Key points

Yesterday, leader of NZ’s conservative National Party, John Key, delivered his first speech as leader to his party’s annual conference. The coverage in the news was mixed, and so was the substance. But there was little in either to frighten the horses—I know, since I actually read the speech.

Key is from a more centrist orientation than his predecessor who, whatever his personal beliefs, aligned himself and his party with far right extremists both from New Zealand and overseas. Key is said to be aligned with the so-called “Blue-Libs”, National party supporters who are social liberals and fiscal conservatives—a bit like “Blue Dog Democrats” in America, except that those Democrats tend to be conservative on most issues—“Republican Lite”, they’re often called.

In his speech, Key announced that if National wins the 2008 election there would be substantive tax cuts (the cornerstone of his predecessor’s failed election campaign), but not until their first post-election budget, the year after the election. This is what the TV news focused on that night—their headline ignoring the delayed implementation.

Today, the newspapers were focusing on Key’s pledge to promote home ownership, long a party priority. Some of it was standard fare and standard rhetoric—tax cuts to make mortgages more affordable and increasing productivity to lower interest rates. He also pledged to help people in public housing buy the houses they rent.

However, he and his team signalled other approaches that might raise an eyebrow: Changes to the Resource Management Act to make things easier for developers and opening up more land for development. All of which would seem to help developers more than ordinary homeowners. As Housing Minister Chris Carter said:

Selling off state houses, encouraging urban sprawl and deregulating the building sector led to a complete mess in the 1990s.

More worrying, however, was National’s pledge to increase involvement by the private sector in New Zealand’s public health system. While the entire policy won’t be released until closer to the election, they’ll need to assure voters that fundamental concepts such as universal access won’t be endangered in any way. When I hear “private sector” mentioned alongside “healthcare system”, I immediately get suspicious. The former leader planned to privatise the healthcare system, apparently with the aim of ultimately turning it into an American-style mess.

Key used a lot of the standard conservative rhetoric about the family, another area that makes me suspicious, since among conservatives “family” is usually a code-word for “anti gay”. He said:

Families are tremendously important. I think most New Zealanders would agree that the security, happiness and welfare of their family are the most precious things to them in the world.

He then went on to talk about a recent horrific case of child abuse in the news, before adding:

Families are, in my view, the greatest institution in our society, however they are made up. A government I lead will support them. [emphasis added]

This doesn’t sound like the frothing of a homophobic bigot, though the context of caring for children doesn’t mean that National isn’t anti-gay. For me, this is another area where Key is going to have to be explicit about his vision (back in November, I wrote about similar wording by Key in another speech).

Here’s a common sense warning to National and John Key: At the moment, we have to read into Key’s words to get his meaning, if we have to guess their philosophies on issues important to us, many will err on the side of caution and suspect he and his party are more right wing than we’ve been led to believe. In the absence of real substance, the question then will be, how many voters will be sceptical like this and how many will buy vague hype? The answer to that question could very well determine the winner of the next election.