The Coalition Government has emerged relatively unscathed from a raucous and controversial start to its term with its 100 day plan completed as promised.
RNZ has published a helpful spreadsheet showing which of the 100 day commitments have been achieved and which ones are ‘questionable’ — but most have been met in some form.
Many of the big ticket items on the list were repeals of big Labour policies: The Reserve Bank’s dual mandate, the Auckland Regional Fuel Tax, Clean Car Discount scheme, Fair Pay Agreements, Affordable Water Reform, the Māori Health Authority, and Smokefree laws.
The merits of these bits of legislation are debatable but National campaigned on getting rid of them all—except Smokefree—and secured the support of a majority of voters.
Other non-legislative policy reversals were also on the list. Revising school curriculum, scrapping light rail projects, and stopping work on Lake Onslow and Income Insurance.
New Zealand First got a symbolic win with a commitment to ‘stop work’ on He Puapua when, in reality, it has been gathering dust since 2022.
In total, 24 items on the 49 point plan were policy reversals of some kind, another eight were operational actions, and the remaining 17 were new policies.
Most of these were just commitments to simply ‘begin’ work but a bunch have been carried through to completion.
These include setting up a fast-track consenting process, banning cellphones at schools, un-banning pseudoephedrine, banning gang patches, making the Medium Density Residential Standards optional, re-establishing 90-day trial periods, and starting a new transport plan.
Allowing the sale of cold medication containing pseudoephedrine was a popular policy win specific to the Act Party.
In a press release, leader David Seymour said his party’s policies had formed “the leading edge” of the Government’s agenda.
“Our coalition wins have taken New Zealand far further toward the ideals of freedom, choice, and personal responsibility than what Kiwis would have seen without us”.
It was true that a “large share” of the new Government’s time had been spent repealing Labour legislation but it was “essential to clean the slate” for new policies, he said.
Onwards
The Coalition Government now faces the more difficult work of coming up with replacements for things they have repealed.
Housing growth, water reform, and transport funding are all areas that need attention and where the coalition’s replacements are still in draft form.
While the 100 days have progressed, Finance Minister Nicola Willis has been quietly working away on the Budget. This process is confidential but she appears to be finding it difficult.
She has repeatedly cast doubt on whether the Crown accounts will be back in surplus by the end of the Parliamentary term as promised during the campaign.
There is no shortage of financial need across the Government and her fellow ministers will each be making the case as to why their portfolio should be an exception to the cost cuts.
Some will have strong arguments. The NZ Defence Force is in poor shape, health needs are rising year after year, and a lot of new infrastructure and maintenance is needed.
Cameron Bagrie, an independent economist, told Newshub the Finance Minister was chasing an “impossible trinity” in promising tax relief, a return to surplus, and sustained core services.
She would only be able to deliver on two out of the three, he said.
Tax cuts are non-negotiable and so she may be facing a choice between cutting core services—not just back-office functions—and getting back into surplus when planned.
Either decision might be a hard sell while sitting around the Cabinet table with both fiscal hawks and economic nationalists.
Popularity
While the first 100 days have gone as planned from a policy perspective, the new Government has faced an onslaught of opposition to its sudden change in direction.
The biggest areas of controversy have been the Act Party’s Treaty Principles Bill, rejection of using te reo Māori in public agencies, and the decision to scrap Smokefree laws which would have eventually banned tobacco.
In amongst all that, there have already been mildly misbehaving ministers and minor party leaders who seem to be beyond the control of Prime Minister Christopher Luxon.
There hasn’t been a lot of positive media coverage of the coalition, something Seymour seems to have taken personally, and the Government has not enjoyed a honeymoon.
A Taxpayers’ Union–Curia poll released on Friday, showed the National and Act parties losing support, while NZ First and the Greens gained.
Individual polls do bounce around a lot, but this one had bad news for Luxon. His personal popularity dropped from already low levels and is now underwater.
A net 5% of voters have an unfavorable opinion of the Prime Minister. He remains ahead of his coalition partners (who are on -8% and -12%) but behind his main rival.
More bad news: a net 3% of respondents thought the country was headed in the wrong direction. That measure had been improving since the election but dropped in this poll.
Labour leader Chris Hipkins had a net favorability rating of just 2%—not exactly Mr. Popular—and his party appears to have been losing support slightly.
59 Comments
The next 100 days to include the following.
- Sell off remaining state assets.
- Resume live animal exports.
- Investigate viability of native bird hunting tours for wealthy overseas tourists.
- Tax tofu and lentils to support local meat industry.
- Ramp up fishing industry to ensure there are no fish left alive in NZ waters.
- Resume whaling.
- investigate viability of a seal blubber industry.
- Sell Premier House to the Chinese government.
