Peter Williams: My vote needs a home

Fifteen weeks out it's struggling to find one

The great irony of Christopher Luxon ruling out a coalition with those redistributive Marxists of Opportunity is that the longer Luxon leads National it’s becoming the kind of left leaning social democratic party I’ve spent my life avoiding.

Consider some of their recent announcements and claims:

They gifted $60 million to Fletcher Building subsidiary Golden Bay Cement to keep the country’s only cement manufacturing plant as a going concern. It couldn’t balance its books because of charges levied under the Emissions Trading Scheme. Golden Bay won’t be the only manufacturer going cap in hand to stay afloat.

A sensible government would have ditched the scheme and reduced costs, not just for the cement maker but for all New Zealand manufacturing. Like we reported here last week this country, like almost every nation on the planet, is not going to make good on its commitments under the Paris Agreement.

So why even bother subsidizing a carbon emitter to buy offshore credits? Wouldn’t it just be more sensible to ditch the ETS?

Which is closely related to other Luxon statements on the same issue. He told an audience at the National Fieldays that his government’s core commitment remains delivering on Net Zero 2050 without purchasing billions of dollars in offshore assets. Then when a Climate Commission report came out last week saying this country wasn’t on track to meet the target, he insisted we were and could in fact reach the target earlier than 2050.

He’s clutching at straws because the numbers say we won’t. The most recent GHG emissions count for New Zealand was just under 78 Mt CO2 -e.

The 2050 target is about 20 Mt CO2 -e which is then offset by pine trees, hence Net Zero. New Zealand’s lowest ever recorded total was around 65 Mt CO2 -e in 1990.

The rest of the world is waking up to the physical impossibility of meeting these targets. Luxon should just get real, save our manufacturing industries billions and give the country an economic kick start.

Net Zero is a crock and should be abandoned. Luxon won’t because he’s too scared of the backlash from his fellow travelers on the left.

Then there’s the unbelievable announcement from Nicolas Willis today (July 27) that this government is subsidizing child care for families earning up to $229,000 a year!

When I read that I thought it was a typo. Surely there’s an extra 2 in that number.

But no, it’s on the official Beehive Press Release.

This is a piece of government welfare that I reckon even Jacinda Ardern and Grant Robertson at their most reckless would struggle to match. If a family is making over $4000 a week before tax then they can bloody well afford to pay for all of their child’s day care.

The country is in need of more babies but is increasing paid parental leave up to 30 weeks really the answer?

It’s remarkable how we’ve become less productive at work in the last 8 years. Ardern’s government invented another public holiday and increased sick leave from 5 days to 10. This National led coalition hasn’t rolled back either of those drains on business and has now added another cost on the taxpayer with the extended parental leave.

And then the craziest warning sign of all that this National Party is a bunch of socialists in disguise – the Finance Minister warning she may interfere in the grocery market.

As the revered economist Michael Reddell has pointed out, official figures from the Commerce Commission show that Woolworths supermarkets in New Zealand have earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) of less than 5 percent of revenue. Across the entire Woolworths group in Australia and New Zealand, the reported EBIT was about twice the net profit after tax, the NPAT.

So it seems for every dollar over the checkout, Woolworths makes about 2.5 cents profit.

If that percentage is conflated across the entire supermarket sector there’s about $700 million in after tax profits on the $28 billion turnover. Divide that by 398 supermarkets across the country and they’re making on average about $1.76 million a store.

Which sounds great until you compare the supermarket industry with what many regard as New Zealand’s best company Fisher and Paykel Healthcare. They have operating revenue of $2.31 billion and make $470 million profit, an NPAT ratio to revenue of around 20 percent.

I haven’t heard anybody say that FPH makes too much money or has excess profits.

Yes, the supermarket business is lucrative for those who have worked their way into ownership but they’ve reached that stage in life through hard work and have taken considerable risk to get there.

It’s what a government that really backs business should be applauding.

So why on earth is the deputy leader of the National Party threatening to interfere? Would forcing New World and Pak’nSave to be different companies make any difference to the household shopper?

It is one of the National Party’s sillier ideas, right up there with handouts to families making $229,000 a year.

I haven’t voted National since 2017. On current form I won’t be touching them with a barge pole this time round either. I’m really struggling with New Zealand First and its crazy ideas like buying a bank, although the mercifully brief suggestion to buy a Super Rugby team was arguably crazier. I’ve been an Act voter before but I really battle with them on moral issues involving the beginning and end of life.

It’s like turning on the TV to find there’s 100 channels and nothing worth watching. We have six parties in Parliament and 15 weeks from an election I’m struggling to commit to any of them.

Peter Williams was a writer and broadcaster for half a century. Now watching from the sidelines. Peter blogs regularly on Peter’s Substack where this article was sourced.