Nats look back and forward
New leader, new forward focus, all the policies under review, National is getting itself fit for purpose in 2020. The slogan says it all: new team. new ideas. new zealand.
No, wait. National has perfectly good policies and if the election hadn’t been stolen by that fool Peters, it would still be in power. Where it belongs. As everybody knows.
Both views had plenty of believers at the National Party Conference over the weekend.
The first line is the official line and environment spokesman Scott Simpson was its exemplar. He revealed party leader Simon Bridges had asked him to “run the ruler” over all policy areas to measure them against environmental goals.
Definitely some new thinking there. Amy Adams, Nikki Kaye and others produced more of it.
Then there were the look backers. Former Aussie PM John Howard called the 2017 election result “unjust” and “unfair”, and MMP “crook”.
He spoke to Old Zealand and got a lot of applause. If the party was looking for someone to inspire them with their future prospects, it could not have chosen worse.
Is Bridges new or old? He called Howard “my hero, my absolute hero”. But when asked later if he supported Howard’s views on MMP, he harrumphed and said no. What about the denial there had ever been Aborigine genocide? More harrumphing.
Jami-Lee Ross also looked backwards. He presented the party record on transport as if there was no need to rethink any old policies. We’ll scrap the Government’s plans and go back to ours, he said.
The thing is, after decades of neglect, from National and Labour, transport is in crisis. So a return to the policies that created it will get us out of it?
Judith Collins was much the same on housing, but with a string of supercilious jokes aimed at Phil Twyford. She seems obsessed with him. Did she think jokes were votes?
“Oh,” she said later, “but they are.”
Climate change spokesman Todd Muller said farming, especially dairy, was already doing the right things and we should not try to lead our trading partners on climate change. The old John Key line.
Paula Bennett made the most surprising speech. She used to be the life and soul of these conferences but this time she seemed utterly sad.
She made the requisite adulation about the new leader, but sighed and sighed, her voice inflected down, she sounded close to tears. She ended with a shrug and did not use all her allocated time.
Then it was Bridges’ turn. His first big party speech, the moment he would put his stamp on the party. He didn’t do it, instead producing a stock speech any party leader since Jim Bolger might have made.
Maybe that was the point. The world is changing, but we won’t upset you with surprises.
Even his big announcement — support for smaller class sizes — was equivocal. Asked later what it meant, he said the Government’s plan to have 1500 more teachers over five years was “roughly the right ballpark”.
So was the Government doing what he’d like to see done? He fudged the answer.
He did wear an orange tie. That was different.