Shearer’s Speech

David Shearer delivered his much heralded new direction speech this morning. It was so hyped up Labour even said they were live streaming it. However the live stream was a disaster according to a number of readers. It barely worked, kept going offline and had ads running on it!

The speech text is here:

You may know that P.T. Barnum was the man who founded the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus.

He was a showman, he was a businessman, he was a scam artist.

Early in his career, he created an exhibit called The Happy Family.

It had just one cage, and in that cage there was a lion, a tiger, a panther, and a baby lamb.

It was a huge hit.

People would line up to see it.

At this point I thought David was doing an analogy about the Labour Party caucus!

And as it grew more and more popular, the newspapers would ask him what his plans were for this amazing display.

He said to them: “It’ll probably become a permanent feature – but only if the supply of lambs holds out.”

In any sense you want to put it, literal or figurative, that’s how we’re running things in New Zealand.

We’re going to keep on doing things the way we are … for as long as the supply of lambs holds out.

We’re going to go right on relying on property market bubbles and a small basket of primary produce exports to earn our living and we’re going to go on borrowing money to pay for a standard of living we can’t afford.

The old New Zealand needs to do more than just primary produce.

He’s not the first Labour Leader to say this. 26 years ago David Lange pronounced farming is a sunset industry. Helen Clark talked about the knowledge wave and economic transformation to reduce the reliance on agriculture. The reality is every Government for 25 years has been saying this.

I’ve always believed the best argument in favour of a capital gains tax was the economic effect it had.

A CGT is pro-growth. It helps switch investment from sectors such as housing, to the productive sector where we desperately need more capital.

Over time I can also see the revenue it raises being used to offset the tax you have to pay in other areas.

So I can see a role for CGT in transforming our economy.

Now this is potentially good. Goff promoted a CGT to fund extra spending – a new version of tax and spend. That I do not support. But I do support a broad base low rate tax system. If Labour propose a CGT which is broadly fiscally neutral, and allows tax on labour and savings etc to be lowered, that is more credible.

On the other hand, I would want to ask whether a tax-free zone that gives everyone the same sized tax cut is going to be as much of a priority.

Everyone should not get the same sized tax cut. Tax cuts should broadly be proportional to the tax you pay.

But the reality is that any overall reduction in the level of taxation can only occur once we are back in surplus.

Any government I lead is going to be thrifty.

New Zealanders can trust Labour to manage the books.

I’d like to believe that. But Labour has opposed every spending cut done by National. They were even against capping the number of civil servants, let alone reducing them.

Instead of the distraction over national standards, we need to focus on how we get the highest quality teachers in the world and the best performing students.

National standards are not a distraction. They are key performance indicators. But I welcome a focus on quality teachers and look forward to Labour’s policy on performance pay.

Study after study shows that the most important ingredient is the quality of teachers.

We need to value teachers.

We need every teacher in our classroom to be a good one.

The vast majority are. But the truth is some are not.

We will work with teachers to develop their professional skills, but ultimately we can’t afford to have bad teachers in our classrooms.

Good rhetoric from a Labour leader. It is an encouraging sign. But we will need policy to back up the rhetoric.

UPDATE: Rob Hosking reports:

Candyfloss is not a particularly nutritious breakfast.

But that is what Labour leader David Shearer delivered to a Wellington business breakfast this morning.

In a speech long on fluffy words and not-particularly original aspirational ideas but virtually policy-free, Mr Shearer set out his vision for New Zealand.

It involves having more nice things, and having fewer bad things, apparently,

New Zealand should have more companies like Nokia, Mr Shearer urged his audience, as if it were a new idea.

Sorry, but there are kids at university who were not born when politicians started talking about how New Zealand having a company like Nokia would be kind of a neat idea.

National MP Maurice Williamson used to do it in the 1990s.

And

A fair chunk of the speech was devoted to education, but, again, it was all empty calories and empty words, with no policy meat at all.

” I want the best educational achievement in the world,” Mr Shearer said, as if this makes him and his party any different from anyone else.
How to do this?
“We need to value teachers. We need every teacher in our classroom to be a good one. The vast majority are. But the truth is some are not.

“We will work with teachers to develop their professional skills, but ultimately we can’t afford to have bad teachers in our classrooms. “

How would Labour do this?

The only answer Mr Shearer put up was that this would be done by “focusing” on it.

Ouch.