- Fast track consent process for housing in national parks.
- Ensure new housing covers every inch of useful farmland.
- Make bible studies compulsory in every school. (PM’s special initiative).
That list could be useful. I’d publish it. It would certainly keep the media busy being offended and writing opinion piece after opinion piece based on something that’s not true.
Thats a classic Trump trick to keep the media busy while completely different things are implemented.
Musk couldn't afford it, using the dividend discount model and some simple assumptions (GDP of $400b in Sept 2023 quarter, GDP growth rate of 3%, required return of 5% to match Treasury's estimates of long run required return for the crown used in CBAs). NZ is worth $20.6 trillion NZ dollars. Of course you'd typically add in a control premium there since you're selling the whole country so perhaps $23.7 trillion NZ dollars is more reasonable.
If we continue along the pathetic economic path we are travelling, and the USA continues to be the last capitalist country standing with the outsized GDP growth it brings, perhaps by mid-century they will have minted an industrialist wealthy enough to put forward a serious offer.
Yes. An excellent start. They set a target and met it. Something that has not happened since prior to 2017. Haven’t heard the weasel word ‘aspirational” for ages, which is a good thing.
interested to see what the next 100 plan includes. They do have to deal with the disaster of a financial position they have been left with, I am sure they will. For some it will be a very painful reality check finding out the world is not just rainbows and unicorns and free money.
Next blocks of 100 days will probably be more balanced with new initiatives to start the repair of the economy, more crack downs on crime and right sizing of the punishments handed out along with legislating to prevent court cases over ownership of coasts and Seabed proceeding and cancellation of race based quotas in public service employment and in university entrance etc.
There are still many things that need to be cancelled and reversed, but from here on they will be more balanced with new policy.
This lot stopped learning in Kindy.
Insults aside, the world is changing faster than their dated ideology will let them - not only would they run out of Overton Window, even if they knew what they were doing, but they don't anyway.
Let me put it simply: The pursuit of physical growth, within a physically-limited arena (Earth is one such, NZ another) was always temporary. Someone was always going to be in charge, when growth reversed.
Pity it was the 3-Clown Circus, but you get what you're silly enough to vote for. Oh wait...
kiwikidsnz,
I admire your optimism and though I didn't support this coalition, as a Kiwi I hope that for the country's sake, they can succeed. However, after 100 days i am far from optimistic. Cancelling stuff is easy, doing things is much harder and they face a huge task in turning the country round. Luxon has surprised me-and not in a good way. He is the personification of corporate man and in accordance with the Peter Principle, he has risen well above his level of competence.
Remember you are comparing a woman whose only redeeming feature was having far too many teeth, and a guy that looks and acts like a school boy who made a giant mess of everything, and comparing that to a professional experienced leader who is here to clean up said mess. The guy that has to do this does not always look like the good guy at the start, particularly when vested interests are very angry and noisy about their free lunch being taken away as part of the process.
Professional experienced leader?
He knew how to ride an energy-rich era, when profit was an apparently-universal thing.
Unfortunately, the planet was finite - as all governments are finding out. And the margin for profit, is less, indeed if you account the amount of debt needed for a profit dollar, it is already negative, globally. That is a physics problem, unchangeable by anyone, of no matter how high an intellectual capability.
So his experience is of the past. Absolutely useless where we are going - but you, from memory, are in denial about the Limits to Growth? Funny how that has to go with the territory...
The thread is about what has happened, and what is likely to happen, given what has been promised. Not about conspiracy theories and other made up bollocks that you seem to be the only one that believes in - and some other randoms on the internet that you happily supply us links to - made up stuff by other conspiracy theorists. In the past few years any one with an opinion different from the lefties was a conspiracy theorist, but most of what they said turned out to be correct. Spoiler alert :- the rubbish that you spout ain’t going to the same.
I thought this thread was about making fun of politicians physical appearances, and not talking about any particular policy the new government has put in place as that would lead to scrutiny that would be hard to defend. At least the adults are in charge now right?
The actual question was on the PMs leadership ability. Clearly he has it, as demonstrated in the progress to date. Clearly the last lot didn’t. They (JA and CR) had none. They were put into a position of leadership and performed very poorly over a number of years which resulted in them being fired by the nations voters with the worst defeat in labours history. Leadership also includes the grooming of future leaders, something they collectively both failed badly at…..when you look into the potential leaders they have….which is none. I don’t think any of this is in dispute. Maybe you should accept what happened and move on.
I disagree to an extent with you about his leadership. Luxon receives detailed updates twice a week showing progress on all initiatives and whether they are “on-track, off-track or ahead of programme”. He meets ministers and ensures their priorities are the 100-day priorities, which is better than what Hipkins or Ardern were doing.
