Opinion - New Zealand is a boiling Frog
Opinion
Urban legend has it that if a frog is suddenly put into a pot of boiling water, it will jump out and save itself from impending death.
But, if the frog is put in lukewarm water, with the temperature rising slowly, it will not perceive any danger and will let itself be cooked to death.
Why?
Since the frog is only slightly uncomfortable with its warm surroundings, it keeps trying to adjust and get accustomed, making believe that the slow, gradual change in temperature is normal. Only when the slowly changing temperature reaches a certain level does the frog realise it just signed its own death warrant. It has already lost its strength to jump out!
This is a good way of understand the long term socioeconomic position of New Zealand unless there’s real change.
We can use the pay gap between us and our beloved Australian cousins as a measure of the performance of the New Zealand economy and an indicator of whether we are already in hot water and which way things are going.
When the last National Government was elected, the gap between a New Zealander and an Australian earning the median wage was $5.70 an hour, or $11,900 a year.
In 2008, National campaigned on closing that gap. John Key said, “Our vision is to close the gap with Australia by 2025.” It commissioned a group to generate ideas to close the gap and then swiftly rejected the ideas it came up with.
Over the last six years, Labour has clearly turned the heat up which resulted in the pay gap now ballooning to almost $23,500 – almost double the increase achieved by National earlier.
None of the above is particularly fast, dramatic or catastrophic enough to captivate the public opinion– and this exactly is the problem – as subsequent red and blue teams turn the heat slightly up or down, the temperature keeps slowly going up. We are unconsciously drifting towards boiling point, when our retention of the first world status may no longer be possible. We’re already seeing this with the decline of New Zealand’s health system.
This is why our next government cannot just turn the heat down a bit, or stir the pot a bit better – none of this is enough to save the frog from our metaphor. There needs to be real change.
ACT has the vision, economic understanding, spine and values to turn things around and introduce real change. This is why I stand with them and why you should too.
I believe this country, and Hawke’s Bay in particular, can be the best place in the world with a thriving economy, safe streets and first class education and health systems – but to achieve this we need to acknowledge the issues and start looking for new, real solutions.
ACT has a clear vision of what this looks like: We would stop government waste and irresponsible borrowing, cut red tape so businesses increase productivity and give hard working people more control over their own money through tax cuts. We would properly fund local government to speed up creation of necessary infrastructure, allow private sector to help build infrastructure faster and preserve accountability of public servants at all levels by making sure that they are elected, not nominated, and if necessary can be voted out.
Real change is badly needed and best moment to start introducing it was yesterday, the next best is on the 14 of October so make sure you Party Vote ACT this election.
* Pawel Milewski is the ACT Party Candidate for Napier. Candidates in the Napier electorate have the opportunity to submit an opinion piece for publication. All views expressed here are Pawel Milewski’s and not those of Hawke’s Bay App.
