It was exhibit A of a coalition government.
Without a single party with a clear mandate, you end up with piecemeal positions. You get a report done then you cherry pick which options are palatable to everybody and effective for nobody.
In this case they picked just two of the ten options.
Seymour would have liked the option of flogging off the 51% of energy companies we do own, but on the other hand, Matua Shane wanted the buy the rest back.
It’s what we call a political halfway house.
Critics on this side say we needed more intervention, critics on that side say less.
What we voters need decide is whether this country needs bold action or incrementalism. Do we need radical, or do we want to comprise?
In 2020, Jacinda scored the first single party majority since 1993 (first under MMP) then burned the reputation of absolute power.
Let’s be real - nobody’s going to give National carte blanche come 2026.
So if the polls, Mood of the Boardroom, and talk on the street actually reflect reality, then we need to decide which side we want National pulled towards - economic nationalism in New Zealand First or free market libertarianism in ACT.
Until then, we'll get more reports firing out blank recommendations. More decisions that appease everybody but fix nothing.
This decision basically went down like any three-way. Messy. Hard Work. Took ages. And nobody really leaves completely satisfied.
Ryan Bridge is a New Zealand broadcaster who has worked on many current affairs television and radio shows. He currently hosts Newstalk ZB's Early Edition - where this article was sourced.
5 comments:
How we elect the politicians won't make any difference if they keep lying to us.
There was nothing stopping Nicola Willis from talking to the 2 supermarkets credited with making Aus families' grocery bills $10,000 a year cheaper than ours, and getting them setup in NZ.
Willis has been told by various studies decoupling NZs wholesale food market from the duopoly will open up competition, so why isn't she doing it?
There was nothing stopping Willis and Watts implementing all 12 recommendations of their electricity market report instead of just 2 to reduce our power bills. So why didn't they?
Why is Luxon, who promised lower food, electricity, and banking prices; hiding?
Ryan, your interview of Simon Watts was brilliant.
Hoskings' capitulation to price colluding, super profit, NZ industries; leaves you as our only honest main stream reporter!
Keep up the great work.
We did have that with Labour and look what they chose to do. Ideology over actual science and their solution to energy is to push water uphill and use taxpayer money to subsidise intermittent, costly, 'renewable' energy - among other things!
FPP has had its day as seen by the last Labour Govt. Politicians are a different breed now than fifty years ago and no-one would trust a lone party in power by itself
Let’s put it to a vote! Let’s say we make the proportion of elected members proportional to the amount of vote they get. But we also need to cater for local electorates too, so let’s factor that in somehow. And so then if some party gets half the national vote and half the electorates, then they can run things how they see fit. 50% is a bit slim though we should have some kind of buffer. Yeah.
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