But yes, there's enormous challenges for this Government which I struggle to see how they'll work it out, especially as it would contradict with ACTs fiscal policies.
Someone should sit Luxon and Willis down and explain to them that taxpayers don't finance the governments spending as we spend the governments money and it doesn't spend ours because taxpayers are not currency issuers.
If the government reduces its spending then tax receipts will automatically follow it down anyway as economic activity is reduced and households are forced to increase their debt.
Truism: 1 Aggregate demand = income + change in debt. (cf. Steve keen). Truism 2: Unproductive government spending diminishes productivity by crowding out the private sector. Conclusion: It’s easy for a government to wastefully juice the economy, but it’s difficult and painful for a more responsible government to reverse that process for the long-term benefit of the country.
My take: Despite constant attacks by the radical left media, the coalition are doing exactly what they said they were going to do, and they're doing a great job.
"And the people bowed & prayed...to the woke god...they made"
I recommend the Disturbed version, it gets the tone right.
https://amp.theguardian.com/business/2023/sep/10/how-austerity-and-ideology-broke-britain
Austerity is a swear word in the UK I can’t believe the Nats used it. Then again Luxon saw no problems in being entitled either.
100 raucous days indeed. Raucous din made by those who can't - rather won't contribute to any discussion, and resort to tribalist abuse. Mindless stuff like bald, rich, ceo. as if those matter.
Fortunately interested.co does not seem to get the 'genocide' chanting.
My kids aren't coming back, but Luxon's a very smart guy. I mean Comrade Ardern destroyed the NZ economy, and he's trying to revive it from billions in debt. Comrade Ardern's claim to fame...running a fish and chip shop in Morrinsville.
Socialists don't have much between their ears when it comes to spending other people's money.
The one who was over paid was Luxon,inherited all the hard work done by Norris & Fyfe, cruised along during the easiest time to ever run the airline and gave himself & his c-suite cronies massive bonuses & share issues.Someone should look at the time line of some of his share sell offs prior to announcements that were made saying the tide was going out on the good times.
Then when it looked like it was going to get tough,he resigns...
And jealousy is not a nice attribute wingnut,the 'cabin steward' may have been a senior in flight services manager who is in effect taking responsibilty of managing 17 cabin crew and the safety of 300 odd pax and his pay would include operational payments for hours worked/away from allowances etc.
Luxons claim to fame was just cost cutting,slowly degrading the quality of services and products in the cabin.Little details that premium customers eventually notice.He once said no one would notice if we have the same strawberry jam up the front as the back cabin,cloth towels in the premium cabins replaced with paper.
Kind of like replacing Ferrari ferries with 2nd hand Corolla ferries.
Trouble is as an airline,if you charge Ferrari prices,the wealthy punters expect Ferrari quality.
No he wasn't an 'in-flight service manager', he was ya bog standard basic cabin crew. On the old contract, which Luxon cut down to size.
Look what's happened to Air NZ since then, it's half the size, doesn't go to London, or anywhere in Europe, and pulled out of half its destinations in Asia and handed over other routes to its 'partners'.
"New Zealand First got a symbolic win with a commitment to ‘stop work’ on He Puapua when, in reality, it has been gathering dust since 2022."
Dec 22 to be more precise. Too close to the election. If Liebour +? had been re-elected it would be on full bore again.
It's the previously secret Labour roadmap for their unmandated antidemocratic racist ethnostate
https://www.nzcpr.com/he-puapua/
from a stuff article on RBNZ about to hire a diversity equity and inclusion adviser.
"But interest.co.nz economic policy reporter Dan Brunskill dismissed ACT's criticism.
DEI might be irrelevant to inflation targeting… But it might be useful in work ensuring remote communities have access to cash, payments and banking, he responded on X."
One area I fully support interference in the RBNZ operations. This DEI adviser and the number of spin doctors they employed in the last two years.
Perhaps a another remit needs to be issued to Orr.
Indeed, look how littered the comments are above with "he can do no wrong" types. The last lot were hopeless but nice. The new guys are ruthlessly hopeless.
Throwing babies out with bathwater is easy to do. Birthing and raising a new baby though is a lot more difficult...
If National hadn't won the election we were going to Aussie, like thousands are already doing. I'm not going to be gouged by do-gooding socialists.
Both the kids are there, they're well paid and like it.
Didn't ya just love that last lot of losers telling people they didn't have to give a reason why they wanted the dole?
Wingman - I regard your comments as foolish. You may extrapolate...
My suggestion is that you do some learning, about logic, math and physics. Not too heavy; 6th-Form (in my day) would be enough.
Hint: All bushfires are not created equal. Just sayin'.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/australia-wildfires-climate-change
Flawed thinking is flawed thinking - see one expect more....
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