The Young Nats have just put out the following press release:

Students Welcome Chance For Choice

The Young Nats today welcomed the drawing of the Education (Freedom of Association) Amendment Bill from the ballot, which will allow for voluntary student union membership.

"The campaign for 'student choice' has had a real win today," says Young Nats President, Alex Mitchell.

"Students will welcome the chance for choice. It is great to see that this private member's bill, allowing for voluntary student union membership, has been drawn from the ballot.

"This is well overdue - students remain the only group in society still forced to join a union. Students can’t enroll at New Zealand’s Universities and Tertiary Institutions or even sign into their classes without having to pay a union membership levy.

"Students ought to have the same right and freedoms as every other New Zealander. They ought to be able to choose whether or not they join a student union.

“There are other issues we hope that this bill will address. For example we constantly see low turnout at student elections, such that student associations spend large amounts of students' money without any real core support from the student body.

“We hope this will be a wake up call to those currently involved to think about value for money for students, especially in the current global economic downturn.

“The Young Nats call on all MPs to vote for this bill through the first stage so we can see a robust public debate at the select committee stage. The National Party was founded upon the principles of choice and freedom – this bill will allow all students to enjoy the fundamental principle of freedom of association”

ENDS

Media contact:
Alex Mitchell 027 303 9272

The media still don't seem to quite understand the relationship between the current government parties.

The media portray a centrist National party, being pulled to the right by ACT, United Future doing nothing in the middle, and the Maori Party as being out of the left in a strange temporary agreement where compromise will always be necessary.


Yes, ACT is on the right, and disagrees with National on quite a few issues. That part is probably quite well understood.

United Future may well be very small, but anyone that actually takes the time to read their policies will find they're a lot closer to ACT than to National. It is United Future's confidence and supply agreement that pushes for lowering and flattening of tax rates. ACT instead lays out the goal of catching Australia (although that will require tax cuts too, of course). United Future are also quite happy to call for more use of the private sector in the health system.

The problems with the media's analysis really become evident though when the Maori Party are thrown in to the mix. There are big differences between ACT and the Maori Party on certain issues - particularly with regard to constitutional issues, no one can deny that. But those same issues exist between the Maori Party and National as well - and to pretty much the same extent too.

What the media forget, is that underpinning the Maori Party philosophy is a deep distrust and skepticism about the Government (in general, not this particular one). The Maori Party consistently call for power, control and funding to be removed from the state and given to Iwi, Whanau and Maori themselves. The Maori Party want schools run by Maori, for Maori, prisons run by Maori, for Maori, etc etc.

Audrey Young has touched on this issue with regard to Welfare in an article in today's Herald, that prompted me to write this piece. She talks about Tariana Turia's big plans for the Maori Party's whanau ora policy:


Turia described it in a speech this week as "one of the most ground-breaking projects I have ever taken on".

It will bring together funding from various Government departments - health, education, justice, housing, social welfare - to fund a new approach to service delivery.

Last Saturday, as the other parties battled it out for Mt Albert, Turia marked the Maori Party's fifth birthday by announcing the taskforce that will come up with the detailed policy design to help get Government approval.

Roughly modelled on John Tamihere's Waipareira Trust, it would allow a co-ordinated approach by private providers to families in need of state assistance, instead of having various departments working in silo fashion.

Tamihere, once at loggerheads with Turia in the Labour caucus, has been helping the Maori Party in the development of the policy.

Turia describes it as a way for Maori to restore their own rangatiratanga instead of being paralysed by state-created dependency.

It sounds good even if it is not yet clear how it would work.


There are a couple of important points to make here.

1) We're not talking about throwing money at a problem, we're talking about co-ordinating the activities of a bloated bureaucracy into targeted assistance.
2) Private providers, competing to provide the best services.
3) Rangatiratanga - self determination - instead of state dependence.

That certainly isn't a policy from a left wing Maori Party that is only temporarily divorced from Labour. In fact, if that sounds more like ACT policy to you, then you're right.

One of the points on ACT's 20 point plan at the 2008 election, and a long running policy of Roger Douglas and ACT, was our 'Families At Risk' policy which features:


Encourage personal responsibility, self-reliance, a return to the workforce, up-skilling and continuing education.

Introduce contestability and competition in delivery of mentor-based assistance.

Ensure coordination and complementarity with health, education, superannuation, and law and order policies.

Funding to come from better use of the currently uncoordinated departmental resources being spent in the social area.

The Social Welfare department will identify dysfunctional families with children that are at risk. Families so classified will be eligible for mentor support.

The role of the mentor will be to diagnose the real problems facing that family and rehabilitate the family into full community participation and self-sufficiency.

Maximum discretion will be given to mentors to establish and run a programme suitable for each particular situation, with emphasis on securing work, providing childcare assistance, if necessary once parents are working, up-skilling/ further education, budget control, better housing and reduced crime, improved health and education for family members.

Mentors will work with the family and work out the best use of the money that is currently being spent on that family, free from bureaucratic rules. Assistance provided will be based on the coordination of the resources currently spent on the family by various agencies.


Audrey Young is right that National and NZ First would see this as separatist policy, but what she misses - and what the rest of the media are missing too - is that while ACT see Maori seats as separatist, we fully support many of the Maori Party's other policies.

The Maori Party want private Maori schools, private Maori prisons, private Maori welfare, maybe even private Maori healthcare too.

ACT want all those things for Maori, and for everyone else too.

For National:

Graeme Edgeler has spotted that to entrench a law, Standing Orders require a super-majority equal to super-majority required to repeal that law.

In other words, if you wanted to require 75% to get rid of the Maori seats, you would need 75% to do the entrenching. So neither National or Labour can promise that they will do so in coalition negotiations.