National 1996 opening broadcast Katherine O’Regan (?): “The issue for this election is trust, whether the people putting their names forward are people you can rely on to do sensible things. Georgina Te Heuheu: “A strong economy underpins everything that we think we want to do.” Indian man (?) “National has delivered over the last six years.” Doug Graham: “I wouldn’t say we’d done everything 100%, but I would say New Zealand is now a better place than it has been for thirty years. And I certainly don’t want to see that lost.” Jim Bolger: “I ultimately trust, I trust New Zealanders, I trust that they will vote wisely. And therefore we won’t go back, we will go forward.” First tick National The decade of the 90s, with a National led government will be the golden decade of the twentieth century. We can have a vibrant economy, that will blaze a trail others will seek to follow. You can have a healthcare system that is as good as, if not better, than any in the world. You can have a quality education system, that is the envy of other nations. You can have an environment that is not only the finest in the world but one that will stay that way. We can have all these things and more. All these things and more providing you, on October 12, first tick National. Thank you very much. God bless you.” Clapping. “Jim Bolger, 61 years old, 24 years in Parliament. A two term Prime Minister who had led the country through six challenging years of reconstruction. A Prime Minister who lived up to his election night pledge of three years ago to govern effectively for a full term, despite a paper-thin majority, and all the confusion of the new MMP era.” Bolger: “Stability for our country as we work through the period ahead is what we need, and I am committed, absolutely committed, to work for that above everything else.” “Despite all, the last six years of the Bolger National government have seen more success and stability than any recent government can claim. But now Jim Bolger and National are out on the hustings again. And this time the choices are even clearer. On the left a confused babble of feuding factions, all hoping for a slice of power by offering a great leap backwards into the failure of the past. And on the right path to stability and success, National. A proven team, determined that the hard-won gains of the last few years won’t be lost to political opportunism and economic incompetence.” Bolger: “And we do have a stark choice this time between the party that wants to both create the wealth and spend it wisely, the National Party, and the other parties. And they’re all much the same. All they want to do is spend money. They spend no time talking about generating wealth and therefore having something to spend. So, we do have a very clear distinction.” “Underpinning all that National stands for is the knowledge that a better New Zealand, better health, better education, a better quality of life can only come from continued economic growth and stability.” Bolger: “We have a number of political parties out there polling up, I guess, the thought that yesterday was better. And not really appearing to understand that tomorrow must be across the bridge, not on the side of it.” Already the economic gains under National have been remarkable. Probably never before has a government been able to go into an election with such a success story to tell. The economy grew two and half percent this year, and as long as current policies are maintained, it will expand by 3.7% over the next year. And the economy is projected to grow by a further 13.5% over the next four years, creating countless more jobs and greater prosperity. Since 1992 unemployment has dropped from 10.9% to just over 6%. It has meant spectacular employment growth, with the creation of 209,000 new jobs in the last four years. And, if current policies continue, operating surpluses will reach $6.4 billion by the end of the century, which will finally rid New Zealand of the debt burden which has suffocated the country for years. Net public debt was 52% of GDP when National took over from Labour six years ago. It will be just 23.6% next year, and almost half that by the turn of the century. And the foreign currency component of that debt will completely disappear on Friday this week.” Bill Birch: “Just by getting our debt down from where it was five years ago, to where it is today, we saved about 1500 million dollars per year, paying off that mortgage as it were. And that frees up those resources for health and education. And that’s where they are going.” “While the Reserve Bank estimates are a little less rosy than Treasury’s, the bottom line from both is continuous growth.” Bolger: “The great thing is we are continuing to grow quarter on quarter on quarter, and it is this compounding effect of ongoing growth that is adding such depth to the economy and adding such depth to job creation in the economy. We are seen to be, according to international surveys, to be the third most dynamic economy in the world now. Hard to believe as you drive around the streets of Wellington because we’re more used to being number 20 of the 22 in the developed world. We are right up there at the top.” “A far cry from the nasty surprises the new National government discovered when it was sworn in in 1990. When National took over from Labour, and the books were opened, the