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Rodney Hide - Source: Q+A -
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PAUL Over the past two days the Act Party's
been holding its annual conference in Wellington. It's the first
conference since Rodney Hide's leadership was questioned late last
year after the former perk buster was forced to apologise and repay
the taxpayer for taking his partner with him on a trip to London
and Hawaii, and it's the first conference since he accused National
of being a do nothing government. In his keynote speech yesterday
Mr Hide stressed the need for the party to keep its promise of
stable centre right government, and to not overreach. So good
morning to Rodney Hide, thank you very much for coming up this
morning and joining us. Did you have a couple of bottles of wine on
the ministerial card at the conference?
RODNEY HIDE - Leader ACT Party No, no I didn't, I
think that lesson's been well learnt by politicians.
PAUL Do you have a card?
RODNEY Yes.
PAUL Do you agree with Mike Williams that it is
hard to know sometimes when to use the ministerial card and when
not?
RODNEY I agree yes about the ministers versus
electorate, and so what would happen is for example if Gerry
Brownlee had taken his ministerial staff for lunch it would have
been fine, but when he went into his electorate office it wasn't
fine, and you find as a minister that you can be travelling around
the country and speaking in one place as a minister, and the next
place as a member of parliament or a leader of a party, and you've
gotta at some point shift your expenses across.
PAUL So should Heatley have resigned?
RODNEY Look Phil Heatley clearly came to that
decision himself, and so the answer to that is yes, and I think
what we're being surprised at politically is that we've been used
to ministers hanging on for grim death, and indeed the political
process defending fellow ministers, and what we have here - my
experience of Phil Heatley isn't what Mike says, I actually find
Phil Heatley a very intelligent guy, but I'd say he's a very
honourable guy.
PAUL But he should have known shouldn't he that
you can't use the ministerial card for a couple of bottles of
plonk.
RODNEY Of course he should have know, I mean he
knows that and that's why he resigned, but what I'm saying to you
is he actually was doing a very good job in his portfolio, I think
it's a loss, be he was pushing hard on aquaculture, we do need
aquaculture to develop the New Zealand economy, he was doing a good
job, I worked with him as Minister of Local Government, I got to
like the guy, my observation would be he's more honourable than
most politicians and I think that's why he resigned, and I think
that's why it hurt him so much inside.
PAUL Is her more honourable than you?
RODNEY Well that's for others to judge.
PAUL I guess so. It shows us doesn't it though,
because he had been warned, you could call him a serial offender on
the ministerial card, two bottles of wine became dinner with the
wife. It shows us again doesn't it how MPs can get hooked into this
culture of entitlement?
RODNEY Yes.
PAUL Did you get hooked into that?
RODNEY Yes.
PAUL Should you have resigned given Heatley's
resignation?
RODNEY Well I didn't think about it actually. What
I did was, I made a mistake and I realised myself that I'd made a
mistake, it took a while because when it broke I was sort of busy
defending myself, and then I had to accept myself that I'd made a
mistake, that's the hardest thing actually to admit that yourself
and then I worked to put it right.
PAUL Yeah but Mr Hide, Mr Heatley paid back twelve
hundred you paid back over ten thousand, should you have resigned
when you look at Heatley's example?
RODNEY No, because I didn't break any rule.
PAUL But you didn't do the right thing initially
do you?
RODNEY Well I didn't do the right thing for me,
but I didn't actually break the rule, and understand this,
everything that I did had been signed off by the Prime
Minister.
PAUL Are you still a perk buster?
RODNEY Well I've got a bigger job, and in fact the
perks have been well busted by me.
PAUL Isn't it amazing, you were the perk buster
and even you got sucked into that culture of entitlement, how the
hell does that happen?
RODNEY Well the rules are poor, the rules are
treacherously poor.
PAUL How complicated is it, two bottles of wine
not being two bottles of wine?
