Labour 1993 opening TV broadcast “In just a few weeks New Zealand will be going to the polls. It is a battle for more than just the Treasury benches. Basic rights New Zealanders have enjoyed all their lives are at stake. Public health, public education, even the freedom given by the Queen’s Chain to walk along a riverbank or a beach, these are in the balance. Perhaps the gravest error a New Zealander could make is to think that there is little difference between the two major parties. They are fundamentally different. Many of the things that define our country will either stay with us or disappear after the people’s decision on the 6th of November. Moore: “And that is the challenge over the next few weeks, to talk about things we believe in. The basics: it is jobs, it is growth, it is health. It is everything you believe in. Text: Labour: Jobs. Growth. Health. “When I first became a member of parliament, I was in my early twenties. I was ready to change the world. At that time, the early 1970s, idealism was a fever that infected a lot of us. Whether the cause was saving Manapouri or fighting apartheid we went at it hammer and tongues. We were certain we were going to make a difference. That optimism, that desire to change things for the better, is always strongest when we are young, but it should never fade completely. A politician can’t afford to lose that. The leaders I admire most keep that flame alive throughout their lives. I’m an older and wiser person than I was in 1972. But I like to think the passion is as strong as ever. The solutions to our problems lie with us. They lie with our special nation, the character of the New Zealander. It is the heroes out there who run the foodbanks, it is the heroes out there who hold together the netball club, it is special New Zealand.” Sonja Davies: “I first really got to know him in London, when we were sitting in the big hall of Westminster listening to the debate on whether Britain should go into the EEC or not. And there was a Chinese man sitting next to me and I suddenly realized it was Mike at the time he realized it was me, we didn’t know, each didn’t know the other was in London. And we stood up and hugged each other, and the poor little Chinese man was trying to get out. So, he moved, and afterwards we went to the park and ate cucumber sandwiches, we were both very broke I remember. Moore: “It was three years ago, that I stood before New Zealand on election night, doesn’t time fly when you are having a good time, and Jim Bolger had just given, what I thought, was the best speech of his political life. On election night he said he stood for the inclusive society, a decent society. He had at that moment the nation in his hand. He had an awesome mandate to implement his decent society. And I had a lump in my throat, but I was proud that we were handing over to the National Party an economy in better shape, a lower deficit and debt, the economy leaner, alas meaner, than the one we took over from in the crisis of the snap election and wage and price freeze in 1984. Helen Clark: “Well we are very different people. Very different kinds of backgrounds, but I’ve found Mike to be a very good friend, and a very loyal friend, and I think that counts for a lot. Michael Cullen: “But he is always the person inspiring ideas inspiring activity, inspiring people to do better. He is a genuine leader, and he is also a man I think who is modest, much more than he needs to be, because he is a very, very talented man, more widely read than anybody else in politics today, has learnt more about world than anybody else in politics today, and of course was our most successful Minister of Overseas Trade.” “I said on election night I have no malice, I suffer no bitterness, I wish the new government well. And offered them our assistance to implement their promises. I said if they could keep half their promises I would vote for them in 1993. No chance.” Cullen: “I must have first met Mike around 1976/77 when I first started going regularly to Labour Party conferences. And Mike, of course, was at that in-between stage then having lost the Eden seat and not yet won the Papanui seat as it then was. Mike was a lot younger, a lot more hair, and of course it was shortly after that Mike went through that great crisis in his life when he was very, very seriously ill. And I think a lot of people have forgotten the courage Mike showed in that stage of his life.” Moore: “Friends I said I had no malice, I suffered no bitterness. Well I do now. I am bitter when I see everything I have fought for over the generations cold-bloodedly diluted, dismantled, and destroyed. I never believed they would abolish student fees, but I didn’t expect them to increase them. I didn’t expect them to halve unemployment, but I didn’t expect them to increase it by 30%. Cullen: “For a very young man, he was very seriously ill, he faced death, recovered, came back into Parliament, and was immediately one of the key figures after the 78 election, in leading the charge against the then National government. From there on he was a major figure in the labour movement. It is hard to keep reminding yourself that Mike Moore is still a relatively young man in his mid-forties because he has been a senior figure in the Labour Party now for 15 years.” Moore: “Yeah, I’ve been lucky. I’m of the lucky generation. Look at us, our generation were