southern Rhodesia, though it's the bottom of the alphabet, but at least they dropped the name of a genocidal maniac.
14. Regional Development
Send government departments to the regions - disperse.
Rationale: this protects NZ in case of natural disaster by not concentrating services and spreads incomes, it means government would be cheaper. Along with Maori semi-autonomy, the regions get a boost from the employment and construction.
15. Health
Concentrate on day clinics and reach into schools and workplaces. Take healthcare to the masses, don't sit behind the desk at the hospital. Expand free healthcare to include basic orthodontic for children up to age 18 and dental surgery for adults once every four years. Free teeth cleaning annually.
Rationale: NZ is getting ever bigger hospitals and worse services. Reverse this by going small, locate clinics for same day procedures close to the people.
16. Police
Freeze the existing police budget but create a new force similar to the Federal police in Australia dealing with serious and international crime.
Rationale: drug dealers, precursor shippers, organised crime, internet scammers look out. The existing police do a good job at the lower level but they're out of their depth on the serious stuff. Arm these Federal police officers heavily and give them sweeping powers of arrest and seizure. That'd sort the gangs out, lock em up on sight; this is possible if you create a force with the powers to do so.
17. Retirement
Over the next decade the baby boomers will be retiring and they'll begin drawing on National Superannuation. This is really not a problem as they're investors and enterprising, they'll manage and so will NZ.
There is really nothing that needs to be done, apart from two innovations; look at retirement being on a sliding scale, paying less if retiring from age 60 (you can retire as early as 55 in Australia), or paying more from age 68. By taking bets like this, the government can smooth expenditure, some people who take a later retirement age (and more money) may actually die early and be no cost at all. Those going for early retirement would receive less over the subsequent 15 years, only catching up on those who retire at age 65 when they reach 75, again they may die before getting there.
The other problem is retirees are strongly incentivized to invest in rental housing as the capital gain is not taxed. There are peculiar whiz bang rules that make a genuine international portfolio of shares almost impossible for the small investor. By simply changing the rules to put capital gains from share investment onto the same footing as rental housing, as well as only paying tax on actual income from dividends, would diversify investors into stocks on the NYSE and Nasdaq and make retirement savers more independent and less vulnerable.
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There you have it, follow this prescription and watch NZ take off. Right now it's sinking, sorry to have to tell you that, but it's true.
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