economy was billions in deficit and the BNZ was about to go belly up. But not now.” Bolger: “That the success, the revitalising, the renewal of the New Zealand economy puts it in a position where others can go around making promises. And the utter irony that they always seem to overlook is that the economy that is producing the goods is the one that each and every opposition party and every opposition leader said would destroy the economy. We were dead in a hole and now they want to claim the goodies to fund their rather extravagant promises on. We’ve got a bit of that going on.” “Jim Bolger has been on the political scene since 1972. And most who know him would say always with an eye to the top job. The solid farmer type, the rugby playing prop forward. All a bit of an act really concealing an ambitious and as events have proven, an almost radical politician. There will still be many who remember the days before weekend shopping, few with an affection. It was a fundamental realignment of this country’s lifestyle and driven by the then labour Minister Jim Bolger. Bolger: “I had more people protest against my decision to introduce voluntary shopping than any thing else I’ve done in politics and it is hard to believe today, hard for me to believe as I was accused of changing the New Zealand weekend. I used to proudly say I intent to change the New Zealand weekend, I don’t want it to be boring where nothing happens. There is no reason why our cities should not be vital on a weekend as they are the rest of the week.” “With his sponsorship of quite radical economic reforms and an increasingly confident and outspoken foreign policy, Jim Bolger the politician often defies the image of Jim Bolger the man.“ Bolger: “What are you squashing that for. Are you going to eat it? No?” “Above all else he is a family man. He has to be with the largest family in parliament. Nine children and now four grandchildren as well. And that is why he bristles when political opponents try to imply that somehow the National government is trying to remove the social security safety net.” Bolger: “A moment’s reflection would say why would Jim Bolger do that. Joan and I have a large family of our own. We have four grandchildren now and we no doubt will have more grandchildren. Why would we somehow want to somehow destroy their future and leave them out on a rock with no support if they need it. It is totally and utterly illogical it is totally foreign to everything that I believe that we should ignore people. “Do you have rushes on your farm Sam?” “Joan Bolger is an unsung strength in the partnership. Raising nine children on the one hand and becoming over the years an experienced, if unofficial political, advisor to her husband. It puts her now he has had six years as Prime Minister, in a position of extraordinary influence.” Bolger: “I do listen because she brings the voice of someone who is not directly involved in the detail, but through her own circle of friends and her own contacts, because she speaks to a large, wide range of audiences now, around New Zealand. I know she is capturing their sense, their mood, and their attitudes and yes I do listen, I’d be very stupid not to listen. Joan: “I’m not as close to the political scene and the decision-making as course as Jim is so I often don’t hear all the logical arguments that go to make a decision. So I suppose I bring a layman’s point of view, the way I see the public reacting to issues. So I pass that on.” Bolger: “Indeed” “There is another great influence on Jim Bolger’s life and thinking. It is love of the land. It is not a politically expedient love of the environment. It is real and it is visible. This family doesn’t holiday in Phuket or New York. If you walk the major trails around New Zealand at Christmas time, you may well bump into the Bolger family. “ Bolger: “If you love the land, by nature you are an environmentalist. And I love the land with a passion. One of the great strengths I draw from my youth of working with the land, working intimately with the land is that love of the land. It is part of that history I guess I bring to New Zealand, I bring to that job and it is part of me.” “In many ways Jim Bolger takes pride in being an ordinary bloke. But only to a degree, because he is not. He is chairman of the most powerful board in the country. And the talent it takes to hold that together is a little more than average. Graham: The leadership of the Prime Minister has been quite outstanding. He has managed to see us through the first three years with a lot of change and quite difficult political decisions to make. He has been the one out front. And then in the last three as you say we’ve been in a minority government and that has been a new experience for New Zealand. And I don’t know anyone else who could have done it better. Bolger: And this is where all the news is. Everything that happens here you’ll be able to tell us about, and we want all the details. Woman: “Sorry I don’t gossip.” McKinnon: “He is very easy to work with. He is an incredibly genuine person. And I think his greatest strengths are not really known. One is his great ability to do the time. He works formidable hours. Easy going, genial. Sure, but not always. There are some subjects guaranteed to get the Prime Minister heated. Play the race card, as some have done, and Jim Bolger’s