Posted on 01/31/2006 7:24:45 PM PST by NZerFromHK
ACT enters the 11th year of its life in remarkably buoyant spirits, despite suffering its worst ever election result last year (1.5%), the biggest fall of any party in the election (109,000 party votes), and the loss of seven of its nine talented members of parliament.
So why is ACT feeling so optimistic?
The 2005 election result was without doubt a serious setback for the political party that has been New Zealand’s most radical and vigorous standard bearer for liberal ideas. But those ideas and the movement for rolling back statism and defending and advancing individual freedom are far from defeated. Indeed liberalism is advancing steadily worldwide and, although its path may be patchy and uneven, there are no apparent moves to reverse it.
There are few more dramatic examples of this than here in New Zealand. The Roger Douglas reforms of the 1980s put a decisive end to the era of big interventionist government in this country, and no political party today is advocating a return to it. ACT-like people – Ruth Richardson, Graham Scott, Derek Quigley, Don Brash – have been at the forefront in bedding those ideas in.
The 2002 election brought the final demise of full-blooded collectivism with the disappearance of the Alliance, and the 2005 election saw the political centre of gravity shift further to the right. It saw a resurgent National Party led by an economic liberal campaigning on ACT slogans. National has now even set up its own ‘classical liberal’ wing.
The 2005 election also saw the emergence of a bright new star in the form of the Maori Party, advocating low tax and choice in education, and with the protection of private property rights as its policy centrepiece.
And noone is expecting any seriously statist initiatives from the new minority Labour government and its patchwork of supporters. Indeed, Helen Clark’s period of government may be recorded by history as the one in which the Douglas reforms became locked in.
Liberal ideas are winning and ACT and its people have played quite a part in that. Its high calibre MPs, a team continually refreshed with new talent by its party, have all been effective parliamentary performers and prolific writers. All have punched well above their weight, providing much of the substance and depth of the Opposition over the past 10 years.
ACT is a vehicle for ideas, not an end in itself, and it will need to reinvent itself for the tasks ahead. The people of Epsom have determined en masse that ACT is needed in parliament, and they will play a part in its future. But its new young guard, one of ACT’s strongest assets, will play the key role in determining the party’s future shape. Of our 59 candidates, 15 were under 30 years of age. The party’s persona is likely to be like its leader: smart, tough, hard-working, young, a never-give-up battler, a hard-wired economic and social liberal. To survive ACT will need to define the next frontier, the radical liberal agenda for the future that is right for New Zealand.
As a party of influence, ACT is likely to remain small, like Ireland’s Progressive Democrats, the party most influential in that country’s stunning success. What matters is not size, but the influence it can bring to bear. In the longer term ideas have a major influence on the way people think and vote. It is clear that despite numerous aberrations, the freer and more market-oriented countries like the United States and the United Kingdom are achieving greater success than their more statist counterparts in Europe. Australia likewise is pursuing a steady liberal course with further privatisation and a greater role for the private sector in health and education.
Huge forces in future will be China and India which appear set on a steady track to greater economic and political freedom, presenting major, highly competitive challenges to ossified Western economies. Barring disasters, these two countries will be powerful forces in the advancement of liberal ideas worldwide.
In 2002 I had the great privilege, as part of ACT’s Liberal Project, of hosting two of the world’s most influential and eloquent freedom-fighters, Milton and Rose Friedman. The following is an excerpt from the Epilogue of their 1998 book Two Lucky People: Memoirs:
“Judged by ideas, we have been on the winning side. The public in the United States has increasingly recognised that government is not the universal cure for all ills, that governmental measures taken with good intentions and for good purposes often, if not typically, go astray and do harm instead of good. The growth of government has come to a halt, and seems on the verge of declining as a fraction of the economy. We are in the mainstream of thought, not as we were 50 years ago, members of the derided minority.”
Like the Friedmans, I am optimistic about the outlook for liberal ideas. And I am optimistic about the future of ACT. Despite the encouraging spread of liberal ideas in New Zealand, there is much more work to be done, particularly in areas like health and education, and ACT intends to play a part in that.
Talk of New Zealand's political firection ping!
New Zealand's political centre is generally a little different from the United States. On military/foreign/defence matters, we are definitely deep into the loony Left - not surprising given that our position could "afford" us the luxury of leftist delusions. On trade and agricultural/industrial regulations, we are at where the most free-market promoting conservative Republicans stand.
On social welfare, we are a bit to the left of you but not as left as Canada. We have dual public and private health care systems although the left in power in Wellington has been trying to undermine it by stealth.
In general, New Zealand's political spectrum translates into the United States is like:
1) National Party - major centre-right party = most of right-wing half of US Democrats, plus the Rockefeller Democrats. Its most conservative minority, the Don Brash faction, corresponds to mainstream Republicans
2) ACT Party - major free market party = mainstream to conservative Republicans but minus the Christian votes, plus a bit of Libertarian Party.
