Some of the unintended consequences of the new government

Today I resigned from two boards that are made up of some of the most inspirational, selfless, dedicated, people I have had the privilege of working alongside. One was Mike King’s I Am Hope/ Gumboot Friday, and the other was the advisory board of an organisation I had not heard of until two years ago, the New Zealand Product Accelerator.

It has been a privilege to have been involved in both, but I have come to this incredibly difficult decision because less than one week into the new coalition government I have seen, to use the Prime Minister’s own words in justifying the back-track on smoking legislation, the ‘unintended consequences’ of MMP – a system that, it was argued, would give minorities a voice in our democracy.

What we are seeing instead is a disproportionate amount of power given to someone who has 8 seats out of a total of 123!

But it is not the number of seats that have transferred this power that concerns me, that is what is expected of MMP, it is the way that power has manifested itself through the coalition discussions and on into the first week of the new government.

For complete transparency, for only the third time in my 55 years of being eligible to vote I gave my vote to National.

I did so because, despite not agreeing with everything that was being proposed, I believed that we were about to see a government that would be open to working transparently alongside innovative Kiwi companies and organisations like I Am Hope, the NZ Product Accelerator and the many others out there who have tirelessly devoted themselves to trying to improve key areas such as education, health, sustainability, global warming, child poverty and countless other areas where we have seen Aotearoa New Zealand slide down the world rankings from positions we once proudly lead the world in.

I have seen work that is being done across the length and breadth of this country by people who believe passionately that we still have the mojo to lead the world. A group of people we were calling the ‘Coalition of the Willing’ who were prepared to put their own politics aside to help create and deliver a vision for Aotearoa New Zealand that united us rather than divided us.

I believed that our best opportunity to do that was with politicians who were open to listening to alternative views about how we might reach common objectives; like how we go about creating the best education system in the world by working with our teachers who are at the cliff face; like how we improve our health deliverables by doing things differently with remote technologies; like how we take advantage of world-leading R&D developed in New Zealand to convert slash, the unintended consequence of our wood export industry, into a multibillion dollar bio forestry industry that will positively advance our drive to sustainability and carbon zero whilst creating high value jobs in our regions; like taking advantage of other world leading R&D to complement the great work many of our farmers are doing in the creation of high value, sustainable products that the world is looking for; like Rewiring Aotearoa to become a world leader in affordable, sustainable, renewable energy; or Recloaking

Papatūānuku, a world first initiative that will do more to help restore Aotearoa’s clean green reputation than simply setting arbitrary targets that rely on legislation rather than collaboration.

I am still hopeful that those discussions can happen, but having seen the vindictiveness of our Deputy Prime Minister’s first press conference, the one where he accused not only media colleagues but also, by default, members of a government agency, New Zealand On Air, of being bribed by the past government, I realised that if I was to continue to comment on the things I see as being important to our country, I would have to remove myself from boards which could be tainted by views I shared, which certain politicians may take exception to and take it upon themselves to extract a level of utu that could affect the great work being carried out by those boards.

New Zealand on Air is a board I once had the privilege of being on. I know from experience that there was never ever any question of bias. Often, I felt we went to extremes to ensure that, but that was our job as an independent dispenser of public funds.

At the first Cabinet meeting of this new coalition government, the Deputy Prime Minister asked journalists to “tell the public what you signed up to, to get that money (part of the $55 million PIJF)”. The answer is simple.

The only way journalists could access those funds was to have their applications approved by the New Zealand on Air board, a completely independent organisation. By making the claim that “you can’t defend $55 million of bribery” our Deputy Prime Minister just accused the full board of being complicit in his bribery claim and they, quite justifiably, should expect an apology for such an unwarranted, and potentially defamatory, claim.

He certainly deserved much more than the slap over the wrist he got.

But then again – that’s MMP.

Which leaves me with the backdown on our world-leading smoking legislation. This was a deal done behind closed doors, seemingly to accommodate the vagaries of MMP. It was not something that I was given the advantage of thinking about when deciding where to cast my vote. I may be missing something here but surely we can all accept that science has inarguably taught us that there is no upside whatsoever in taking up cigarette smoking.

To put in place an intergenerational plan that would remove that risk from our tamariki was something being acclaimed across the world. It was the sort of bold initiative we need to be taking as we face the other intergenerational changes around education, health and climate change.

To argue that we needed people to continue smoking so we could collect a billion dollars in tax, to fund tax cuts, brought back to me a phrase I learned in my Latin class back in the 60s.

“Reductio ad absurdum” – if we are going to justify smoking as a tax generating revenue why don’t we go the whole hog and start selling methamphetamine in our hospitals. For our libertarian politicians this would be the perfect “user pays” scenario. Users get to fund the health system that they end up relying on when all of the health impacts of their drug use kicks in. Apparently, it is a huge business so it is likely that there would be millions left over to properly fund Pharmac.

And then there is the really cool ‘unintended consequence’ where gangs are put out of business because hospitals would have completely destroyed their market.

Reductio ad absurdum – a bit like Māori not being indigenous to the land because they had to travel to get here.