kiwi sense of fair play ignites every time. Bolger: “What angers me extraordinarily, is those who want to play on the prejudices of New Zealanders for political advantage. Because nothing is cheaper, and perhaps I feel it so strongly myself because I am the son of migrants, my parents migrated in the middle of the Depression to New Zealand in 1930 and my mother is still alive at 94, and I know they worked damn hard. And I know some of the unstated persecution of migrants, no matter where they come from, is often there. And when I see people seeking to use it, that is why I reacted against the New Zealand First leader. Because I think trying to play the Asian race card is so destructive. The Polynesian race card was played in the 1970s, let’s be honest. So destructive.” In part it is that sort of anger that drove Christchurch civic leader Pansy Wong into national politics. “Hello this is Chin, it is Pansy Wong from the National Party. I was absolutely saddened and disgusted by that political agenda. Two weeks ago when I was in Auckland and this young man came up to me to say in broad day light he was cornered by three young men in Queens Street and told to go home. And physically assault him. There is a different look about the modern National party, one which has also attracted Georgina Te Heu Heu, number seven on the list, and therefore highly likely to make it into Parliament.” “Well with National I was persuaded, I think, by the fact that this government had confronted first the issue of settlements, Treaty settlements head on and had developed a policy, and voted money, to actually get settlements started and that was a plus, and tied into that is the need to maintain a strong and growing economy. “It is a message not lost on the Pacific Island community either. Arthur Anae from Auckland has been given a high list position as well.” Anae: “National has delivered over the last six years. When the National party came in Pacific Island unemployment was 32%. It is now just over 13%. My determination is that in the next term of the National government Pacific Island unemployment is going to be equal to the rest of New Zealand. The Pacific Island people are going to come off being dependents. What they are all hoping to join is a government remarkable for its stability. And that is despite the minority status of the last few years. Graham: Certainly, in my time in the house I don’t think there has been a more peaceful beehive. In the past there has been battles between one floor and another and all that sort of thing. I have never detected any of that at all in six years. And I think that the cabinet members actually like each other. And we’ve never had any backstabbing or trying to push someone the other way to get ahead. I think that is quite remarkable in politics. “It has to help when many of the nation’s leading decision makers are also good friends. For many in the cabinet, family responsibilities figure highly in their lives. English: “When I go home, the kids aren’t interested in the latest poll result, they aren’t interested in the last lot of macroeconomic figures, they just want their nappies changed, their lunches made, their reading heard. And that gives you a very real grounding in the way of life of New Zealanders. My children happen to be part Samoan and we both have quite large extended families and you get a close look at all sorts of aspects of New Zealand experience. And that makes a world of difference to how you see it. It is not all just papers and meetings and high-level discussions.” Bolger: “Bill English from Dipton is one of those finds that Prime Ministers look for. Someone put it that Bill is the best all schucks politician we’ve had in New Zealand for 20 years, and that could be true. Because his disarming sort of rule style, I think I put it, totally hides one of the better minds of politics and one of the more astute personalities in politics. One would expect the Prime Minister to support those he has chosen, but one of the more remarkable complements paid to a National cabinet Minister came from a most unexpected source last month. Lange: “I often think of Bill Birch, who when I was ill last year wrote the most moving personal letter I received in hospital. And yet I spent a political life portraying him as a heartless, venal, mechanical, robotic, uncaring fiend. And it didn’t quite work.” Bolger: “Bill is one of those great colleagues. He entered politics with me, has come through the system with me, nothing gets past him. He can be tough, but he equally has a warm heart in terms of people, whether they hurt, whether they need support both in a personal sense and as a Minister. And I’ve got tremendous faith in Bill Birch and he is an enormous support to me. I’ve got a lot of thank yous for Doug Graham because if he hadn’t put the effort in, to take through the details of land grievances we simply wouldn’t have made the grievances we have made. I saw Jenny very early on as a key person in the National party, and I promoted her to the extended front bench after she was in the house about two years. She was the Minister of Social Welfare when we changed the social welfare system, everyone blamed her, it wasn’t her, it was a government decision not the Minister’s decision alone, but Jenny carried that and she never blinked. Shipley: “I’m a mother of two lovely