Sunday Star-Times: If I was PM – Power to the people, respect for planet

Read the original article in the Sunday Star-Times

OPINION: I’ve never wanted to be prime minister, a view only strengthened by watching Christopher Luxon’s gruesome struggles this week. But if I somehow found myself in the role, I’d start by reminding everyone of the purpose of politics, as I see it: to ensure that each of us can live a rich and fulfilling life, in harmony with others and the planet. I’m a social democrat, and take both parts of that term seriously: the people should exercise political power, but do so together, and for a life lived together.

What first-100-days flurry of changes would flesh out that vision? Nothing else matters if the planet burns, and the public needs climate action to feel uplifting. So I’d quickly introduce a localised renewables package: subsidies for rooftop solar, support for community batteries, and a fair price for selling energy to the grid. That’d ease cost-of-living pressures while warming people up for the harder climate fights to come.

On similar lines, I’d largely retain Chris Bishop’s Resource Management Act replacements, because the country can only stand so much chopping-and-changing. But I’d ditch the sweeping ministerial discretion and payouts to landowners affected by rule changes. I’d also legislate hard environmental bottom lines, ensuring the planet is protected, indeed replenished.

One central threat to the environment is our economy – which not only relies too much on digging stuff from the ground and selling raw materials, but also struggles to provide well-paid jobs. In the first 100 days, I’d lift R&D tax credits and pilot new career pathways for young scientists.

I’d also launch an assessment of which strategically important domestic industries we need to protect as global supply chains buckle. That review would simultaneously identify options for lifting regional growth with better infrastructure, high-tech clustering, and subsidies for low-carbon industries. If the old economy is a coal mine on the West Coast, the new one is a forestry refinery – turning every last bit of the tree into sophisticated products – on the East.

I couldn’t ignore AI – but knowing I didn’t have all the answers, I’d immediately launch an AI safety unit and a national summit, gathering the community to figure out how we exploit the technology’s productivity power while guarding ourselves against its immense dangers. Responding to the decimation of entry-level jobs for young people would be an urgent challenge.

As a social democrat, I believe the ills of democracy can be cured only with more democracy. I’d issue instructions to public sector bosses to involve regular people more deeply in policy-making – a win-win of increased trust and better delivery. I’d convene a citizens’ assembly – a group of 100 ordinary Kiwis, selected at random and representative of the whole nation – to “unstick” things by finding solutions on an issue where politicians have failed – superannuation reform, for instance. And I’d roll back the previous government’s attacks on Māori rights while creating more room for iwi to deliver services to their own people.

I’d spread democracy to the workplace as well, introducing legislation to make it easier to set up worker-run co-operatives and put staff representatives on company boards. That, combined with fair pay agreements (quickly exhumed), would drive up wages, allowing people higher earnings on fewer hours, and leaving them more time to spend in their communities. Giving the Commerce Commission tougher powers to break up monopolies and cartels would be another boost to families, lowering everyday costs and putting curbs on price-gouging.

I’d also want to reshape the goals of politics. Too much policy-making is reactive, and targets near-term fiscal surpluses at the expense of long-term social deficits.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in our appalling rates of child poverty and abuse, often generations in the making. So I’d immediately convene a whole-of-society effort to start writing a Generational Plan that outlines the key policies needed to ensure all young people are thriving by 2050. Owned by the country at large, the plan would ensure politicians protected the future.

My initiatives would of course cost money. So the final act of the first 100 days would be a bill introducing a capital gains tax on all assets bar the family home. That would close a major loophole, one that currently allows the wealthiest Kiwis – who take most of their income as capital gains – to pay a mere 9.4% tax rate. And it would pave the way for further reform in the second term: specifically, the closing of another loophole by taxing income taken in the form of large inheritances (those over $1m, say).

Power to the people, respect for the planet: through the above initiatives, we would have begun to address some of our country’s greatest challenges – high emissions, low productivity, severe hardship – while deepening democracy and making politics more future-focused. It would be a packed 100 days, full of urgent action. But given the scale of the problem, what else does the moment demand?