Vancouver Province
for January 24, 1999

In 1984 Labour won the New Zealand election and discovered to its horror that matters were even worse than they said they were on the campaign trial. It was awful – the treasury was bare, their huge debts were unpayable and now being called, and millions were due the farmers as subsidies. The Minister of Finance, Roger Douglas was brutal. He immediately cut off all subsidies, laid off thousands of public servants, and clawed back pensions and benefits. It was not pretty but to the surprise of many, the voters supported Douglas’s tough love, dubbed "Rogernomics", by re-electing Labour in 1987. And it worked.

Sir Roger left the Labour government because once the country was on its feet, it wanted to start spending again. Moreover, Labour is, says Sir Roger, the party of privilege, the privileged people being the union bosses and certain industries which the Party and the Unions think should be supported with public money. (Sound at all familiar?)

I first met Sir Roger in the late 80s, and we now have an annual lunch at Cin-Cins in downtown Auckland. We met last Monday and talked about New Zealand’s electoral system which, much like that in Germany, awards roughly ½ the seats by "first past the post" and the other ½ under Proportional Representation (PR) where each party elects off a list of candidates as many as its share of the popular vote mandates.

I was interested because of talk here about trying PR or the New Zealand system if only because if we’d had that in place here in 1996 and 1997 there’d be a Liberal minority government in Victoria and in Ottawa. PR invariably produces minority governments that must carefully shepherd legislation past a legislature it doesn’t control and that, we’re told, is a good thing.

Tain’t necessarily so, says Sir Roger. New Zealand might just return to first past the post when the matter comes up for review in 2002.

After the 1996 election, neither National (Conservative) nor Labour had a majority with National being the larger of the two. The National leader, Jim Bolger, rather than facing parliament as a minority government, entered into an auction with Labour for the affections of a small party led by what both parties considered a wild man, Winston Peters. What ensued was nearly two months without a government until finally Mr Bolger out bid the Labour leader, and got Mr Peters’ support. The price? Mr Peters became Finance Minister, spending went wild, and the result was near chaos.

But there’s another problem, according to Sir Roger. The names on the "list" aren’t necessarily people experienced in running public affairs. More likely they’re party hacks who have raised large sums of money or done other services for the party. This means two types of MP – one which has fought it out in the crucible of an election campaign and another who just wandered in from party headquarters because his party got a big enough % of the vote.

Sir Roger Douglas’s advice is go slow in changing from "first past the post" to anything to do with PR.

We then discussed the "Asian ‘flu" and its impact on New Zealand (same population as B.C. with much fewer resources) From my Auckland hotel room I could see three huge buildings under construction. Since Asian ‘flu had hit New Zealand so hard, how come?

New Zealand, said Sir Roger, while it had backslid a bit since the days of "Rogernomics", had kept the debt and the deficit under control. But more than just that, New Zealand, because it always must compete hard for investment, has worked diligently to provide a good investment climate.

I didn’t dare tell him how Glen Clark, Joy McPhail and our equivalent of a Labour government handle hard times – it wouldn’t be proper for the host to spoil such an eminent guest’s lunch.