Forty-Nine Steps (or the Government of Undoing)

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Forty-Nine Steps (or the Government of Undoing)

December 2, 2023

There has been righteous outrage this week about the new coalition government repealing the SmokeFree legislation. I find the outrage somewhat over the top, given I don’t believe the same level of outrage was visible while Labour was allowing vaping to run rampant and then being truly pathetic about reeling it back in. Vaping is creating the next wave of young nicotine addicts while we debate how to assist the previous wave to quit.

On the other hand, I love how New Zealand has relatively little smoking compared the majority of countries. As someone who as disliked the smell of smoke since early childhood, my life has been a lot more pleasant since smoking was banned in communal spaces, on buses, airplanes, restaurants... I wouldn’t want to see the trend reverse, although vaping is already doing that job by putting sickly sweet scent into the atmosphere in a whole lot of public spaces.

However, the SmokeFree legislation is only one of many pieces of legislation the coalition government is proudly going to remove in its first hundred days in Parliament. Where did this hundred day thing come from? I only remember it from the last couple of governments – is my memory faulty or is this a recent thing? Apparently it was invented by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933 so it has been around for a while in the USA. Another import, like Halloween?

So, in this next hundred days, the coalition will enact forty-nine steps (a book of the same name is based on there being forty-nine steps to finding the meaning in every passage of the Torah but I doubt this similarity is anything more than coincidence). Forty-nine seems a lot of steps but Chris Luxon says, "Our government is starting the way we mean to go on - ambitious for New Zealand. With 49 actions to deliver in the next 100 days, this plan is hugely ambitious but we will be working as hard as we can."

My first impression has been this government is focusing on not doing what the previous government did. However, that was an impression without quantification. So I went through the forty-nine steps and colour coded them in a list at the bottom of the blog:

Red is repealing something done by a previous government = 26.5 steps

Orange restricts something new or reviews something previously established = 7 steps

Green is something new and non-restrictive = 15.5 steps

I had a ‘what the’ moment noting the proposal for a third medical school, one of the green steps. We have enough medical schools, we need more doctors. We need more people to train doctors. We need more money to pay for training of doctors. More money to pay doctors once they are trained. Not more money for more buildings and more administration. I also had a Dan Brown moment where I wondered about the hidden power of Universities – who in Waikato University is friends with the incoming government? And how have the Universities avoided major restructuring over the past four decades when everything else in the country has been rethought?

Back to the forty-nine steps. Fewer than one third of the steps are doing something new and positive (positive not meaning good, but not taking away something we currently have). The remainder are about curtailing – freedoms and/or actions of previous governments. Where the Labour government went mad in reforming everything all at once, it's looking like this government is going to repeal everything all at once.

The disturbing underlying philosophy (as proposed by NZ First and National during the election campaign – ‘Take Our Country Back ’ and ‘Get Our Country Back on Track ’) is that if you reverse actions you will get back what you had before. Someone should suggest they listen to Split Enz. ‘History Never Repeats’.

THE FORTY-NINE STEPS

Rebuilding the economy and easing the cost of living

1 Stop work on the Income Insurance Scheme
2 Stop work on Industry Transformation Plans
3 Stop work on the Lake Onslow pumped hydro scheme
4 Begin efforts to double renewable energy production, including drawing up a national policy statement on renewable electricity generation.
5 Withdraw central government from Let's Get Wellington Moving (LGWM)
6 Meet with councils and communities to establish regional requirements for recovery from Cyclone Gabrielle and other recent major flooding events
7 Make any additional Orders in Council needed to speed up cyclone and flood recovery efforts
8 Start reducing public sector expenditure, including consultant and contractor expenditure
9 Introduce legislation to narrow the Reserve Bank's mandate to price stability
10 Introduce legislation to remove the Auckland Fuel Tax
11 Cancel fuel tax hikes
12 Begin work on a new government policy statement reflecting the new Roads of National Significance and new public transport priorities
13 Repeal the Clean Car Discount scheme by 31 December 2023
14 Stop blanket speed limit reductions and start work on replacing the Land Transport Rule: Setting of Speed Limits 2022.
15 Stop central government work on the Auckland Light Rail project
16 Repeal the Fair Pay Agreement legislation
17 Introduce legislation to restore 90-day trial periods for all businesses
18 Start work to improve the quality of regulation
19 Begin work on a National Infrastructure Agency
20 Introduce legislation to repeal the Water Services Entities Act 2022
21 Repeal the Spatial Planning and Natural and Built Environment Act; introduce a fast-track consenting regime
22 Begin to cease implementation of new Significant Natural Areas and seek advice on operation of the areas
23 Take policy decisions to amend the Overseas Investment Act 2005 to make it easier for build-to-rent housing to be developed in New Zealand
24 Begin work to enable more houses to be built, by implementing the Going for Housing Growth policy and making the Medium Density Residential Standards optional for councils

Restoring law and order

25 Abolish the previous government's prisoner reduction target
26 Introduce legislation to ban gang patches, stop gang members gathering in public, and stop known gang offenders from communicating with one another
27 Give police greater powers to search gang members for firearms and make gang membership an aggravating factor at sentencing
28 Stop taxpayer funding for section 27 cultural reports
29 Introduce legislation to extend eligibility to offence-based rehabilitation programmes to remand prisoners
30 Begin work to crack down on serious youth offending
31 Enable more virtual participation in court proceedings
32 Begin to repeal and replace Part 6 of the Arms Act 1983 relating to clubs and ranges

Delivering better public services

33 Stop all work on He Puapua
34 Improve security for the health workforce in hospital emergency departments
35 Sign an MoU with Waikato University to progress a third medical school
36 By 1 December 2023, lodge a reservation against adopting amendments to WHO health regulations to allow the government to consider these against a "national interest test"
37 Require primary and intermediate schools to teach an hour of reading, writing and maths per day starting in 2024
38 Ban the use of cellphones in schools
39 Appoint an expert group to redesign the English and maths curricula for primary school students
40 Begin disestablishing Te Pukenga
41 Begin work on delivering better public services and strengthening democracy
42 Set five major targets for health system, including for wait times and cancer treatment
43 Introduce legislation to disestablish the Māori Health Authority
44 Take first steps to extend free breast cancer screening to those aged up to 74
45 Repeal amendments to the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products Act 1990 and regulations
46 Allow the sale of cold medication containing pseudoephedrine
47 Begin work to repeal the Therapeutics Products Act 2023
48 Establish a priority one category on the social housing waitlist to move families out of emergency housing into permanent homes more quickly
49 Commission an independent review into Kāinga Ora's financial situation, procurement, and asset management