the generation that missed the war, missed the depression, we had free milk in schools, we had the Plunket nurse, I could leave school at 15, go to the freezing works, I used to have, the boss used to ring us up asking us to come to work. We had everything our generation. I’m also lucky to have Yvonne as my best friend, she works so hard behind the scenes looking after people, sharing problems, without Yvonne’s care and support it would be impossible. Yvonne: “One of the things I really do like and admire about Mike is his passion for things. He has a soul, he believes in New Zealand and he believes in New Zealanders, and he wants what is best for New Zealand and New Zealanders. He is not afraid to front up to the issues, and he has learned, he has listened.” Mike Moore: “The 1990s present a different picture from the 1970s and the 1980s. The free market, which is so vital to business development, jobs, and trade, is in place. Every industry now stands alone, stronger and hungrier, and there is nothing wrong with that, we need it. But business and the market doesn’t supply our society with all the answers. And right now there is division, there is real hardship, and New Zealanders care too much for each other and for their country to allow the strong to trample the weak. A government has a responsibility to lead, and offer a hand where a hand is needed, whether it is a small business person with a great idea or a sick person, a government shouldn’t shirk or duck or say, sorry that is not what we are here for. If an issue is important to the people, it ought to be important to government. And right now there are three great issues facing all of us. Text: Labour: Jobs. Growth. Health. Woman: “Jobs, growth, health. There is nothing pretty or clever about that slogan. But this election is not a time to be pretty or clever. It is a time to face reality. The bad times, we’ve been told, are over. But the truth about the economic recovery is becoming clear. It is not everyone’s recovery. Let’s take jobs. Unemployment has never been higher, the current situation, particularly among young, is chronic. One in four of our young people is out of work. New Zealanders are right to ask questions about what we have to do to stop discarding people just as they reach adulthood.” Man: “I haven’t really heard anything positive as far as the age group from 15 through to 20. That is the group I am actually dealing with, I am a youth worker dealing with young kids and the age group I want to know something concerning that age group. I coach a team with 43 guys and out of those 43 only one gets benefits.” Moore: “The two dilemmas of western type economies and societies are joblessness, particularly amongst the young, and violence. Now even if we do all the things I talked about, even if we stretch the market economy to ninety, that would be a magnificent achievement, there is still going to be a deadly problem, the last ten. Now we have to do things substantially different. And what we are saying, is probably the most historic thing we will say in this entire campaign, this, just as in the 30s we invented social security, and in the eighties, and in its time, we opened the New Zealand economy to become part of a global economy, in the 90s our mission is to do these things on jobs for the last ten percent. And simply, we say this, to a young person under 20, modern Labour’s obligation does not finish with posting the cheque. Cullen: “We can move to ensure that no young person under twenty leaves school to go into unemployment. We have to put in place the training, the work schemes and the other sorts of activity to ensure that young people start their lives with the idea that working and contributing or training is the way that their life has got to unfold. If we leave people at that stage in their life unemployed, degraded, then they will go down that path, perhaps for the rest of their lives, so we can’t afford that kind of underclass being formed in New Zealand. Moore: “We have a government that is budgeting for failure. It is steadily eroding all that is special about our country. They have no policy to create more jobs, they simply say “we surrender”. It is a matter of fact they say, there is some law, that ten percent of New Zealanders will not be employed. And they budget year out, it is an acceptable level as far as they are concerned, and they wave the white flag of surrender, they have given up. Now I haven’t. Text and voice: “The Labour plan for youth unemployment. No-one under 20 will be left on the dole with nothing to do. Young people will be offered the choice of training or employment through a new system of community work.” “A large part of our unemployment problem is a lack of skilled people. Often the jobs are there, but there aren’t the trained people to match them. Why? Are New Zealanders lazy? Is education something we hate? I don’t think anyone could accuse kiwis of not wanting to learn. There are more books sold in New Zealand, per capita, than just about anywhere else. The problem is that the world has changed, only we haven’t changed with it. In other countries it is the industries, the employers that play a major role in skills training. Moore: “We are going to have to do things substantially different. We are going to do training, I mean a country’s, the wealth of a country now is not based on its coal or its