3) Labour Party - major centre-left party = left-wing half of US Democratic Party, and its most conservative minority would have been moderate Democrats, and the most right-wing member would correspond to RINOs.
4) Progressive Coalition - social democratic party = oldline Mondale Democrats if they agree to fullscale social welfare state, plus Howard Dean Democrats who emphasis works on social welfare policies.
5) Green Party - major left-wing party = Ralph Nader plus any Democrats to the left of Cindy Sheehan.
6) United Future - chruch-going "centrist" party = RINOs and moderate Democrats.
7) New Zealand First Party = Pat Buchanan.
This is why New Zealand is not on a whole to the left of the US on each and every issue. I think bureaucracy administration, trade policies, and agricultural and industrial policies are the areas NZ is more conservative. But no doubt any defence hawks would be treated as a parish in this country, and NZ does have a naive worldview of wanting to "trade freely with everyone" eg selling lamb to Iran and tarde with Cuba or North Korea.
All too often North Americans use the term "liberalism" when the term "hedonism" would be more appropriate.
Or to put it in a lazy man's guide, the North American definition of social liberalism is "When I visit Dymocks, I will be able to buy a copy of gay paedophilic porn magazine, but not Daniel Pipe's books dissenting from 'established intellectual consensus' on Islam, and when I relax at their cafes, I will be able to buy 'hash' but not hamburgers."
Very well said.
Proportional representation favours the Left no doubt, because this arrangement gives power to parties and politicians who are avtivist in stances, and in the postmodern West the type of activist politics people love is leftist. When MMP was instituted in 1996, this marked the time when it becomes harder for the conservatives to govern because arithmetrically, we can't compete with the Left on votes proportions (they have naturally 52% versus conservatives' 48%). The same thing happens to Mother Britain - since the 1960s it has been estimated the conservatives could best no more than 45% of votes.
In Canada, under the current First Past the Post system you have the Liberals in power 75% of the time. Had you used MMP, this would have meant the Liberals, in coalition with the NDP, being in permanent governance!
I asked you what you thought just in case you were a supporter. I am not. I use to be, until British Columbia voted on whether to adopt it. The more a looked into it, the more I realized it would result in the left allying together and keeping conservatives out of power forever.
You are right. Liberal support of 30% plus Bloc of 10% plus NDP of 18% = 58% vs 41% conservatives (if you lump the greens in with the CPC).
Certainly I don't love proportional representation. To anyone who thinks proportional representation represents a more democratic representation of people's will, they are deluded.
My ideal political system is the American republican system, and proportional election model represents an oligarchic rule by elites misguised as activist-politicians.
Parliamentary systems are far superior to PR, but I agree that American republicanism is the best system. I think the creators of the US constitution warned about mob rule systems of government such as PR.
While New Zealand has provided fine service in some wars, they still military action as something you undertake to protect others, not out of self protection.
I'm interested that you trace NZ's current policy back to World War 1. I'm sure there were strong pacifist sentiments in NZ between wars. But pacifism and isolationism were a common reaction to WW1 - think of the efforts Britain took to avoid war with Germany prior to WW2, or indeed the fact that the US didn't join the war till attacked in 1941. None of that stopped young Brits, Americans, Kiwis, Aussies, Indians et al serving their countries with distinction from 1939-45, and for many of those countries again in Korea and Vietnam.
I don't agree that WW1 "soured" NZ on Britain. As he declared war in 1939, our Prime Minister said we "range ourselves without fear by Britain. Where she goes, we go; where she stands, we stand." Sound sour to you? I'd be tempted to look much later for the psychological break - probably to Britain joining the EEC in the early 1970s.
New Zealand's participation in WW2 was clearly about self-protection, not just about protecting others. It was part of the collective security of the British Empire, on which our trade routes and economic life then depended. And it was understood as such. New Zealanders would not have been prepared to make such sacrifices otherwise.
I'm only reporting what I saw. Though Kiwis served honorably in WW II, especially as they saw the Japanese asland-hoppiong advance pushing toward them, the WW I esperience seems to have meant much more to the national spirit. Why else would every little town have a WW I memorial, while in a month I saw precisely one WW II memorial (dedicated to the USMC deployment to Guadalcanal, which trained near Wellington). A succession of films like "Chunuk Bair" carry the same theme.
I asked New Zealanders in different walks of life about this. The consensus seems to be that WW I represented the nation's first big break with Britain. Before that, NZ had faithfully sent troops to battle whomever Queen Victoria had designated as the fuzzy-wuzzies of the moment.
The second big break with Britain came in the early Sixties, when Britain joined the EU and the farm quotas it imposed on all countries not part of the great socialist experiment. NZ suddenly found itself out in the cold, abandoned by the Old Country. At that point, NZ decided to rebrand itself as a Pacific nation.
So why is most NZ lamb sold to the Arab world today? Nothing ideological is involved; despite high US consumer demand, the American farm lobby imposes stiff quotas on NZ agriculture. When socialists can't compete in the open market, they get the government to 'fix' things.
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