The great search continues….

Someone searched “Don Brash Testicles” again.

And I’m still not sure why…

John Key Interview Part 2

Here’s part 2, question 5 is especially interesting.

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1.A lot of people draw parallels between you and David Cameron, the leader of the British conservative party, in that your both relatively young, both quite moderate, and have both embraced newer styles of campaigning such as your you tube journals and face book. You are both even criticised the same way by political opponents. Given the conservative parties recent electoral success in Britain and your own parties hefty lead in the polls, what do you think it is that has made the two of you so appealing? Are there any major ways in which you differ? 

 

There are clearly similarities between us, as you point out.  We take a less ideological view to things, we are interested in what works, we are forward thinking, and we are ambitious.  I have met Mr Cameron, and we developed a strong personal relationship fairly quickly, which I think reflects those simiIarities. 

 

 

2. How do you respond to criticism you’ve been “given a free ride” by the media? Paul Henry of the Breakfast program in particular is often cited as someone going far to easy on you.

 

I don’t agree I get a free ride from the media, and that’s certainly not been my experience.

 

3.You’ve mentioned that reform to the Resource Management Act is needed. Why do you think that is, and what form will the reforms take?

 

Fixing this vital legislation is part of National’s plan to lift New Zealand’s living standards.

 

Our issues with the RMA are about process and timeliness rather than outcomes.  We want to streamline and simplify the law to get less costly and more timely decisions.

 

National will give the RMA greater central direction.  It doesn’t make sense to have our 86 Councils constantly reinventing the wheel, so we propose setting up to 20 national environmental goals to clearly guide decision-makers on what needs to be achieved.

 

Specific changes to the RMA we intend making include limiting the definition of the environment to avoid vexatious arguments, reducing the number of consent categories to simplify the law, allow direct referral of major applications to the Environment Court, and removing the Ministerial veto power that created such a furore over the Whangamata Marina. National is also exploring ideas that will simplify the processing of consents. 

 

But we need to be careful in reforming the RMA that we do not throw out the baby with the bathwater.  There are some important principles that underpin the Act that National stands by including the concept of sustainability and an integrated approach to resource decision-making.

 

4.If elected will National be making any changes to the benefit system? If so what will these changes look like?

 

Welfare policy will be announced in due course.

 

5.Michael Cullen said recently in an interview with me that he expects National will “-bid whatever policies Labour delivers on the personal tax front”. He expects however that National will finance these bigger cuts by borrowing money, thus putting the Government into debt. Is this true?  Cullen also called such a policy “reckless”. How do you respond to this?

 

National will not borrow for tax cuts. National believes tax cuts are important for improving our economic competitiveness with other countries, and putting the right incentives in place for kiwis to get ahead.  National believes that long term intergenerational assets should be funded from debt.

 

6.Earlier this year you criticised Labour for their repeated personal attacks on you. Obviously personal attacks are a frequent part of politics, you yourself went on Breakfast and told Michael Cullen to “stop being so precious” when he was offended you bought his wife up in a debate in the house. You’ve also frequently called the Labour Government corrupt. Is your criticism of Labour’s attacks on you a sign that you yourself will no longer be using personal attacks like these?

 

I don’t agree that I engage in personal attacks on people.  Labour has been prepared to rort the electoral system, firstly by unlawfully spending public money on the pledge card at the last election and then last year ramming the draconian and anti-democratic electoral finance law through Parliament.

 

 Further proof that Labour is prepared to rort the system using this law was revealed when Labour Party president Mike Williams described Labour’s plan to use taxpayer-funded government leaflets as Labour Party campaign material as a “damn good idea”.  Labour were also the first party that the election authorities found earlier this year to have broken the Electoral Finance Act – their own law. That says it all about the Labour Government’s contempt for the law and their desperation in election year.

 

I have criticised Labour’s attacks on me not because I’m worried, but because Labour are clearly distracted by low-grade personal attacks on me rather than confronting the real issues facing New Zealanders – such as the rising cost of living, the thousands leaving for destinations offshore, sky-high interest and mortgage rates, and an education sector that is failing many of our children.

 

7.The return of Roger Douglas has been one of the major stories in politics this year, as well as your statement that “If ACT are hell-bent on following a radical right-wing agenda and won’t fit in with a moderate pragmatic agenda, then we can’t work with them.” I was hoping you could clarify what your position on ACT is. Is it that there is absolutely no way you will work with them after the election or is it just a case of “If they go too right wing, we can’t work with them”?  What if you were in a position where you needed ACT to form a government, would you then have to renege on what you said earlier?

 

I have never ruled out the possibility of working with Act after the election. What I’m not interested in is the radical right wing agenda Roger Douglas recently outlined.