iron, it is based on its knowledge and the skill of its people. We don’t do enough apprenticeships have gone down the toilet, the training has gone down, why? Because businesses cannot capture their investment in training and research. Cullen: “We are going to ensure that New Zealanders have the skills that they need to take advantage of the opportunities in the new economies of the Asia-Pacific region. And we are going to increase the research and development effort that is going into the New Zealand economy. So as to grow this economy sustainably over a period of years.” Moore: “And we will sector by sector say simply this: you will lift your play in training and research, or each sector will have a self-funding industry levy and we will do it for you. Text and voice: “The Labour plan for skills training. Industries will develop training programmes. The number of people in Training Opportunities Programmes will be increased. “Tertiary education and access to it is also crucial. Higher education shouldn’t just belong to a few. Students have a right to know where they stand and how they’ll be treated.” Student: “My question is in regard to your education policy. I’m a full-time university student and the last three years have been really difficult for me under a National government. Can you tell me what your views are on that?” Moore: “I can’t think of anything dumber than starving New Zealand of smart people because they chose the wrong parents. The genius of equality, is mobility and no-one really asks, if you’ve got a doctor, I don’t know anyone who said to the doctor what was your father or mother doing, who cares, if you are bright enough and hard-working enough you ought to get there. Our education policy is clear: standards will be raised, we will register teachers, compulsory bulk-funding of teachers salaries will go, we’ll be able to assist the students in terms of when they pay their loans back, and what the income is for parents, we’ll be able to help them, we won’t be able to do the kinds of things Jim has promised, or the two Jim’s and a Winston used to promise. And we will give pre-school education the priority it deserves, and we will replace the ghastly cuts they made in this year’s budget where they took away the subsidy for childcare to the poorest people: the beneficiaries. Text and voice: “The Labour plan for education. Increased allowances to tertiary students in need. A return to teacher registration to raise standards. Lower class sizes. “Besides training and education, the best way to produce jobs is through economic growth. Like a garden an economy grows best with thought and care. If the only guidance comes from the market itself the growth will be chaotic and uneven. The Bolger-Richardson government has shown us this.” Cullen: “The market has its place, the market sends us signals about what can and cannot be done which should and should not be done. But the market also fails miserably in many respects, the market left to itself will deliver us increasing differences in society, the rich will get richer, the poor will get poorer, the market will deliver us a healthcare system where many can’t afford health care and many in the middle are terrified whether they will be able to afford it when they need to have it. The market can’t organize us effectively and intelligently.” Moore: “And we have a ten-point plan of how we will lift New Zealand’s economic growth, to the level we need to start really employing new people. And we’ll work through those sectors where we can stretch growth, whether it is forestry and adding value, whether it is tourism, horticulture. Cullen: For years we tried to ignore what the market said to us, we thought we could push water up hill, as a means of economic management in New Zealand. Mr Birch’s Think Big projects were the worst example of that, of trying to push water up hill in New Zealand. What we have to do now is say, how do we work with what the world may want from us, and how do we get those jobs. How do we make sure that in ten year’s-time we are not exporting more and more unprocessed logs, and the jobs that go with them, how do we make sure that we planned and acted in such a way that New Zealanders are processing those logs, we’re producing quality products, which are going to overseas markets that want them. Woman in green blouse: “Labour’s plan for growth is broad, but it comes down to one simple important idea: partnership.” Moore: “And within six months of the election, the enterprise council, headed by the Prime Minister, this is actually a National Party idea, the enterprise council, it is a good one, the only thing wrong with it is that I didn’t think of it, and we’ll get that enterprise council working, and we’ll enlist the expertise of business and the workforce, and we’ll give them recognition, and the kind of support and security they need to take on new staff. Woman in green blouse: “Small business is an important area for growth and new jobs. But for many of the country’s small businesses, help is long overdue.” “We’ve already recognized in the community that it is not the major industries that really make the difference, it is small business in the market sectors. But it is small business we need to stimulate and make grow.” Moore: “They are the engine rooms, but clustered around those engine rooms are the small businesses, so you could put a