Building Bridges.

Putting aside party politics to get the big stuff done.

Listening to RNZ yesterday, I heard that the government was making a major announcement about a second crossing of the Waitematā. I was fairly surprised.

I’d have thought with it being election year the last thing the government would want to be talking about was a massive Auckland transport project. Especially after the controversy, and lack of progress, on initiatives like the now cancelled cycle and walking bridge and the enduring saga of light rail to the airport.

It does need looking at. Transport in Tamaki Makaurau is a mess, and getting worse. But in election year? Surely not.

Not with all the other things needing government funding. Like the infrastructure repair work following cyclone Gabrielle, for example. Even if you look at transport projects needed in Auckland surely there must be others to focus on that will produce faster results?

Cyclone Gabrielle hit Gisborne hard. Photo: George Heard

The harbour crossing won’t begin until 2029 and will then take 15 years. Children born this year will be able to use it when they are 21! The City Rail Link project has seriously impacted the city and while the payoff of the improvements to train services appeals, the thought of another couple of decades with massive disruption does not.

Still, if we don’t start these large projects, a Transmission Gully, or a Waterview Tunnel, which span decades and multiple governments, they’ll never get done. Maybe the government just want a solid plan in place before polling day. It would be a bad look to not even have a plan. I was pleased to hear that all five options under consideration include provisions for walking, cycling, and light rail.

Former National leader Simon Bridges came on the programme in his role as CEO and spokesman for the Auckland Business Chamber. Here we go, I thought, time to politicise it before it has even been announced.

But no, he was calm and objective. He talked about the need to do something after a long history of not doing anything about a second crossing. Including when he himself was Transport Minister. Bridges indicated that he thought a tunnel option was most likely. He sounded straight up and honest, and it made me think he’d been a bit of a loss for National. Freed from the focus on political popularity he came across as constructive and supportive.

I mentioned this and my friend Lorraine said “I wonder about our whole system. Nit-picking, gotcha moments, opposing because one must oppose, wasting the time of people trying to get on with the job to score political points. We need a better system, God only know what that is. But one where the focus is on the best and brightest people work together towards common goals. Utopian, I guess.”

She is right, shouldn’t we be utilising the best talents and experience in our parliament to address the big problems? To fix our crumbling infrastructure, or address the climate crisis? To take on the really big problems and produce more than feel good gimmicks?

In a time of crisis, like a war or a major emergency, we might consider a unity government. Political differences put aside to focus on tackling the hard challenges the country faces. When it’s time to pull together and sort stuff out, not play politics.

Well we’ve got some pretty hard challenges, so why not now?

Imagine you were running a company and you’d hired a bunch of top quality people (I suggest you don’t look too closely at certain aspects of this metaphor), the best people. Would you have half of them work towards solving the objectives you had, and the other half undermining them? Criticising everything the first group did regardless of merit, just because it was them that did it, and not actually contributing themselves?

Sure checks and balances are important in government, but if the goal is to solve tough problems then our adversarial approach to government is a terrible way of going about things. Half the people pulling in one direction, and the other going the other way, but really - no one going anywhere much at all.

Imagine if we could harness the full talents of our politicians, rather than having half sitting on the bench. Just imagine if we fully utilised the skills of the National team, what that would mean for the country right now…

One extra doctor.

I’m kidding of course, come on.

I really mean an additional woodwork teacher, and one extra doctor. Sorry.

Photo: Monique Ford.

Surely if you have great big problems to solve you want to utilise the best people, and they won’t necessarily all come from the ruling party. Labour have had a highly capable team - Ardern, Robertson, Hipkins, Sepuloni. As National had previously with Key, English, and Joyce. But it won’t always be the case that the governing party has such a strong team.

Ignoring party politics, who are the capable people in our parliament that we would want addressing big problems? Who would be the people that could contribute the most in a combined cabinet?

From the Greens there are probably some you’d consider - James, Marama, Julie-Anne, Chlöe, possibly others in time. I struggle to see Brooke van Velden as a cabinet minister, as for the ACT party MPs beyond the leader and the deputy - you have got to be joking. I don’t think many of these people realistically thought they would get in to parliament, much less sort out the major problems facing the nation.

ACT Party caucus. Photo credit: Newshub / Zane Small.

Another terrible option would be Winston Peters, if he gets back in. A man who took delight in stopping things happening as the “handbrake”. Fortunately for the country Winston appears to be lost down a rabbit hole. His latest theory being that the left threw Stuart Nash under a bus in order to save Marama Davidson. OK buddy!

Winston Peters @winstonpeters

The ‘coincidental’ timing of Nash’s three-year-old emails being suddenly leaked and his sacking, in politics, is called a ‘dead cat being thrown on the table’. No one in the media is talking about Marama Davidson now are they?

National have to replenish. After the carnage of the 2020 election they have been left with some very average MPs, many of whom should have retired years ago. They aren’t looking flash in terms of newcomers either. That they stood by Sam Uffindell spoke volumes as to how hard they must be finding it to attract high calibre candidates.

Despite her current brain fart around the school curriculum, Erica Stanford is clearly bright and capable, you’d find a role for her and she’d do a good job. Dr Reti would be an obvious choice for Health - having he and Dr Verrall working together, as opposed to against each other, would be a good thing for the country.

But if you look at National MPs that you’d put on the hardest jobs there is only one, and it’s not Christopher Luxon. He hasn’t done anything I’m aware of that suggests he’d be useful for anything other than short term gains for the wealthy.

No, the person I’m talking about, and if you’re still recovering from the bit above about Key and Joyce you might want to look away now - is Nicola Willis.

I know, I know - her policies would be a disaster for the country and heap misery upon the most vulnerable in our society. But she is obviously very smart and very hard working, maybe we could harness her energies for good? Put it this way - imagine the state the National Party would be in right now if she wasn’t there! Pretty grim, right?

I’ve got right wing friends who tell me that we want the same things, we just have different ideas about how to achieve them. Maybe we’re spending too much time hearing what politicians say they’re going to do, and how awful what the other lot want to do is, rather than having parliament work together to fix problems.

In the time of an emergency we need our best people on it, whichever party they are from. We really should have had more of a non-partisan approach to dealing with Covid. I’m not blaming either party for that but if we’d had more consensus we might not have seen the level of division we’ve had as a result.

Certainly for large scale challenges, that span many parliamentary terms, we need a team going in the same direction. Actually that makes me think of something Luxon could do - he could offer motivational speeches about all “going in the same direction”.

So much of our politics is descending into what we see in America. Smear tactics, culture wars, opposing things based on partisanship not merit, constantly criticising the other side over every tiny thing, and not focussing on the big challenges we have.

Most of us do want the same things. A sound economy, a safety net for those who need it, decent public services, good infrastructure for water and transport, and we really don’t want to suffer the ravages of climate change. Wouldn’t it be nice if our politicians focussed on those things together, rather than on beating the other team?

You might even attract some new people to parliament with good ideas and experience, who wouldn’t go near it as it is.