 

8.Labour especially has raised the prospect of Douglas gaining a cabinet position in a National led Government. Is there any chance of this?

 

No, on the basis of Roger Douglas’ radical right wing agenda.

 

9.I just recently interviewed Nándor Tánczos and he said that he thought that decriminalisation of Cannabis was inevitable, due to the large numbers of young people who have tried the drug, and realised that nothing terrible happens to them when they use it. Do you agree with this? Do you support eventual decriminalisation of Cannabis?

 

I do not support the decriminalisation of cannabis, and I don’t agree that it causes no harm.

 

10.In terms of foreign policy, if National wins the election, what changes can we expect to be made?

 

Last year National released a foreign affairs, defence and trade discussion paper signposting where we are going in these areas.  There is now broad, bipartisan agreement on foreign policy that reflects New Zealand’s more independent assessment of its external environment.

 

We have already signalled our intentions in some areas.  For example, there will be no change to the anti-nuclear legislation.  National believes that after three decades of debate, the basis for an enduring consensus in foreign affairs, defence, and trade has arisen.

 

Two ideas underpin the proposals in the paper – New Zealand must concentrate on its essential interests in these areas, and we must focus more than ever on our core strengths and capabilities.

 

The paper can be found at: http://www.national.org.nz/Article.aspx?articleId=11110

 

11.One aspect of the National Party that has attracted heated criticism is the use of anonymous trusts for fund raising, such as the Waitemata Trust, which donated $424,100, the largest single donation received by your party, in 2007. The use of trusts has been legislated against in the Electoral Finance Act, as many believe them to be undemocratic, as they allow donations to be made in secret from the public, while politicians can still know who is donating. Do you support the abolition of such trusts? If not, why not?

 

The Electoral Finance Act, while a draconian piece of legislation, does not legislate against trust. The law controls the level of anonymous donations and requires disclosure of who gave to trusts.  Whether trusts continue or not is not the issue.  The issue is the level of disclosure, and let me state clearly that we intend to operate within the law – unlike Labour which was the first political party found to have broken the Electoral Finance Act this year with its taxpayer-funded booklet “We’re Making a Difference”. 

 

12.National is on record heavily opposing the EFA. What would happen to that legislation if National wins in 2008?

 

We would repeal the anti-democratic Electoral Finance Act, which Labour passed solely to screw the scrum in election year to get itself a 4th term. National would work on changes to electoral finance rules in a consultative way with all interested parties rather than the way Labour did, which was to ram it through with no agreement from the main opposition party and in the face of extensive and widespread public protest.

 

13.Final question, anything you haven’t told anyone else in the media, so I can say Canta heard it first?

 

I’m tend to be superstitious and I’ve always been that way ever since my days working in the financial markets.

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Interview With John Key pt 1

Question One: Since you’ve become leader National has moved to the centre a lot, so for students voting at the end of the year, what differences are still left between National and Labour?

A: Well firstly I think it’s where we want to take the country. It’s ultimately about the plan we have for the future. That is unquestionably to lift after tax wages and the opportunities for New Zealanders. That is because we are much more concerned, I’m not sure the current Government is concerned at all, about the brain drain. You know, we had 79,000 people leaving last year. 29% of all people that have been to university and graduated now live overseas. Now look of course Young Kiwi’s will always go and experiment overseas, but increasingly they aren’t coming back here, they’re coming back to Australia. So we think the driving force around that is wage rates, they’re under paid effectively. So we’re going to have a program of personal tax cuts, we believe in them, we think that put the right incentives in the economy. They’ll be right across the income sprectum, where Labour has indicated today that theirs will be at the lower end. For students who will typically over time be much higher income earners it’s likely to be a very big differential under us and Labour.

Secondly, It comes down to where we think the investment should take place. The differences is that we’ve announced we’re going to put 1 and a half billion dollars into ultra fast, fibre to the home broadband. That’ll be part of a 4 billion dollar investment to really wire New Zealand up, and future proof New Zealand. The Government, to contrast that, is out buying 19th century technology with the trains, so there’s a sort of difference.

Thirdly I think if you go back to our basic values, we are much more trusting of the private sector. We think the State has an important role to play but it’s not all encompassing. So theres a difference there.
I think finally I’m just younger. I come from a younger generation, I have I think a much more optimistic view of where New Zealand can fit into a global environment, and that will be about a package that supports small business and people’s opportunity’s to grow, and I think they will ultimately be very internet based. So I think a lot of the graduates that come from here, of course some of them are going to be doctors, well ok not Doctors from Canterbury, but engineers or whatever, but many will go into setting up a business and I think the internet will play a big part in that.

