ACT's The Letter - Monday 15 December 2003

CHRISTMAS WEEK

The government hopes to end parliament and announce the foreshore policy with no parliamentary scrutiny. Labour is pleased Maori are criticising the proposals because that means the rest of the country concludes it must be ok. The Letter fears the proposals may turn out to be bad for everyone. Development in aquaculture means there’s a multi billion-dollar industry in marine farming ready to happen. Investment is held up waiting on secure title and the lifting of the moratorium. Many in the industry would prefer Maori to have development rights, so there is someone to negotiate with, rather than local government or even worse, DOC.

IF IT’S STUCK – TAX IT

Labour’s solution to any problem - tax it! Lack of money is not the reason for the lack of a roading infrastructure. Transit has not been able to spend its annual budget for the last six years. It is the incredible planning delays caused by the Resource Management Act. The new transport legislation requires even more consultation, so planning delays for roads are now even longer. A decision for toll roads or a public/private partnership, adds, as a minimum, a further two years to the delay – assuming no legal challenges.

THE POLLS

TV1 - L – 45%, N– 28%, NZF – 11%, ACT – 6%, Greens – 4%, UF – 2%. Labour has lost ground. Governments usually lose support during an election campaign - Labour lost 10% last election. The Greens without the insurance of a seat or the GE issue could fail to reach the threshold. So the next election is winnable for the Centre-right. But the poll has concerns. National’s fall is significant. ACT voters like Brash so National is cannibalising voters from the right and losing voters to parties that could support Labour. Peter Dunne must be gutted by 2%. In ACT’s own polling, Labour’s ally, United, is gaining votes from National. Don Brash needs to be careful he does not lose the religious right vote to United who support the anti-family, godless Labour party. National also need to counter Peters’ racist immigration statements. Finishing the year on 6% gives ACT its best post election polling ever. ACT has always increased its Election Day vote on its public polling support, but ACT’s ambition is greater. The polls show that we can get rid of that woman!

CHRISTMAS ECONOMY

Indications are that this will prove a record retail summer. The Boxing Day /January sales are becoming bigger and bigger. If it rains over Christmas/New Year, retail will boom.

FONTERRA

Fonterra’s pay out, thanks to the policy of 15 months forward cover, remains high. The Letter thinks Fonterra’s policy is a crash waiting to happen. When the Kiwi again falls, and it will, farmers will be trapped into a low pay out for over a year by the forward cover. That’s what destroyed ENZA. Fonterra will find it cannot protect its monopoly in a market where farmers can receive far more from companies not trapped by massive forward cover contracts. Now is a good time to rethink the policy.

COURT OF APPEAL CASE

Richard Prebble is determined to continue with the Electoral Integrity Act to regain ACT’s entitlement to nine MPs. Donna Awatere Huata’s injunction has no merit. She is claiming that she has taken no action (some elf must have cast her vote for her) to distort parliament’s proportionality. On Tuesday the ACT caucus will consider Donna Awatere Huata’s letter responding to Ken Shirley’s asking why she should not be expelled from parliament. “We owe it to the 150,000 people who voted for ACT.”

STEVE FORBES COMING

Steve Forbes, the owner of Forbes magazine, one of America’s richest men and former Republican presidential primary candidate on the flat tax policy issue, is coming, via interactive video, to ACT’s conference on 5 – 7 March 2004 in Christchurch. The use of interactive video, enabling a live question and answer session with Milton and Rose Friedman, was spectacularly successful at this year’s conference. Steve Forbes is one of the leading advocates of capitalism and a much sought after speaker in the USA. You can register for the conference on http://www.act.org.nz/conference.

INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS BILL

ACT is continuing its analysis of this complex bill. It looks more diabolical. Terminating employment will become even more difficult. The bill has been sent to the Labour select committee. More analysis and commentary will be provided over the summer as it becomes available at http://www.act.org.nz/era.

DON’T HAVE A COW, MAN

The press gallery is up in arms over http://mediacow.blogspot.com – a web log site looking for media bull. It appears to be written by a media insider(s), possibly in the gallery. While the site has got some facts wrong, ie, who the next editor of the Listener is, it is remarkably well informed. We refuse to confirm or deny that it’s ACT’s revenge (be very afraid).

WHO OWNS THE FORESHORE?

Labour will release its foreshore policy on Wednesday to prevent parliament from having an opinion. That does not stop you from having your say. ACT will post the foreshore release on Wednesday and you can tell us if you support Labour’s foreshore proposals - we’ll send the results to the PM. http://www.act.org.nz/foreshore.

SADDAM

The capture of Saddam Hussein will come as a shock to NZ newspaper readers who are used to reports that Saddam is somehow winning. We’ve never been told that power supplies, school attendance, etc., all exceed pre-war levels, nor do the media explain the citizens’ dissent is because now they have free speech. For real news see http://www.usaid.gov and http://www.state.gov.

ENDS

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