The boss of New Zealand

In her week off from politics, Jane Clifton wishes she ran a benevolent dictatorship.

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Elections can be extremely annoying for all concerned – not least the voter. But in weekly news-land, a particularly tiresome pain is that two most unsatisfactory misalignments in time and space come into play. There is a strict political news blackout on polling day, and it is illegal for there to be any material pertinent to politics on these pages for those reading them on Saturday. So this is a political column that is not allowed to be about politics.

Alternatively, if one is reading this on Sunday, or – given the vagaries of NZ Post – Monday or Tuesday, it will be impossible to overlook the fact the election has taken place, but this column has nothing to say about the results.

It’s a pig of a situation, but that’s deadlines for you. In vain over the years have I wheedled at editors that I might as well be given the week off. Readers expect a political column, and they must have one, I am always told. Even if it can’t contain actual politics – or at least, not topical politics.

Short of giving readers a two-page photo of a cute puppy, my last holiday, or the crop of sweet peas I’m especially pleased with this season, I really do scratch around for ideas every election blackout.

In the past I’ve attempted high-minded, generalised treatises on what “the incoming Government” will face in terms of challenges/opportunities/pitfalls. But given a variety of recent mega-events, we all know this schedule only too well.

So, given these two pages are electoral no-man’s-land, and a temporary enforced holiday from reality; and given the season is fast approaching when wish lists are longingly compiled … I’ve decided to compile a schedule of what I’d do if someone made me the boss of New Zealand.

First thing I’d do is get my roots done, obviously. But after that, I’d institute a muscular inquiry into pricing – specifically the supermarket duopoly, and vertical integration in the building-products industry. We pay far more than we should for groceries and construction, and the root cause seems to be lack of competition.

Talk to any grower, or manufacturer/supplier of a grocery product, and you’re left in no doubt that the supermarkets are calling the shots – about pricing, and everything else besides. We know fresh fruit and vege are routinely subject to mark-ups of several hundred per cent, a money-go-round not even waftingly beneficial to the poor blighters who produced the food in the first place. And our building costs are astronomical by world standards.

It’s time for Parliament finally to take an interest in this, and a Clifton-led benevolent dictatorship would get stuck in. I would then ban the widespread practice of building skitey, boxy modern additions onto nice old villas and bungalows – and make it compulsory for homes already bastardised in this way to prominently display the name of the offending architect on the building’s frontage. We have little enough surviving architectural heritage, and those who inflict their egotistical fetishes on old buildings of any sort deserve to be named and shamed.

A system of spot fines for open-mouthed gum-chewing would be next, followed by a review of local authority rating practices, and the whole scope of local body activity. I’ve banged on about this ad nauseam, but our local councils are the only institutions that can put their prices up at will, without limit, every year (well, them and supermarkets), and use our money to dabble in any activity that takes their fancy. Media scrutiny is scant, and the democracy – at 40% voter turnout – is too frail to be any kind of accounting mechanism.

We have a growing crisis, in which people are having to sell their homes because they can’t afford their rates. They can’t afford their rates because they’re having to pay for all manner of extraneous council activity, from lobster-shaped dunnies to practically random roading bollards. It’s time to get a new consensus on what local bodies should and shouldn’t be expected/permitted to spend our money on. It’s awfully nice to have skating rinks and car races – but in the current economic circumstances, nice isn’t a good enough reason.

Successive governments have devolved all manner of extra responsibilities onto councils to get problems off their plates, and this has led to a ridiculous duplication of bureaucratic systems and maddening inconsistencies in costs and rules. The classic example is the patchwork of building inspection practices, which was a big factor in the leaky homes epidemic. And why should it cost less in one city to register a dog than in another, or be mandatory to paint your house a environmentally sympathetic “green” colour in one rural area but okay to have it canary yellow with puce bits in another?

Local and regional authorities consistently fail to agree on or get to grips with the really important infrastructural issues that actually do make or break the amenity of a city or district. Wellington regional politicians are still squabbling over Transmission Gully, and rather than tackle the urgent issue of improving water catchment so people don’t run out of water in what is hardly an arid country, the Kapiti district is scaring people with the prospect of water meters.

Local government probably needs to be centralised and have a whole lot of petty functions taken off it, and to be given a clear charter of what is and isn’t its business. Then I’d ban the deployment of Christmas decorations in shops in October, and of Easter merchandise in January. For pity’s sake, is nothing special any more?

After lunch – you should never be bossy on low blood sugar – I’d launch a massive campaign to transform New Zealand’s farming practices into the world’s cleanest and greenest. We don’t have to go all woolly-pully organic, but we surely to goodness have the scientific resources to crack the downsides of dairying. We certainly have the incentive. We are among the world’s cleverest and most efficient agricultural producers – but we are also its most distant from prospective markets.

We need to tower above competitors on environmental and ethical issues, yet we’ve been short-sighted in not channelling adequate funding to the science that can get us there. It’s a matter of survival, and of national pride and identity. We love our land more than anything, and I suspect even townies like me have a subconscious romantic attachment to “the farm”. We desperately need the farm to be a less ugly place.

Naturally, I would phase out battery-chook farming, sow crates, the mutilation of sheep’s bottoms and the like rather quickly, and greatly steepen the penalties for animal cruelty. There has to be a way to “encourage” farmers to provide adequate shelter for their stock. How can it be economically rational to lose so many animals to heat and cold each year, rather than bear the one-off cost of providing rudimentary shelter? Even those not intellectually evolved enough to care about animals must accept this makes us look bad to the overseas consumers we depend on.

By now I’d have effectively banned quite a few activities, so I’d probably be trifling with the gentler idea of rationing things I dislike. People should have to prove they need a four-wheel drive for off-road purposes – and that they can drive them other than like wannabe Masters of the Universe. Also subject to a sinking-lid quota would be all those smug, look-at-me things people put on their cars: “Baby on Board” signs, personalised plates, cutesy “I Love My Schnauzer” stickers, bull bars … no, sorry, I’d have to ban bull bars. Nobody needs to attach a bull bar to their car (unless they’re secretly worried about the size of one of their other attachments).

On reflection, running the country would probably be rather a pain. I’ll be leaving it to the politicians as usual – although not without further impertinent advice.