Category: imported_weekly
Welfare reform requires great care. Of all policy areas, the unintended consequences of getting it wrong can be devastating, especially for children.
Over recent weeks the plight of Manus Island refugees and the Prime Minister’s offer to take 150 has dominated the news. The media’s obsession with the refugee issue is reminiscent of their incessant promotion of Jacinda Ardern’s Labour Party in the run up to the election.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has promised to address New Zealand’s flagging productivity growth. According to the Productivity Commission, the country is being held back by our persistently weak labour productivity growth, which was the fourth lowest of all OECD countries between 1995 and 2014.
Following on from the controversial way the new Government was formed - whereby kingmaker Winston Peters chose a coalition of losing parties instead of the winning National Party - the 52nd Parliament also got off to a controversial start.
If anyone was hoping the election would deliver some form of reprieve from the hundreds of overlapping claims for the foreshore and seabed, resulting from National’s disastrous Marine and Coastal Area Act, they will be sorely disappointed.
The country’s new Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister have claimed that free market capitalism is failing New Zealand. Their comments indicate that they intend blaming areas of government and policy failure on capitalism.
“NZ Shock: Losers take power” was the headline in The Australian newspaper on Friday. They are not wrong. It is a shock to many that the party with substantially more votes than any other party is now in opposition.
Winston Peters, the 2017 General Election ‘Kingmaker’, is yet to choose New Zealand’s new government. The widespread speculation that the coalition negotiating window set by New Zealand First was too tight, has turned out to be correct.
The 446,000 Special Votes cast during last month’s election have now been counted. According to the Electoral Commission, the final election tally gives National 56 seats, Labour 46 seats, New Zealand First 9 seats, the Greens 8 seats, and ACT one seat.
The election is over and voters have had their say. Now the MMP horse-trading begins. Elected MPs are the ones who will chose our new Prime Minister and deliver an administration that can command the 61 vote majority in the House that’s necessary to govern New Zealand.
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