The Agreement

What I like about it is the clarity and the language. ACT has done very well in covering all of its identified priority policies and getting a commitment to action on each. Great result in that respect.

But there are a few of things ACT has signed up for which I do not like. That's compromise for you I guess. That's the difference being being in government or not.

From the Key Commitments;

Maintain and build New Zealand’s asset base by increasing investment in infrastructure such as roads, broadband and public transport, and by not selling Kiwibank or any other state-owned company.

I oppose state ownership of banks and disagreed with Key's broadband roll-out to every home. Huge expenditure for questionable gain.

Give families financial certainty by continuing all Working for Families payments at current levels...

WFF is a bad policy. It breaches not only ACT's but National's stated values. It should be abolished.

Give seniors financial certainty by keeping the age of eligibility of NZ Superannuation at 65.

The qualification age for Super should rise given ever-extending life expectancies. If the qualifying age for Super was set to match the average periods spent on the aged pension in 1900, the eligibility would now be well into the seventies for men and pushing 80 for women. Not that I am advocating a rise to those sorts of levels.

And from the Post Election Action Plan;

Introduce legislation to require DNA testing for every person arrested for an imprisonable offence.

This is wrong. The state has no right to take DNA samples before a person has been tried and convicted.

Introduce legislation to give police the power to issue on-the-spot protection orders to help them protect victims of domestic violence.

This will be abused by women who want the law to intervene in troublesome situations that do not warrant it. It will be used to achieve personal vendettas.

Instruct that a full 12-month course of Herceptin be publicly available.

I have reservations about overriding Pharmac on Herceptin funding as it sets a dubious precedent. We now have control of expenditure by political noise. But that could work in a negative fashion eg undoing funding of things like the morning-after pill. Of course, I would rather Pharmac ceased to exist but as it is not going anywhere, caution must be exercised in opening it up to less-than-expert lobbyists.

There is one error which results in ambiguity. The word 'eliminating' should replace 'elimination'.

National agrees to work with ACT to achieve better value for money in the public sector by:
• Involving the ACT Leader Rodney Hide as a member of the Cabinet Expenditure Control Committee process. A focus of this work should be on elimination programmes that do not deliver value for money.

It will be now most interesting to compare this agreement to that between National and the Maori Party.