I update this regularly. This is my personal opinion only. I haven’t mentioned every party either.
Greens
They need to be there to keep the 2 main parties in line. They will never amount to much but eventually some of their policies get adopted by the other 2 parties and become mainstream. National and Labour are now as green as the Greens were a few years ago.
Winston Peters
Used to be the Grey Brigade (now even older) and Neonazi’s and racists that followed Winston. He played the Immigration card but Jacinda has taken that. Hopefully he won’t be kingmaker.
Pretty amazing though how he managed to deflect this making it about “how it was revealed” rather than his trangression. He claimed too much. He got caught. He paid it back. He still won’t reveal how much it was. This is the man that demands transparency.
Gareth Morgan and TOP
Odd man. Wants to remove all cats. Certainly not someone I would want as my prime minister. But he does tell it like it is. Sometimes a bit too blatantly as in “Jacinda is the lipstick on a pig.”
All the people under her are exactly the same people that were under Andrew Little. She’s just added a little gloss.
Labour and National
Jacinda Ardern comes with little experience. She has been in parliament since she was very young but has no real track record.
Bill English does come with experience but also carries baggage.
Lets look at some of the policies
Free university education
Nothing is ever free. Someone has to pay for this. And it will be you and I, in taxes.That way we won’t be paying to train the future generation of other countries. National want to keep the current system of interest free loans to students.
How about a loan to everyone (not just university students) but apprentices and all people learning a trade. Write this off by 10% a year for as long as they remain in New Zealand.
Age of superannuation entitlement
The retirement age should be raised immediately. The country cannot continue to afford to pay for retirement at 65. When this was first introduced, (in 1898) the life expectancy was not even 65. In 1938 it was lowered to 60, 61 in 1992 then gradually raised to 65 between 1993 and 2001.
At 65 we are fitter and healthier than we have ever been. It is selfish of us to want to have our kids pay for us to go fishing or play golf when we are perfectly capable of doing a days work. We now live to the ripe old age of 85 for male and 90 for females and this is increasing all the time.
National want to raise it over the next 20 years.
Labour want to keep it the same.
Capital Gains Taxes, Land taxes.
Okay Labour have now put their tax reforms on the back burner until 2020. So how are they going to pay for all the extensive changes they are promising? National promises a lower tax rate. I’d rather keep paying the same tax and put that money towards health or some other social service.
Water Tax
Okay agree something has to be done here. But farmers need to be granted an exemption. Agriculture is the lifeline of our economy especially in the Waikato. Our wine industry is now a massive earner. Lets just tax the overseas companies that take our water for nothing. National don’t want to introduce any tax. Labour wants to tax everyone.
Immigration
Labour wants to cut immigration numbers. National want to keep immigration levels up but this is putting massive pressure on Auckland.Most of our major industries however need immigrants to survive. Instead of cutting numbers why not allow immigrants into the country but restrict them to areas of need for a period of time. Definitely keep them out of Auckland.
Housing
I think that all the parties need to get together to solve this. Anything that causes house prices to drop significantly is going to put major pressure on many people who will be in negative equity. Higher interest rates will make current loans unaffordable for many. One obvious solution is restricting anyone who is not a New Zealand citizen to only be able to build a new house and not allow them to buy an existing home. I really don’t know that any party has an answer to this.
Transport
National’s improvement of the roading in the Upper North Island is certainly making our roads safer. Since the introduction of the newer expressways, there have been no deaths in those areas that have been improved.
Everyone agrees that something needs to be done about the Auckland situation. Better public transport is probably the best solution. Who pays for this? Once again i think this needs to be a long term solution with both parties making a decision and sticking with it no matter who comes to power.
Abortion
I would certainly support Jacinda and Labour on this point. I can understand that Bill English with his strong Catholic commitment would not support this but I hope that National will allow all their ministers are allowed to vote as they want to and there is no party line.
My concerns
One of my biggest concerns is that labour will restore the power to the Unions that they have had in the past. Remember the days of port strikes when the country was held to ransom etc.
I also remember the Labour days when parallel importing was not allowed. Even 10 year old cars cost a fortune. TV’s were 1000’s of dollars. Everything was expensive. Even home loans were in double digits. Now we have almost zero inflation, and in some instances deflation and low interest rates.
We do however need to start taxing all imports irrespective of the amount spent. We have to pay GST for anything purchased in New Zealand.
So what am I going to do?
I think I am going to vote National. Whilst many of my friends are screaming for change, National has brought us through a global economic crisis relatively unscathed despite the massive impact of the Christchurch and Kaikoura earthquakes, and the floods in the lower North Island. I’d like to give them another 3 years to consolidate.