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.
I make a distinction between self protection and self interest. Yes, New Zealand certainly had a real self interest in being involved in the Second World War, but it was under direct threat of invasion, and was not directly attacked in the way, northern Australian towns such as Darwin and Broomer were attacked. And I do think that difference is partly behind the difference in modern attitudes within Australia and New Zealand.
I don't intend to disparage New Zealand in any sense. I've served alongside New Zealand Defence Force personnel on several occasions, and in terms of ability and dedication they are the equal of any on Earth. And, frankly, I feel New Zealand's contribution to World War II is all the greater because of the fact that they were fighting to defend others more than they were themselves. Yes, there was self interest involved and that was important. But self interest has real limits.
I hope you enjoyed your trip here. But you didn't look hard enough at the memorials. They are indeed covered with the names of the young men who died in WW1. The small farming town I grew up in has one on a hilltop - the names are those of the families who still live in the district. Although it was built after WW1, on the other side you'll find the names of those who fell in WW2. And on some of the memorials you'll find sections for those who fell in Malaya, Korea and Vietnam. They are more than just WW1 memorials.
"Chunuk Bair" was filmed not too far from where I live. The Aussies have a film called "Gallipoli" that's better done, but on a similar theme.
Just to correct a couple of points. Before WW1, NZ sent troops to one British war: the Boer War. The "fuzzy-wuzzies" we were fighting were Afrikaaners - South Africans of Dutch descent. We were still sending troops to fight alongside the British as late as the Malaya emergency in the 1950s.
Even after WW1, NZ was most reluctant to sever links with Britain. The Brits passed a law in 1931 that allowed NZ to claim full independence. NZ refused to ratify it till 1947! I wish I could say we were keener to grasp our independence, but we weren't. So the Kiwis you talked to might have led you astray a bit.
Britain joined the EEC - which became the EU - in 1973. I agree - that was a real psychological shock to NZ, even though we'd had warning.
And most NZ lamb is in fact sold to Europe, despite quotas and tariffs. We'd love it if the major Western countries joined little ol' NZ in dropping most trade barriers - letting us earn all the money we work for - but we're not holding our collective breaths on that. NZ used to be a heavily-regulated, Socialist-style economy. That failed. We're now doing far better after free-market reforms. Even the bunch of loopy lefties in government at the moment don't dare change the economy back to what it used to be. Agricultural reform works. It was hard on our farmers at first, and it's still hard work for them, but they're now successful at growing and raising things that foreigners want to buy.
We are indeed the last and smallest stop on the line, but Kiwis in 1941 still feared that the Japanese train would arrive. Guerrilla units were trained, weapons were cached in the mountains, aviation fuel dumps were created in secret for whatever remnants of the RNZAF and USAAF could get here, bunkers were built along the most likely landing beaches, and so on. I'm sure similar things were done in Aussie. No, we weren't bombed like Darwin was, but Kiwis were convinced that it was a war of national survival, the more so once Japan overran Singapore. There's a fair bit of hindsight involved in saying we weren't under physical threat. The necessity for NZ of forward defence with allies was well understood by the war generation. It's the baby-boomers who overturned that here.
But I know what you're saying about NZ's isolation, and Australia's proximity to Southeast Asia. You guys should remember that according to the NZ Labour Party we're all in a "benign strategic environment". Feel comforted?
Yes, our defence lads and lasses do a brilliant job, particularly given the lack of funding and equipment through the 1990s. Credit goes to the ones who hung in during some tough years. Hopefully the latest spending increases let them build a good base for the future.
I did, a lot. I spent a full month, so I could see everything from Auckland to Invercargill. In America we get a distorted impression of NZ as some sort of leftist satrapy. Just as in this country, this is because the news media are run by a small clique of self-absorbed urban liberals. Notice that the editorials in Scoop are mostly written by foreign leftists, including some America-hating Americans I've never heard of (who in hell is Daniel Patrick Welch, for example?). But out in the rural "red provinces", farmers don't own any newspapers that are read interbationally. You need to do more blogging. That's how we get around them.
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