Q: I asked that same question to Michael Cullen and he talked about the interest free student loan policy, and you might be surprised by this, but he wasn’t exactly complementary of you. One of the things he said was attacking you for not always supporting the policy. He quoted you as saying “The policy isn’t for National because we have standards”. I was hoping you could elaborate on why that policy has been adopted, given that when it was announced in 2005, National was so against it.

A: Well we were against it in 2005. The reason for that actually if you take a step back was, I actually still believe, and this is actually factually correct, if you do an analysis of our student deductability, which is essentially our deuctability for interest and a combination of tax cuts, actually the vast majority of students were better off. Some students weren’t, if they had a large student loan and a low income then they wern’t, but the vast majority of them were better off.

We were always worried, and continue to be a little bit worried that zero interest loans will send the wrong message to students,  to take on too much debt. It’s not that they shouldn’t take on debt, I personally think the economic payback for an education is so overwhelming compelling that they should do that, but it’s easy when you’re younger to sort of lay the thought process about what it might mean when you have to go and pay it back. Well that has implications for later life.

So yeah, we we’re opposed to it, but the policy didn’t cost us the 200 million that Michael Cullen told us it would, it actually cost us 3 billion, and that value is reflected when you look at the fair value of the loans in the book. So half a million New Zealander’s now have a loan, they’ve built that into their life style, if we put interest back on the loans, we’ll have to add 3 billion dollars worth of interest back on, and I don’t think in all reality, in all good conscience we can do that. We can’t have a situation where every time we have a new Government we start playing political ping pong with student interest, so we’ve said “look, we accept we lost the election, that’s a policy that’s in place, and we’ll keep it”. We even added to it buy saying if you repay over and above the mandatory requirement then you’ll get a ten percent write off.

Question 3: Cool, now student debt just recently hit 10 billion dollars, Labour’s been heavily criticised by the NZUSA, the student lobby group for failing to deliver on it’s 2005 election promise of getting 50% of all students onto a student allowance by the end of their third term, we’re currently at around 35%. What’s Nationals policy, well ok not policy, but general view on how many people we should have on student allowances?

A: Well yeah we’re still working our way through that at the moment, but we recognise the two components, which are the $150 that people can actually borrow for their loan, and its a little out of synch with the realities of what students face in terms of costs. For many of them just finding a flat is not very far away from $150, let alone being able to afford to eat, which is a very nice thing to be able to do, and I think that’s got to be accommodated for, so I think you can anticipate some changes there, though it will let you add to the debt, but never the less.

Secondly I think there needs to be an acknowledgment that the current allowances are at best, marginal. Quite honestly expecting people to be entirely dependent on their parents at ages 25 or below is probably a stretch for a lot of people. Also the income thresholds are quite low, eligibility cuts out very low. So we’re looking at all of those things, and you can expect us to do something in those areas.

Q: Now The Government’s emissions trading schemes been in the news for running into…

A: It’s hit a brick wall.

Q: Ha, yes, theres talk of the Greens pulling their support for it. Now where does National stand on this. Obviously you guys are sort of thought of as the party of big business, and business is very worried about the issue of leakage, where if you put this system in, you end up sending jobs and profits overseas. Where is National on this?

A: Yeah, well we like emissions trading as a mechanism, we think its the mechanism of choice, if you look at Australians, the Europeans, they are all headed in that direction. We think it’s probably the most coherent way of pricing the true environmental costs of climate change. So overtime when your a signatory of Kyoto you’ve got binding liabilities and they do need to be paid for, and we do think that ultimately business and consumers need to recognise that there’s not just a production cost there’s an environmental cost and someone needs to pick up the tab for that either tax payers or consumers. So we do like that system, our argument has always been about what we want the design of that system to look like and obviously we are worried about relativity to our other trading partners. It’s not hugely logical from our perspective to say look if a large company, let’s take Bluescope, New Zealand Steel in Auckland, simply to pick itself up and go to Australia or to China simply because we’re pricing CO2 emissions. The reality is that doesn’t help the planet, and it hurts the New Zealand Economy.

So out mantra if you like has been look the way we’ll tackle climate change is we’ll balance our environmental responsibilities with our economic opportunities, and we haven’t argued that we’ll be a world leader. We’ve argued that we’ll do out bit for climate change, that we think New Zealand should take it seriously, but it’s a balanced approach. Labour has taken the view that they want to be a world leader, Helen Clark actually got a gong from the United Nations for it, for being carbon neutral. But the rhetoric just doesn’t back up the record.

Our view is this, if the model is not sustainable then politicians bottle, and that’s what Helen Clark is doing, and actually it’s a bit worse than that. They’ve had the wrong structure. If you look at Forestry as a good example, one of the big drivers of why our emissions profile is rising is because deforestation has occurred at such a fast rate.

So from our perspective we’re saying look let’s take a balanced approach, let’s get the right incentives in place. Let’s take this thing seriously but let’s make sure it’s balanced. We’ll support an emissions trading scheme that balances those objectives, but we won’t support something that’s out of whack.

Q: Now the other issue that comes up about the trading scheme are the exemptions. Agriculture has an emission to, I think…

A: 2013

Q: And Transport has one until 2011. Do you support exemptions like that?

A: Well I think just in terms of liquid fuel transport, I think it probably makes sense to delay it, since the rising price of oil is probably choking off demand anyway. But what I think is much more challenging is that at the moment The Government is in full scale retreat, and it’s making political decisions not sound economic ones necessarily, in so much that there’s a select committee process which is occurring. Our view of it has been, rather than these ad hoc changes, lets continue to work through the select committee process. What the Government did this week was say there’s an exemption on transport until 2011, with mention of energy which is still theoretically to come in 2010. For big emitters, no reduction in their free units until 2018, well what does that mean for agriculture which starts in 2011, but has a linear reduction now for the next 12 years? Ultimately what does it mean for forestry?

To put it bluntly, it’s a bit of a bastardised way to develop an emissions trading scheme. We think you’ve got to go back and say, what are we trying to achieve, how does this look relative to our trading partners, what is logical and most importantly what is fair? I’d rather see a coherent holistic approach, and that’s how we are going to work through it.

Q: On the issue of living standards, how would National go about raising living standards, especially in comparison with Australia?

A: Obviously firstly tax cuts will help, no questions. They are just a direct thing. You can see that in Australia, I think there was something in the paper today saying Kevin Rudd’s new budget, which is due May 13 and effectively that will deliver about $47 dollars a week to the average family, based on what Michael Cullen looks like he’s going to deliver, it might be about $25 a week over three years, so you can see how that gap will blow out. Without knowing the numbers we anticipate we’ll be able to do more.

Secondly you’ve got to get in there and drive productivity, and that is yep investment in broadband or energy and others. Secondly it’s got to be around the planning and regulatory environment. We think the RMA (Resource Management ACT) has been a real hand break to development in the economy, and we’re going to reform that, it’s quite a high priority.

There are other aspects of general bureaucracy and administration that are too heavy. Even if we look at something like the Tertiary Education Commission. It started life as light handed regulation for universities, but now the reality is that the regulatory requirements on the University of Canterbury are the same as the worst performing polytechnic or private training establishment in the country. And I’d strongly suggest that that’s not right. It’s overly bureaucratic for Canterbury and it’s money that could be better spend on other aspects of tertiary education.  So you’re going to rebalance that.

Q: Cool, now we’ve just recently had a gay pride week feature for Canta, and I wanted to ask about the Civil Union Bill. When it was in Parliament  you voted against it. I was just wondering why that was, and given how that legislation has turned out, do you think it was the right decision.

A: Yeah look I’ve taken the view in my electorate, I mean I represent what’s a pretty conservative electorate and I’ve taken the view that I’m going to vote on conscience issues in a way that best reflects my electorate.  In a sense I think that’s probably right, I think people have different ways of doing it, I mean it is my conscience, but it should really be the conscience of the people I represent.

I’m not overly bothered with it though, or tempted to change civil unions. I was never a great believer in the argument that it would undermine marriage, I think that’s a nonsense argument. I don’t care, I’ve got some quite good friends who are gay and have a civil union and it has absolutely no impact on my 25 year marriage to my wife. Being away from home every night might, but certainly not our friends having a civil union. Personally I’m not overly fussed by it.

Q: I’ve done a series of article on the whole Save Happy Valley-Solid energy Conflict, and one of the people I ended up talking to, a good friend of yours, Nicky Hager

A: [Laughs] Yeah sure

Q: And he’s quite a firm believer that we need stronger regulation of private investigator’s. I was wondering what you thought of that? Obviously we’ve seen some quite high profile examples of worrying activity by private investigators.

A: That stuff with Solid Energy, yeah.

Q: Well, not just Solid Energy, Diane Foreman for example was alleging PI’s broke into her office and things like that.
A:

Yeah, I think the industry has been moving to try and to regulate it’s self in a way. I mean there’s clearly a role for Private Investigators for a variety of reasons, both commercial and other reasons.

I tend to be on the other side of that, we’ve had them going through my rubbish and I have other reasons to believe they’ve been doing all sorts of things with regard to my background. And hey that’s fine, I’ve got nothing to hide, they’re welcome to have a look.

I think though clearly you have to be careful with it. Paid informants is not a good look for a State Owned Enterprise and Don Eldar has reflected that, and I think he’s asked those people to cease and desist from that kind of activity. Of course there’s always two sides to every story, but I won’t go into the great merits of all that.

But yeah it’s an industry where some standards have to be maintained, or we end up with the grubbiest of all worlds.