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Therese Arseneau -
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Paul Holmes is joined by Therese Arseneau, former Labour Party president Mike Williams and Young National president Daniel Feilding to discuss the John Key interview.
PAUL Well one thing he was definite about if we can read the code.
MIKE WILLIAMS - Former Labour Party President Yes well I think he's read the tealeaves on that one. Forty thousand people walking up Queen Street, whatever it was has got to take a message to him, and I think he's done well.
PAUL As you said ten times Nikki Kayes majority in Auckland walking up Queen Street about Great Barrier Island. It's gotta be dead mining on Schedule 4 doesn't it Daniel. Your age group particularly aren't gonna wear it?
DANIEL FIELDING - Young National Party President All we're saying at the moment, or all the government is saying is look we're about catching up with Australia, we need to look at all the options, and all we're doing is just taking a stock take of the resources that we've got, we haven't done it before, let's see what's there, it's a discussion?
PAUL We've heard all this, but you heard him say it's going to Cabinet tomorrow, wasn't it fairly clear that Schedule 4 goes?
DANIEL We'll have to wait and see. I mean there was a lot of support for it as well.
PAUL Let's go to something he said which is very much the tone
of the interview, and you have already remarked to me upon this,
and I noticed it too, so here's what the Prime Minister said on
privatisation.
Guyon: "Privatisation, do you think in your tenure as Prime
Minister that you will preside over the partial float of any
assets?
John Key: Well we might do, I can't rule that out."
PAUL So we don't rule it out, we don't rule it in, and that appeared to be the tone and I wonder if this becoming the tone of this premiership. We don't rule it out but we don't rule it in. Fran O'Sullivan described the government yesterday as looking like it's frightened of its own shadow?
THERESE ARSENEAU - Political Analyst Well we have to remember they're half way through the term and you know there's a lot of talk already of the next election. Look half of their term is still here, they really need to be talking about what they're going to do with the one half of this term of government. I actually think the problem is, we spend an awful lot of time looking down at individual policies. For me the problem with the government has always been up at the higher level, and at the level of goals and strategies, and you need to talk very clearly about, it's not catching Australia by 2025. Economic growth is actually a means to an end, and the end is a higher quality of life, a higher standard of living for New Zealanders, and that determines what sort of economic growth you go for.
PAUL What I was trying to say to you was, are we getting a wishy washiness?
THERESE Well they've had a tendency to float a lot of ideas, listen to what the public says and then perhaps go with it or not.
PAUL Daniel what do you think?
DANIEL I mean I have to disagree with you there, I mean I think the government has been quite clear, it's set out a vision for New Zealand, and it's about a more ambitious New Zealand, it's about providing opportunities for New Zealanders and backing success, and I think we're seeing this with the budget, and the announcements in that.
THERESE` But where was the vision in you know we do know that one of the best - the biggest drivers of economic growth is education, and particularly tertiary education, and we have Steven Joyce as the Minister of Tertiary Education floating the idea that university funding is going to be perhaps ...
PAUL Tied to people being able to get a job.
THERESE ... job in the next year. In the next year. You look at the OECD report on this and the driver of good education is the quality, and it is absolutely I think the incorrect mechanism for trying to gauge the value of an education within a job placement.
PAUL Can we talk about the business of Corrections which the government, Judith Collins, very proud of the new prisons and the numbers of prisons we're getting. Bill English apparently told the Mood of the Boardroom Conference recently, Corrections is becoming the biggest single budgetry item, [clarification: Vote Correction is not becoming the government's biggest budgetary item. English told the Mood of the Boardroom conference that Corrections was the "fastest growing portfolio" and is set to become the biggest department if measured by staff numbers]. Sir Doug Graham stood here and said look you know when I was Minister of Corrections the prison population was half what it is today, he said do we feel any safer? And of course every time someone goes to prison it's $90,000 a year and 250 capital spend.
MIKE This is something that will have to be addressed, because it's completely running absolutely out of control, and the interesting thing is that the incoming Secretary for Justice in Britain has actually encountered exactly the same thing, when he left office 13 years ago the prison population was half what it is now. Now we've gotta do some lateral thinking about this. Australia has a prison population 30% less than New Zealand, it's a very similar society, with a heritage of transportation of convicts. Now what the hell is going on? How is this different? We've got to find out quick.
THERESE And again the issue is the goal is to make communities safer, but you need to have a more robust analysis around what does that mean, and does it mean that we're - you know Bill English is saying in the very near future we're gonna be spending more money on locking people up than on the very programmes that we need to spend it on to prevent them from committing crimes in the first place. So again the vision has to be more fully examined.
PAUL Michael, the 90 day kind of probation business for people beginning work at a firm. What is wrong with that?
MIKE I don't think that's the issue. The issue for me was actually something that's been a bit swept under the carpet and that is union access, and I'm just wondering why John Key would go there, and I think it may be one of a very rare mistake because in doing that he's alienated a group which were not supportive, but at least sort of giving him a go.
PAUL Which group?
MIKE The Trade Unions, and I think he's made a bad enemy there, and I don't know why he would do that. It's potentially as John Howard found a third rail issue. But let's see how far he pushes it.
PAUL Why is he talking only about the small businesses which comprise about 200 odd thousand of our businesses where you want to be sure when you take someone on full time.
MIKE Yes I don't think the unions are gonna win that argument, it's the union access thing I think that John Key has chosen to mark himself out as a right winger, and I think that's a mistake and I don't know why he's done it.