RODNEY No, the rules are treacherously
complicated save for Gerry Brownlee and for me, because my view of
it is that we shouldn't be paid the way we are, we shouldn't have
this part of our salary package that's a trip entitlement, that was
always my argument, and then you actually have your salary deducted
for these trips, and then when you take them you have TVNZ chasing
you, but I accepted because I'd criticised that process, I couldn't
accept that entitlement and I took it on the chin, but now my job
is a much bigger one because essentially we have a government
that's borrowing 240 million dollars, government spending is out of
control, I'm working hard to get both under control. Of course we
have an economy that's struggling where average family here of four
is $64,000 a year behind Australia, so my job now is yes I've gotta
keep an eye on the MPs. My job is to lift the performance of this
country.
PAUL I understand that and we'll talk about the
economy very shortly. Let me just ask you how badly that matter
hurt you and the party?
RODNEY Not too bad actually.
PAUL Was there discussion at a special caucus last
November or any caucus last November, in which there was an attempt
to roll you as leader?
RODNEY No, no.
PAUL Where there misgivings expressed about your
performance?
RODNEY By me there was, so it was me that called
the meeting and it was me that took the opportunity to review the
year, because we'd been going very hard, imagine this you had the
election campaign, we came in, I was working very hard on local
government as leader and getting the relationship with National
going.
PAUL Well everyone seemed to do very well, and for
ACT you did very well in the John Key government, but was concern
expressed by Roger Douglas or Heather Roy?
RODNEY No. When I say that no, I mean there was
concern expressed about ACT's positioning, about how we'd go
forward, but there wasn't a concern expressed about me staying on
as Leader.
PAUL So after the conference yesterday can you
guarantee that you'll be fighting the next election as the Leader
of ACT?
RODNEY Look no person can guarantee that, and
you'd be foolish to do so, and you'd be arrogant to do so. A person
is a leader, or indeed an MP, on the request of others, it's a
great privilege, and in the ACT Party we don't take anything for
granted. I work every day to justify my position as an MP, as MP
for Epsom, I work every day to justify myself as a leader of the
party and as a minister, and I don't take it for granted, and I
mean if caucus decides that there's a better option then you accept
that. So if I sat here and said I can guarantee you that I'll be
leader, it doesn't matter what I do. No no, I've gotta actually
earn that right to contest the next elections as the Leader of the
ACT Party.
PAUL Let's talk about some of the difficulties of
being the minor party in a supply and confidence deal with the big
monster party, if you like, and you've spoken about ACT being in
the death zone, what did you mean by death zone?
RODNEY Well no political party has survived where
ACT is positioned, and so you know unless you call sort of Jim
Anderton or Peter Dunne hanging in there surviving, the parties
typically get wiped out, and the reason is that they&
RODNEY Well the Alliance got wiped out through
internal difficulties within the party, New Zealand First probably
the same over the whole business, and United Future perhaps Peter
Dunne's numbers in that election were a freak.
RODNEY That's true.
PAUL But it's about - they seem to have imploded,
the parties.
RODNEY And I think there's a lot of pressure on
the small party in government, you know a larger party has more
resources, has more people, it in a funny way has less pressure,
the Maori Party and ACT Party have a lot of pressure on them, and
I'm conscious of this, and here's what we've done to counter that,
because we've had the observation of other parties. The first thing
is to be very clear with the electorate what they're gonna deliver
on before the election, and subsequent to the election, a very good
confidence and supply agreement with the National Party that allows
us to criticise the National Party, and hears our policy
achievements, our promise to the voters that we'll ensure a stable
centre right government, and we will ensure some policy wins, and
hears the thing Paul, we're delivering on that.
PAUL I know and it's not being reflected in the
polls, that's my question. So how does ACT, I mean Heather Roy is
saying we can't rely on Epsom forever, we've gotta get 5%, well
you're nowhere near 5% at the moment, you got what 3ý% in
the last election?