forestry mill here, but it wouldn’t be employing as many people as the drivers, taxis, the boozer, the teacher, the whole thing clustered around it. And it is those small businesses that are clustered around the major ones, where the major growth will come from. Now the big business is okay, its got the Business Roundtable, they meet, they don’t have to make an appointment with the Minister. Who works and speaks for small business, that has got to be our job because small business are the innovators, the risk-takers, they are the people who put it on. Cullen: “What I can say to a small business-person is look, we are going to simplify matters for you. We are going to set up a small taskforce of people like you, people with practical experience to look at all that paperwork government demands of you, we are going to produce a simpler tax system that will make life easier for you so you can do your job of growing your business, in many cases hopefully taking on extra workers. Moore: “The next thing we’ve got to look at, and if you are speaking to the self-employed and small business, is the enormous compliance costs based on them. And this is a bit technical, but the compliance cost is the cost of filling all the forms in, all the kinds of regulation you have if you are trying to start a business. Right. The estimated cost is 1.7 billion dollars, how is that? It is a lot of money, 1.7 billion. For example, you may have a little panel beating shop, hairdressing salon, or a little manufacturing place of five or six people. You will fill in as many tax forms as Fletcher Challenge: thirty a year. But there is no way you are going to be hiding money in the Cook Islands. Cullen: “If every small business could take on one extra worker, we could solve our unemployment problem and that is where the jobs are going to come from in the next five years in New Zealand. Moore: “You have got to give the confidence to the self-employed, the farmer, the small business person to go to the bank manager and ask for some more dough, because I want to put an extra plant on, take another apprentice, put the bottom 20 acres in asparagus or whatever. How do we do that? Well, one, we need venture capital, for the new ideas, for the innovator, because these new business people will not have a good track record in savings, they won’t be able to go to the bank manager and say listen, you know, you’ve known my family for a hundred years and I’ve got plenty of money and I’ve done well, can I have some more, no. The risk takers, the innovators, find market failure because the bank is suspicious, they have no track record. So we can top that up with venture capital. Text and voice: “The Labour plan for small business. Administrative red tape will be reduced. A venture capital fund to help establish small business will be established. Woman in green blouse: “Our public health system, once the envy of the world, is now being taken from us. Its prime concern used to be to heal the sick. Now it is to make a profit. Hospital by hospital, bed by bed, it is being privatized, corporatized, Americanized. Rightfully people are concerned about what the future holds.” Man: “We’ve had change after change after change. If Labour wins the election, are we going to be faced with yet more change in the hospital system. Clark: “The first thing is we are not going to spend hundred of millions of dollars, like the National Party, changing things for the sake of change. Because that is what this latest round of change has been about. What we will do, is change the philosophy, the direction, the emphasis and the mission of the public health system. Because nobody accepts that it is right to ask your public hospitals and public health nurses to get out there and make a profit for Paul East and Jim Bolger. That is ridiculous. So, those Crown Health Enterprises, are not going to survive as profit making companies, they are going to become District Health Services again, that serve the people, no profit focus, it is going to be a huge difference in what the system does, but we can do it without turning everything upside down again, and spending hundreds of millions of dollars in the process. Davies: “Well I think if National gets in again, I don’t know if I want to even go on living here. Because if they continue the way they are doing it, I don’t think we will have a health system that is worth much, in fact I’m sure we won’t, I went to hospital with pneumonia and found I wasn’t in a ward I was in a business management unit. For an ex nurse that is just absolutely appalling. And the sister wasn’t a sister she was in mufti and a business manager. Text and voice: “The Labour plan for health. Abolish the Bolger government’s user pays charges. Lower the cost of doctors’ visits for the children of working families. Place care of patients above profitability in public hospitals. Clark: “When I was a child, going to school, I developed very severe asthma and I was very, very ill, I had to be withdrawn from school because of the illness. I was rushed to hospital, and ended up there with a collapsed lung and pneumonia, and the system put me right. That would be a common experience for many New Zealanders I think. I don’t knock the public hospital system, I think it does well for New Zealanders, but it can do better with a commitment to keep it public and keep it working well. Man with white hair: “The question I really want to ask, is, how does someone in advancing years get real assurance that their health is going to be looked after without having to have private insurance because I tried private insurance a few years ago and I disclosed my full medical history, and everything I had they didn’t want to know me. So, I was left with some rare thing like, I suppose, some gynecological problem.” Clark: “You’d be the first man to have a gynecological problem.” Man with white hair: “But that is the sort of con job they do on you, how do you get real insurance because private insurance, I think, is really a con job.” Clark: “You can’t rely on private insurance to look after people. Sure, it is there as an optional extra if people want to pay for it. I always advocate you are better off to put your money in the bank and if you don’t get sick you can have a holiday after ten years, but we have to ensure that there is a guarantee of a public health system that is there when you need it, it must be there for urgent treatment and it should be able to see you within a reasonable period of time for the non-urgent surgery, which isn’t threatening your life but is actually hurting your quality of life the longer the bad hip or the bad knee goes on, or the cataracts get worse. Woman in green blouse: “These Labour policies are the result of several years work and a great deal of listening. They don’t promise what can’t be delivered, New Zealanders have had enough of that. Nor do they alter the strong economic platform that a Labour government put into place in the 1980s. They simply put people back into the equation, and people are saying yes to that. Davies: “We are not promising anything that cannot be delivered. That would be fatal, I don’t think the country could stand another bout of being promised something and then it not happening. Cullen: “We have carefully gone through our programme to say look, what we say we are going to do we must do, we mustn’t break promises, we mustn’t repeat the cycle which has gone on for too long.” Moore: “We are fundamentally at odds with the National Party over the future of our health system. We are fundamentally at odds with them over the future of our education system. We are fundamentally at odds with them on the future of our social security system. We are fundamentally at odds with them over the future of our Housing Corporation. We are fundamentally at odds with them over the future of the ACC. This is no mere academic battle we are engaged in. This is not a game.” Cullen: “We’ve got to have a government which delivers more than it promises, of which New Zealanders can be proud at the end of three years. Moore: “No New Zealander, no person in this room, nor their grandchildren, will be unaffected by the result of this election. Everybody’s life will be changed forever on election night. Because our differences over health are more than the differences over the cost of a prescription. Our differences in education are more than the cost of student fees. Our differences on social security are deeper than more the level of the benefit. Our differences over our policies for older New Zealanders are more than the level of a surcharge, or the cost of healthcare. Our differences are about the central value systems we used to enjoy. Davies: “One of the exciting things about the policy for me has been the sort of consultation that has gone on. Particularly with the women’s policy, that really is a policy by women for women, from the north right down to the south of the South Island. And I feel very comfortable with that. Because that is what it should be, not what is in the Cabinet Minister’s heads, or the senior politicians’ heads, it should come from the people. Moore: “The solution to our problems lie with us, they lie with our special nation, the character of the New Zealander. It is the heroes out there, who run the foodbanks, it is the heroes out there who hold together the netball club, it is special New Zealand.” Clark: “I’d describe a team of very different individuals sharing common ideas about how to rebuild New Zealand and the bits we enjoyed when we grew up. For example, the public health system, public schools of good and even quality, social security. When I was in my twenties, social security and the welfare state didn’t seem so relevant because we thought we’d seen the last of the depression. It is back with a vengeance and people need it more than ever. And I see in the Labour team a commitment to getting those basics right again. Moore: “This is our chance to rebuild the Labour dream. I hope in a hundred years time they say in 1993, you wouldn’t believe it, they elected a Labour government that cared about pay equity, that understood that environmental issues are economic issues, that understood the cost of education and the cost of failure, that here was a society and a nation unique on earth, that enjoyed the values and virtues of enterprise and enthusiasm in a global market place, but didn’t lose its soul, it had always a conscience, there was a floor level, and was underpinned by fair industrial relations, by public health and all those other things we cherish. And that is the challenge over the next few weeks. To talk about things we believe in. The basics, its jobs, its growth, its health. Its everything you believe in. Text: Labour: Jobs. Growth. Health.