ACT’s regular bulletin

Noisy Neighbours
We have no idea what is going on with our friends in the National Party but just some days we are glad not to have too big a caucus in ACT. We know lawyers and accountants charge like wounded bulls. Free Press hopes that investigating who leaked that Simon Bridges spent $113,973 on expenses did not cost the taxpayer more than $113,973. The real pity, however, is that serious policy will be overshadowed this week.

The Order Paper
The order paper is filled with bills that will erode the quality of policymaking in New Zealand. They are the Commerce Amendment Bill that will allow the Commerce Commission to allow ‘Market Studies,’ the Equal Pay Amendment Bill that will allow the courts to set pay rates for whole industries, and the Education Amendment Bill that will abolish Charter Schools. Meanwhile, the Crown Minerals Amendment Bill that bans oil and gas exploration crashes through its shortened Select Committee process.

Market Studies
For years the Commerce Commission has wanted extra power to conduct ‘market studies.’ These mean that, without any complaint, the Minister or the Commission can decide to go poking around in an industry, demand information from participants, then demand restructure of the industry. It is a bureaucratic nightmare. The tinder dry commerce Minister Paul Goldsmith rightly told them where to go. Bureaucrats know that if they wait long enough they’ll get a soft Minister and so it was with Jacqui Dean who said yes. With the National party’s resistance gone, Labour’s Kris Faafoi is making it easy for them with legislation set to allow market studies this week.

Meanwhile…
The Teacher Unions run an effective monopoly on education at the expense of the most disadvantaged kids. Fonterra, created by special legislation to override competition law, lumbers from one crisis to another while the few plucky competitors that have emerged in this artificial market add much greater value. In both cases, Government has deliberately legislated competition away.

Like Giving Whiskey and Car Keys to Teenaged Boys
P.J. O’Rourke warned against giving power to Government, and the Commerce Commission is about as reckless as a drunk teenaged boy. This is the organisation that stopped the StuffMe merger between Fairfax and NZME and the merger between Sky and Vodafone. In both cases, companies facing technological disruption now face less certain futures against global competitors because the Commerce Commission is out of date. They are the last organisation that should be given even more power but that’s what the Commerce Amendment Bill will do.

Flight Attendants and Pilots Should Be Paid the Same
The International Labour Organisation has seriously suggested that the flight attendants and pilots are paid differently due to gender discrimination. The basis of the Pay Equity bill is that different professions are paid differently because of underlying biases for or against the gender that a particular industry employs. It all started with the Terrranova case where Kristine Bartlett claimed rest home workers were paid less because they are mainly women.

The Pay Equity Amendment Bill
National grappled with the Terranova case and could have legislated to say ‘back in 1972, the Pay Equity Act was designed to stop an employer paying a woman less than a man. It was never designed to let the courts order whole industries to be paid more or less, the courts are out of line.’ That would have been the right thing to do, but they set the wheels in motion to allow the courts to set pay rates as in a socialist economy. The Equal Pay Amendment Bill will bring that to pass.

The Education Amendment Bill
The Government is spending literally millions on working groups and consultations on education. Yet despite all the evidence they are abolishing charter schools. The Education Amendment Bill will remove the legal basis for the schools. Charter school operators are phenomenal people who will soldier on as state schools, yet without the flexibilities and obligations of the charter school model, their long term future is grim.

Everyone’s an Environmentalist Until the Lights Go out
So said Muldoon and so found a number of recent Australian Prime Ministers. Free Press warned that the ban on oil and gas will lead to New Zealand burning coal when there is no more gas in the future. We never thought that we’d see it happen this summer. Low lake levels, a lack of rain forecast over the summer, and outages in gas production have led to Genesis importing coal to keep the lights on.

Cheer Up
There is an election in only two years, and this country has survived world wars, depressions, and acute shortages of marmite. We have no shortage of work to do, but ACT remains unified in the task of not only changing the Government, but the country’s policy direction.

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