RODNEY Yes but again I can sit there and worry
about the polls or I can get on and do the best job that I can for
the country in my ministerial positions and as Leader of the ACT,
and that's my focus. My focus actually funnily enough isn't ACT, my
focus is New Zealand. You know what we need to be doing is lifting
our economic performance, and we know what we need to do, we had
the great report from the Don Brash task force, we need to get
spending under control, we need to be cutting the red tape, we need
to be increasing our performance as a government so that we have
first rate policy, so we can have a first rate country, that's the
responsibility that we have as ministers.
PAUL Yes, but you have got a bloke called Sir
Roger Douglas who said to the conference yesterday, that ACT is
facing serious risk of being seen merely as a support partner
content with crumbs from National's table. You on the other hand
were saying ACT has to be responsible and provide the stable
government. Is that a division?
RODNEY No, it's a tension, and it's a natural
tension that I feel every day, because I'm not the National Party,
I find the National Party too conservative, too centrist, not
confronting the problems that the country faces, basically we're
still sticking with the policies of Michael Cullen and Helen Clark,
and that's going to lead us to a second rate performance when we
are actually aspiring to a first rate performance.
PAUL Is that what you believe Bill English and
John Key are doing, sticking to the policies of Helen Clark and
Michael Cullen?
RODNEY Yes.
PAUL Is this incremental cautious economic policy
of Bill English's going to work, going to lift our game?
R
ODNEY Well, they're doing a better job than
Helen Clark and Michael Cullen that's true, but we want to be doing
a much much better job than Helen Clark and Michael Cullen, and our
job as ACT is to push that, we've got to respect though that we're
only five MPs.
PAUL Yeah but at the same time are some of your
people getting ancy?
RODNEY Of course they are, and some people within
National are getting ancy too, because we can actually see the
country slipping off the pace, and when we voted at the last
election we voted for something different, and we have to ensure
that difference, a difference not just for us in the here and now,
but a difference for our children. Don Brash told us at the
conference yesterday, and it's a shocking statistic, 260,000 New
Zealanders left this country permanently over the last decade, and
the question is over the next ten years are we going to lose
another 260,000 of our best and our brightest or more, or are we
going to reverse the flow, and the decisions that we're making now
as a country are deciding that. You know we passed the dopy
Emissions Trading Scheme that is going to cost our economy over a
billion dollars a year.
PAUL Go back to your people who are leaving the
country, 260,000 over the past decade, are the present policies of
John Key and Bill English going to bring them back?
RODNEY No.
PAUL Do you believe as John Key does that we can
catch up with Australia by 2025? Alan Bollard of course as you know
sat where you are and said we cannot. What do you believe?
RODNEY We can, but we can't do it on our present
policies, so they're both right. We can catch Australia and you've
actually gotta set the goal, but then you've got to actually say
not only set the goal, you've actually gotta have a plan to achieve
it, and that's what we're getting frustrated with, and the present
policies that we're on won't lift our economic performance. There
are people in New Zealand right now in businesses, in the
households, who are actually being squeezed, they're paying and
paying and paying, there's nothing left to be squeezed out of them.
Our farmers who are still the backbone of New Zealand, are actually
being squeezed till their pips pop, they're being over regulated,
so is every small business, so is every entrepreneur, and people
are saying why would I stay in New Zealand and have a government
that's doing this to me, when I can go over to Australia say and
earn so much more and actually be supported by government?
PAUL When you look at those numbers Bill English
was talking about in his speech a couple of weeks back, how bad do
you think the situation is?
RODNEY Very bad.
PAUL Very bad?
RODNEY Mm, because unless we do something to
reverse our performance and to give some aspiration and hope to New
Zealanders the trend will continue, and I mean you think of 260,000
people, think of the
economic potential and the social potential and the energy that
that means that we've lost.
