Post by Lux on Jun 1, 2008 11:13:03 GMT 12
FORMER NATIONAL Party leader Don Brash has revealed his regrets about not "stamping his authority" on the National Party by announcing policies to scale back superannuation and cut tax for the better-off.
Brash, who stepped down as National's leader in November 2006, says he should have used his huge surge in popularity after the 2004 Orewa speech to pursue policies he believed were important for New Zealand's future.
In a wide ranging and unusually candid interview with the Sunday Star-Times, Brash said he could have announced policies unilaterally over the heads of his colleagues.
"I should have used that speech much more effectively to stamp my own views and policies on the National Party, and I could have done that at the time," Brash says.
"I didn't recognise that sometimes a leader has to take a more assertive role on policy than I in fact did."
Policies he believes now he could have unilaterally announced include abolishing the 39c tax rate, cutting the 33c and 19.5c tax rates, and revoking National's support for the Iraq War. At the time of 2005 election National made no cuts to the top two rates in its policy.
He also wanted to rein in New Zealand's ballooning superannuation bill, by making it National Party policy to gradually increase the age of entitlement for New Zealand Superannuation from the year 2020. And he wanted to delay superannuation for over-65s who work, in return for a bigger payment when they did retire.
His comments suggest the hardline views Brash held would have caused increasing internal conflict with colleagues had he become prime minister in 2005. Brash came into politics with a firm agenda for change but became silent on many of those views as part of his repackaging as a "mainstream" politician in the leadup to the 2005 election.
Brash says while he was largely happy with National's policy platform in 2005, seeing it as a necessary compromise, he wonders whether he might have gained more votes campaigning as a conviction politician.
In other comments, Brash said that it may have been National MP Lockwood Smith who made the infamous "gone by lunchtime" remarks at a January 2004 meeting with six United States senators. Labour accused Brash of telling the senators that New Zealand's anti-nuclear policy would be "gone by lunchtime" if National took office.
"It is possible. And that's what, I gather, the American Embassy have said. They said that Lockwood said it," Brash said.
American Embassy spokeswoman Janine Burns response was that by diplomatic convention "the Embassy has not, and does not, provide public comment about who said what in private meetings with US government officials".
Lockwood Smith was overseas and unable to be contacted for comment.
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What a load of kreacher krap!
He was too busy rallying rednecks to generate any bloody policy...what's the excuse this time?