young people, and I think this place is the better for having women who are mothers as well. I don’t mother people, but insofar as women who have brought up a couple of children you tend to see the world in a broader view. Jim Bolger has led this cabinet for six years through majority, minority and then coalition. That he has succeeded doesn’t surprise his wife. Joan: “I think part of that is personality. He is very easy and very good with people. And to manage to hold a family like ours, with so many of us, and all these young ones growing up with their own views and own opinions, and going and doing their own thing, and to be still able to be father in a household like ours, has to be pretty good experience for managing a cabinet. But it is managing the economy which has been key to National’s success, and everywhere the economic indicators are vibrant. When the National government took over in 1990, unemployment was the big election issue. Bolger: “We have been able to create over 200,000 new jobs in New Zealand in the last four years. That we now have one of the lower rates of unemployment in the developed world. We are about sixth, and the developed countries of Europe are from about 6 to 22% unemployment. So tremendous, I mean the human dimension of having a job to go to in the morning and feeling worthwhile, is why it is so good. “How are you. Good good.” Bolger: “And this is where you grow money, that is what is said.” “Whether it is small businesses in places like Stewart Island, growing paua pearls for jewellery, or like gigantic crayfish for export, or whether it is a budding giant like the electronics industry, business in New Zealand has continued to grow. In electronics alone, there has been 30% growth per year for the last six years. And now total earnings are expected to top a billion dollars before the end of the decade. Bolger: “The boom and bust days are behind us. If we continue with the current framework we are working in, that’s the bad dreams of yesterday, and of course they were disastrous, you would psych things up and then crash them down because you would run out of reserves. What has enabled us to say they are behind us is much stronger and broader based exports these days. “Economic success has bred an economic confidence as well. The ability to repair bridges with the most powerful country in the world. The ability to be independent in foreign policy even when it upsets major powers. To take a lead in world issues and to build a national cross-party coalition at the same time. Bolger: The great thing with the campaign against the French nuclear testing in the Pacific at Mururoa recently, was that New Zealand united behind that. New Zealand supported the sending of the Tui that we sent up there with the groups that were protesting there, to support the other private protest yachts. It became a New Zealand issue. And it is interesting how quick the five nuclear powers have now all agreed to stop testing. To some extent the final gasp of nuclear testing was at Mururoa. And we were there, in the loudest and clearest voice, saying to the world stop, it must stop. And they have.” “December 1994 an important watershed in New Zealand race relations with the Tainui settlement. Graham: “Sooner or later justice will prevail. For Waikato that time has now come. No longer are they regarded as rebels. Fair restitution has been provided, the suffering is now at an end. Bolger: There are few occasions that stand out, that make all the disappointments the anger, the frustration, the pettiness, of politics worthwhile. This is one such occasion. “Despite all the success stories, despite the undoubted strength of the economy, there is no escaping the dissatisfaction of the electorate with some aspects of health and education. Graham: “People felt a bit left out, that we were cruel and uncaring. Whereas, in fact, of course, we spent hours trying to be as caring as we could, but we realised we had to change some attitudes and that you have to earn your living, we have to earn our living as a country. That was pretty hard to take after thirty years of do it when you feel like it, and that sort of thing. “It doesn’t seem to matter that for every story of south Auckland educational failure, there are hundreds of thousands of children receiving the best the world has to offer. The same can be said of health. But despite billions more being committed, and six years of spending it, the National Party concedes it still has a long way to go. And it is not down the path of every person for themselves. Bolger: “No New Zealander who knows anything would want an Americanised health system with forty or fifty million Americans with no health care whatsoever. That is a nonsense. What we want, and what we are committed to, is a publically funded health system that delivers to all New Zealanders. We want to do it in a way that enables them to have the highest possible level of sophistication in terms of modern technology and modern pharmaceuticals. We know we have to spend more money and we have spent well over a billion dollars more already, we haven’t cut any spending we have spent more. “That is the political commitment, but policy and implementation don’t always travel at the same speed. Jenny Shipley has always fronted up to the issues, and now with election day looming she is urging people to understand it is not simply a matter of promising more money. Shipley: “Everyone is anxious about their health and the government understands that. What we’ve got to do is have a system that can respond. In New Zealand if anyone is ill, very ill, no-one asks if they are insured, they go into hospital straight away and they will get the best of care and treatment and National has modernised the health system to see that we are at the front edge of technology and quality of care. If they’ve got a condition that may well be bothering them, and is not urgent, they will get it but they may have to wait. Because in New Zealand as we become more clever in medicine, and we offer more, it is true that more people want help, and so we’ve got to balance those two issues. “The talk around the cabinet table is often centred around money and Bill Birch arguing why a portfolio can or cannot have more funding.” “Why have you given people tax cuts before more spending seems to have been put into health and education?” Birch: “There is a very simple explanation for that. We are in fact doing all of those things. We’re putting a lot more money into health, a lot more money into education, at the same time we are giving tax cuts and paying down our debt. Why tax cuts are important in that scenario is because by leaving more money in people’s pockets, of people who are working hard, it allows them to use that money to sustain a faster growing economy. And it is that fast growing economy that produces the dividends, if you like, to put into health. So, there is a virtuous circle. Tax cuts, faster growing economy, more money for health. “It is not every day Prime Ministers come to visit. Then it is election time. It is a pity for Jim Bolger the children on Stewart Island cannot vote. Bolger: “We have to build 50 new schools, 5,000 new classrooms, and employ 5,000+ teachers in the next decade. So you are in a growth industry. Bolger: “There is an endless list of initiatives that have to be taken, but will cost a lot of funding and will only occur as long as we maintain strong economic growth. Maintain that, and with the forecast surpluses under our management out into the future, then I can say very comfortably tonight, that we can afford to do all of those things. It is not an if, it is not a maybe, we can afford as long as we maintain the economic policies we’ve got to do all of those and take all of those initiatives that are necessary.” “And on a smaller scale, there are initiatives like Baird’s Road School in Otara, where they are trying to break down stereotypes through books and performance. Bolger: Thank you princess and your team it was wonderful, there are prince and princesses everywhere.” Bolger: “I’m quite passionate about education, I’m one of the generation of New Zealanders who left school very young, I left school at 15, I left school in the fourth form, I left school at the age I tell every young school I go to “don’t follow me, don’t take my example, do as I tell you”. I’m passionate about it because I didn’t get the chance myself.” English: “I don’t know if we’ll ever be finished, but certainly we haven’t done everything right, there are shortcomings both in education and in health where people aren’t getting the kind of service they paid for and the kind of service they deserve as New Zealanders. The question then is how do we solve those problems? Who has something to contribute? And I think a lot of people have something to contribute. In my job I get to meet a lot of large number of very committed professional people, a large number of very committed parents and families, they can help us solve the problems. And that is much more attractive than politicians sitting in Wellington dreaming up models, drawing lines on maps and telling people how to do it. “But with our first MMP election well and truly underway, the future of this country is now firmly in the hands of all New Zealanders of voting age. “I’m very confused. My husband and I both are.” “Any thoughts at all about what party you might support.” “Ah, maybe National.” “Why is that?” “Well, I just think they’ve done, we’ve gone through a rough period, but we’ve come out of it and I wouldn’t like to see us go backwards now.” They’re doing a good job, for the economy, running the country. I’m scared of Winston Peters and Labour and so on don’t really click.” “I like the policies, they’re quite straight forward about what they think and I think they are quite honest about things.” “I’ve never voted for National in my life, but I probably will this time, I’ll probably give them my party vote because I don’t want any change I’ve got such a huge mortgage I don’t really want to take any risk at this stage with anything else and I’m a person who has voted for everything except the National Party. First tick National McKinnon: “My goodness, we’ve got great opportunities and you don’t want to see that blown at this stage. Graham: “I think the future of the next generation is at stake here. We’ve worked very hard over the last 15 years as a little country. Bolger: “But we are asking New Zealanders is to secure their future, to make certain of their future, that when they get that ballot paper in front of them, to first tick National on the party vote. That is the most important decision they make on the 12 of October. First tick National