During the next three years, National will embark on reforms as outlined in its ‘Post-election Action Plan.’
The changes include halving the budget deficit this year to be back in surplus by 2014-2015 and introducing lower public service staffing caps.
Meeting departmental spending targets, connecting 58,000 premises to ultra-fast broadband and increasing productivity through establishing the Crown Water Investment Company are also on the agenda.
The National-led government would allow choice in the ACC work account, extend the youth training wage (of 80% of the adult wage) to six months and construct the Waterview Connection and Auckland’s Western Ring Route.
It would set six-month time limits on Resource Management Act (RMA) consents for medium-sized projects, introduce partial sale of four State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) and reduce the Government’s stake in Air New Zealand to create the Future Investment Fund.
The new Government would enact tougher consumer credit laws to target loan sharks, slow the phasing-in of the Emission Trading Scheme (ETS), allow offsetting for pre-1990 forest owners and update the Maritime Transport Act including for the International Convention on Civil Liability.
A competitive new system for processing oil and gas exploration permits, social welfare reforms to ensure the able-bodied go back to work and sanctions on beneficiaries whose use of drugs prevents them from getting a job would also be in place.
Judicial reforms
National would also increase prosecutions for welfare fraud, stop benefits for people on the run from Police, make it harder for serious offenders to get bail and introduce Civil Detention Orders to protect the community from extremely high-risk offenders.
Other proposed measures include reducing unnecessary parole hearings, passing the Search and Surveillance Bill, increasing penalties for child pornography and breaches of domestic violence protection orders.
There would be better protection for vulnerable court participants, especially children and measures to ensure that state houses built before 1978 are insulated.
Better healthcare
In the health sector, the Government proposes to increase elective surgery operations by 4000 a year and ensure that all patients booked receive their operations within four months and those needing specialist appointments are seen within four months.
The Voluntary Bonding Scheme to health professions and hard-to-staff regions would be expanded and provisions would be made for free afterhours GP visits to children under six years.
The health ministry would roll out a comprehensive after-hours telephone advice service with access to nurses, GPs and pharmacists.
Education needs
Parents would have access to secondary school performance information, while the education ministry proposes to develop more effective systems of teacher and principal appraisal.
The Teachers Council would be strengthened and a new system would be introduced to ensure the participation of 98% of new school entrants in early childhood education.
Rebuilding Christchurch would continue to receive priority.
There is no doubt major changes are needed to the way New Zealand Inc operates if we are ever going to lift our game and achieve true First World status. In particular, the welfare system must be returned to its proper purpose of providing temporary support for the able bodied in their time of need, instead of trapping them into long term dependency on the state.
Simplified procedures
The mindless regulation and red tape that continually holds back small business must be drastically pruned.
The RMA and overbearing local government planning rules need major surgery so that people can get on with their projects instead of being endlessly tied up in costly box-ticking bureaucracy.
Government spending must be significantly reduced to levels affordable for a small country of four million people to foster economic growth and living standards.
Most importantly, we must recapture the aspiration to succeed and the traditional ‘can do’ attitude that have been knocked out of us over recent years. But to do that, we need to know that all Kiwis are pulling together in the same direction, as a society committed to a better future for all New Zealanders and not as a society divided by race.
The above is the edited version of the views expressed by Dr Muriel Newman, Director of the New Zealand Centre for Political Research, in her web-based NZCPR Weekly. For full text, visit www.nzcpr.com