PAUL Can I just move on to a couple of things. You
have succeeded it is true in pushing on to the national agenda a
number of major policies, you got Super City through of course,
regulatory reform, three strikes, yes you got 3ý% of the
vote, this is very much isn't it the tail wagging the dog, isn't
this what people dislike so much about MMP? These are major
planks.
RODNEY They're major planks and they're major
planks that ACT campaigned on, and people voted for, people voted
for&
RODNEY Three and a half percent voted for
ACT.
RODNEY Well 3ý% voted for it, but don't
forget this Paul, 92% voted for tougher sentencing for repeat
violent offending, I actually haven't found anyone outside the
Labour Party that don't believe that three strikes is a good policy
and that we should be being tougher on repeat violent offending. I
can't find anyone who doesn't believe that red tape isn't
strangling New Zealand and we should be doing something about it. I
don't find anyone again outside the Labour Party or the civil
servants, who think we're not spending too much money and wasting
it, when actually hard working people and farmers and small
businesses are being squeezed to pay these outrageous taxes and
they want to see a government, that gets on top of that spending
pool, and I tell you the people that gave their vote to ACT are
getting good value for their vote, and what I'd like to see is more
people give their party vote to ACT in the next election, and then
we can lift the performance of this country.
PAUL Yes alright. Talk to me about regulatory
reform, now what you're planning, what you're trying to do there,
you're going to set up a powerful committee, one bill to rule them
all is what they're calling it, you're going to set up a powerful
committee to assess all legislation against a set of principles,
these are the rule of law liberties, taking of property taxes and
charges, role of courts and lawmaking. Doesn't that bind future
governments to ACT's fundamental philosophy.
RODNEY No.
PAUL Sounds like Roger Douglas to me.
RODNEY No it's not, what we have is those
principles are being distilled out of the legislative advisory
guidelines that operate for Cabinet now. We've got those guidelines
operating in Cabinet now. What this does is put them into statute,
it doesn't actually set up a committee at all, what it does is
require ministers and a government to be transparent about what
their legislation is doing, so the people of New Zealand can
actually see what the effect of this bill is. It doesn't stop
parliament, it doesn't stop a minister from passing whatever law
that they want, but what we're demanding in law making is proper
transparency so we can have accountability. We're also demanding
this, we're also saying that existing legislation should be
regularly reviewed, and this bill sets up a framework for doing it,
and bear this in mind, this bill is not about stopping politicians
from doing things, or parliament being in charge of its own
destiny, or tying it up, all it's asking for is transparency about
the effects of the legislation, and goodness knows Paul we need it,
because we're drowning the country in mad red tape and
regulation.
PAUL As you've been telling us for years. Look the
dog laws - ACC handled 40 dog incidents or maulings in January
alone, you're talking about changing the dog laws, you believe they
too are an onerous muddle, what changes?
RODNEY We don't know yet, I tell you what we're
doing?
PAUL Give Carolina Anderson, right now on this
programme, an assurance you are not gonna loosen the dog laws.
RODNEY I can give the people of New Zealand
including Caroline Anderson an absolute assurance that we have dog
laws there to protect people for the public safety against vicious
dogs, that's the purpose of the laws, but what I'm saying is this,
I want to do a review of that legislation to see that it's working,
because what we've had is successive governments come along in
response to particular&
PAUL And we've had continued successive dog
attacks.
RODNEY Yes, and so the way to do that is to do a
proper review, involve the public, and say you know what can we do
to make this law better.
PAUL Yeah but the perception I think is you might
be talking loosely.
RODNEY Ah no, no. We don't have cat control laws,
we don't have budgie control laws, we have dog control laws because
dogs can attack people, but here's my worry, and it's always been a
worry that I have with legislation, is that we pass laws constantly
that affect everyone, when the actual problem is the few.
PAUL The problem is the dog I spose.
RODNEY No, the problem is the owners.
PAUL I'm sorry, I've gotta wrap it there, thank
you Mr Hide very much for coming on the programme.
