The Post: National is shedding compassion and showing its mean streak

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“The basis of private prosperity is government activity.” These words were uttered not by some socialist agitator but by Jack Watts, a 1950s National minister of finance. William Massey, a conservative prime minister from 1912 to 1925, similarly believed that people should pay tax “in proportion to their ability and in proportion to the requirements of the country itself”.

Contrast this with Christopher Luxon’s approach to governing, in which “excessive” state spending is constantly attacked and restoring $2.9 billion in tax breaks for well-off landlords takes precedence over properly funding the health system. It is striking just how far the National Party has drifted from traditions that were once its anchor.

Formed in 1936 by the merger of Reform and United, the National Party – and indeed its predecessors – have always had a mean streak. The infamous “Massey’s Cossacks” brutalised waterfront workers in 1913; four decades later Watts’ government did essentially the same thing.

But as might be expected from a conservative party, National has often, well, conserved things.

When the great Labour prime minister Michael Joseph Savage described his creation of the welfare state as “applied Christianity”, National leader Sid Holland may have retorted that it was “applied lunacy”. But when he won power, Holland preserved virtually all Savage’s achievements.

Again, the contrast with the current administration – which tore up Labour’s legislation with frenzied disregard for democratic process – could hardly be sharper.

National has also sometimes pursued “One Nation” conservatism, the idea that we have obligations to others and should support the poor, even if communities shoulder more of that burden than the state. Under Keith Holyoake’s 1960s National government, economic growth was broadly shared, and disparities fell.

Contrast that with the current doubling of homelessness in some cities. In a devastating recent interview with journalist Bernard Hickey, Auckland City Missioner Helen Robinson said she knew of people forced to sleep rough despite having pneumonia.

Others had been denied emergency accommodation because they were deemed to have “contributed to their own homelessness”. But, under the Government’s new rules, that “contribution” can be something as innocent as giving up stable housing in order to move cities.

At this point one has to ask: what have we become? Do we want to be a country in which desperately ill people are denied housing on the flimsiest of pretexts or for minor imperfections? How is this even vaguely consistent with any notion of “compassionate” conservatism?

Although obviously not a cheerleader for this Government, I have tried to give ministers their due, praising reforms in schooling, infrastructure and elsewhere. But when people with pneumonia are being left on our wintry streets, what am I supposed to say? What is anyone supposed to say?

I know of seasoned government-relations professionals, too worldly-wise to be a partisan for either side, who now absolutely despair of this administration. I have heard public servants speak wistfully of the “tight but fair” era of Bill English, comparing it favourably to Labour’s undisciplined largesse but also to the open contempt some current ministers have for public servants, experts, and indeed basic facts.

Some commentators compare the current climate to the dark days of the early 1990s, when poverty and unemployment soared. And although this government is not – thankfully – slashing benefits by one-quarter like Ruth Richardson did, still there are parallels.

In the early 1990s, two Porirua pre-schoolers burned to death when their state house was set alight by a candle. Their family had resorted to this primitive lighting method after National hiked their rents and they could no longer afford the power bill.

Such house-fire deaths are now soaring again, reaching their highest level in a decade. Many involve “non-traditional” forms of heat and light, including candles and even barbecues brought inside, as families seek “to reduce the cost of living”, Fire and Emergency’s Pete Gallagher told RNZ.

What links the early 1990s and today? Ideology. ACT’s Silicon Valleyesque, “move fast and break things” worldview is partly to blame. But the bigger party has been infected, too.

National has often been suspicious of rigid ideology, preferring a more pragmatic approach. In the early 1990s, though, its attacks on the state took on a quasi-religious quality.

Today, rough sleeping has doubled because National holds a rigid ideological view that emergency housing numbers must plummet. A numerical target has taken precedence over pragmatism, and indeed compassion.

Some people have of course made the positive move from emergency accommodation into state homes. But those are dwellings Labour built. And National has scrapped plans for another 3000 state houses, amplifying a homelessness crisis for which they are substantially responsible.

This is a long way from the party’s better traditions. Nor can ministers claim ignorance of the beliefs of predecessors like Watts and Massey, whose statements above are drawn from a history of tax entitled We Won, You Lost, Eat That! The author? Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith.