Why Paul Henry’s Act leap is good for politics

The press scramble continued and he became the target of a disproportionate amount of media interest over the next 48 hours. There was ample TV coverage and even a slot on the nation’s biggest morning radio programme with Mike Hosking. I can’t recall a new candidate receiving such coverage. Most new entrants could only dream of the treatment being offered up. But Henry’s advantage is that the media love talking about their own. And Henry, probably a close second to Hosking as a broadcaster when he’s behaving himself, is part of the fabric of NZ’s media scene.

I listened to some of Paul Henry’s interviews this week. There is still a bit of the likeable larrikin in there and that’s probably a good thing. Let’s face it, the rest of our politicians present a very grey and dull image. But it was what Henry said when he got serious that was worth listening to.

Firstly, he doesn’t have to be there. In a Parliament largely made up of career bureaucrats and politicians, that’s refreshing. Think Key, Joyce, Luxon. There are other things he could be doing. But Henry is putting his hand up because he is concerned about the state of the country and he thinks he can make a difference. I think he can too.

Like Luxon, he is incredibly aspirational for what the country can or should be. Unlike Luxon, he’s not shackled by the “Prime Minister” tag. He can say what he thinks. He’s genuinely disappointed that we’ve lost our way. And being a professional broadcaster, he knows how to get his messages across.

With Stuff’s Jenna Lynch, he dealt with a series of rapid-fire questions with confidence and poise. Abortion? Yes. Same sex marriage? Yes, probably. What constitutes a man or a woman. Straightforward. You’re either born male or born female. Abolish Māori seats? “Absolutely.” Simple. Straightforward. Straight up.

We might not agree with everything he says. But he is clear on what he believes is important and that presents us with a nice change. We’ve had people in politics for 20 years who can’t answer some of those questions.

With Mike Hosking, we heard a different line of questioning, but an equally assured set of responses. He wants to “make a difference”. He believes Act can genuinely steer the country to inspire economic growth, cut wasteful spending and create an environment where New Zealanders are not suspicious of everything all the time. We need a change of direction. We have to pay off debt. And then this: “Every election is vital, but some are more vital than others. Our economy cannot sustain another left-leaning government because we know it will be a tax government, a borrow government and a separatist government.”

BOOM! Someone is saying exactly what needs to be said.

All too often I feel that our politicians seem trapped in short-term politics rather than focused on the national interest. Many create long sentences that have become known as “word salads”, designed to answer questions without offending anyone. We can’t even say what a woman is anymore, for fear of upsetting women, or men, or men that want to be women. You get the idea.

In the MMP environment, it seems the goal is not to stand for anything, but to be capable of standing for everything.

As a result we get a lack of clarity. The reasons New Zealanders are “angst-ing” to use another Paul Henry phrase from this week, is because they don’t know what our politicians stand for anymore. We are too used to political leaders saying they will do something and failing.

The outcome is a country that doesn’t know what to do with itself. Our bureaucracy and our government departments are littered with people whose prime focus is to stop things from happening, rather than encouraging them.

We are crying out for school teachers. And yet, this week we heard that a qualified teacher from South Africa, named Catherine McVey, who is unable to gain teacher registration because she cannot provide an original copy of her South African teaching degree. She can provide copies and other verifications, but that isn’t good enough.

Last year, another woman, real estate agent Janet Dickson, had her licence to operate as a real estate agent cancelled for five years, because she refused to complete the newly mandatory Te Kākano course on Māori culture, te reo Māori and Te Tiriti. We should be asking why that is.

We hear of people who attempt to rescue others in a crisis like a volcano or a flood, who then spend years in court defending themselves, because they didn’t follow proper procedures. The Covid-19 pandemic and later, Cyclone Gabrielle, have made our little country even more risk-averse than we were before.

Many readers will have been through the upheaval that is associated with the granting of building consents and resource consents when building or renovating a property. Again, there is a litany of people along that particular road, a seemingly never-ending circle of geo-tech analysts, floodplain assessors, risk assessors and seismic monitors, not to mention water engineers, whose main focus, it seems, is to slow everything down and possibly even stop the process altogether.

It’s not just the building sector, either. We have developed a mindset where consulting reports are required for almost any type of permission to be granted. Those reports can sometimes fail to make a conclusion without deference to another report, one that takes more time and costs more money.

In fact, it sometimes feels like we’re living in a country where everybody is fearful of making the wrong decision, rather than striving to make the right one.

I call it the CYA problem (as in “cover your a***”). No one will make a decision on anything unless their butt is covered by someone else. Government, local government, insurance companies and banks – to name but a few – are full of such behaviours.

If we are going to prosper, we need to shake ourselves out of our reliance on a massive bureaucracy, overcome the lack of confidence brought about by six years of being in and out of recession, and then push past the limitations that a massive interest bill brings to our ability to pay down debt and invest in what’s important.

These are all things that the Act Party stand for. They have been around Parliament for a while now. They’ve done plenty of good work and continue to do so. They’ve done good work on education, regulation and resource management during this parliamentary term. But it’s back-office stuff. They get very little credit. And they’re not skiting enough, either. They’re far too busy being constructive to be noisy like the Greens or Te Pāti Māori.

But they have values and principles that every New Zealander should identify with. A party that talks about individual freedom, personal responsibility, equal treatment under the law and a smaller role for government needs to be heard. It’s not just us. Many countries around the world are grappling with those very issues, and some, like the UK, are failing. Our closest neighbour, Australia, is at risk of following a similar path.

In David Seymour, the Act Party has a very good thinker and by our own political standards, an even better communicator. But they haven’t had an X-factor. A headline grabber. A media favourite. The Greens have that. And inexplicably, even TOP have that.

Now Act have it too.

Paul Henry is a polariser. You either love him or you don’t. And now he’s gone into the business where polarised opinions are almost expected. He’ll do that well. He’s very bright, quick-witted and fast on his feet. The way he talked about his alignment with Act’s values suggests he’ll communicate the core messages with a strong level of personal commitment.

He’s also a fresh face. We’re ready for that. And he’s well known enough for people to identify him and identify with him.

The challenge for Henry will be to keep the larrikin in check so he can turn his media profile, communication skills and aspirations for the country into political capital.

I hope he can do that. Right now, his party and his country need everything he offers, larrikin included.