Alliance offers New Zealanders a choice
A national conference of the New Zealand Alliance was held at Easter in Wellington. Here we reprint major excerpts from Alliance leader JIM ANDERTON's speech to the conference.
We joined the Alliance to unite the strengths of each of our member parties — to combine our concerns with making New Zealand a better place for us all to live in.
We have combined environmentalism, economic and social policy and [Waitangi] Treaty justice into a strategy for democratic government. We draw on the lessons of the past, as we look forward.
We are told, we have to be better, cheaper, leaner and meaner than our competitors. It is, we are warned, a dog-eat-dog international marketplace. The 21st century, we are told, will not be pretty.
For example, it is better, we are told, to sell the vast forests of the central North Island to international companies than to develop and harvest them ourselves.
From living within nature's seasons and patterns, we are now altering the global climate. Cities house billions in the industrialised world, and the carpeting forests which were once home to so much animal and insect life have virtually gone. Human waste, from sewage to junked cars, poses vast problems everywhere.
In the developing world, tropical jungles are being burnt at a scale without parallel, threatening the last great reserves of species diversity. In their struggles for survival and for decent lives, the peoples of South America, Africa and Asia are becoming increasingly desperate.
There is hope, of course. The technology of the Green Revolution in agricultural products of the 1960s has been something of a farming miracle, enabling countless more to be fed.
At the microscopic level, we have split the atom — and nearly destroyed life in the process. At the same time, we have almost unravelled the secrets of life itself in the genetic codes. So, we may just haul ourselves out of global catastrophe using knowledge.
Of course we believe in the attitudes on which a competitive economy is based: hard work, efficiency, independence of thought and spirit, not wasting time, associated democratic values: competitive politics, free speech and individual liberty.
If one word expresses that unity, it would be community. There are values in our community, in the concept of the public good, in the state, in a fair society. To achieve these things, we need the combined resources of the state.
We need the economies of scale, the central authority, the balancing of diversity, the narrowing of inequalities — only the state can achieve these things efficiently.
So, we say: Yes to competition — but not at any cost. Yes to production — but not at any cost. Yes to building — but not at any cost. Yes to trade — but not at any cost. Yes to low inflation — but not at any cost.
We count the collective good somewhat higher than the other parties. It is time for the public good to strike back.
The other parties argue that the key is to allow the market to dominate everything. But has this veneration, this idolisation of "the market", any basis in economic fact? Sure, there are plenty of stories about the public waste of funds. But how many more stories are there about the private sector: insolvency, bankruptcy, fraud, deception?
How many pensioners have ever lost their life savings from government-run Post Office Savings Banks? None. How many people lost their life savings from the madness of the 1980s market? Hundreds and thousands.
We stand for a national health system, because we believe that the resources of New Zealand can be managed better to provide a public health system for all, than in ludicrous and destructive cost-cutting.
We accuse the National government, as did Judge Noble in the Cave Creek inquiry, of starving the Department of Conservation of funds so that it created the climate of scraping by on a shoestring. We are not suggesting that the answer is to throw taxpayers' money madly at every department. We accuse the government of failure. We accuse the minister of forgetting the public good, in favour of market worship.
We say it is a public investment, which the country will regain countless times over, to educate our young people as far as their abilities can take them.
We accuse the government of pork-barrel politics by giving away money in an election year, rather than trying to ensure properly funded state activity. We believe that the people of New Zealand would prefer that an efficient public sector did its job properly — rather than bribe taxpayers with the ephemeral benefits of a few dollars in their hands.
Poorly used tax money is a public waste and a scandal. Under-funded government activity is an equal scandal and, occasionally, a tragedy.
About Winston Peters [leader of the New Zealand First party, who has been campaigning against immigration] let me say that the denigration of "groups", whether it be immigrants, Pakeha New Zealanders, Maori, or any group, is not the sort of politics for which the Alliance stands.
Out of the climate of distrust which arises when leaders publicly denigrate others, often comes a harvest of hate. A politician in India makes a nasty speech about another religious group — that night innocent members of that group are beaten in the streets, or killed in their homes. Some "security expert" in America says on national TV that the Oklahoma bombings were most likely to have been done by Islamic extremists — and people who look Arabic are threatened and harassed. In New Zealand, a series of speeches about immigrants — and a brick is thrown through the window of refugee Somalis.
Political leaders who make these sorts of speeches bear part of the moral responsibility for talking up the violence which results. It is not enough, afterwards, to say that one condemns violence.
So, to the immigrants of the last few years, we say: "Welcome". We say: "Thank you for joining us, for travelling thousands of miles to make a new home among us."
And to the Somali families who now fear for their safety, we say: "You are not alone; that rock was thrown through the window of the home of every caring New Zealander; we will stand with you around your houses if it is necessary".
We offer a vision as the Alliance. We are finalising our policies as we face both the difficulties of this country, and the place in the international economy that we find ourselves. We offer a choice to the people of New Zealand that is not based solely on fear.
The basic choice is between the minimalist state and an accountable government playing an important role in key areas.