My ideas

Well I spent the weekend at Labour Congress - and given there was no new policy announced - I thought I'd throw my big ideas out there...

Up skilling
In short our manufacturing sector is buggered - we cannot and should not aim to compete with low wage economies on this basis. We need to become a high skill - high wage economy. This will be achieved by increasing productivity through education and innovation. There is no reason why we cannot produce 'weightless' exports in the form of IT, legal and accounting services. To do this, I think we need to seriously look at encouraging people into the degree courses that will enable us to have a large workforce with the right skill-set to be able to offer these services. Currently the government pays around 70 per cent of students course fees - as a start, why not pay the whole lot on IT and economic/accounting degrees?

Health
Primary Healthcare should absolutely continue to be the number 1 priority. I am a firm believer that if primary care is affordable, then people are more likely to go to the doctor - and get better sooner and not let illnesses get out of hand. Subsidies in this area should continue to rise - I'd like to see $20 doctors visits personally. But there is also unquestionably a need to address tertiary care elective surgeries. Dare I say it, I dig United's new policy for over 65s - it is a guarantee that you will have your surgery done within six months - or your treatment will be done by a private provider. Eventually this should become universal. As Tony Blair once said - the Labour value is getting people treated quickly and funded by the state - this achieves that.

Transport
Well I think at some point we are going to have to bite the bullet and build a highspeed rail network that will get our asses out of the planes. In the shorter term we need more public transport - if its safe, on time, reliable and cheap - people will use it and get the hell out of their cars. Transmission Gully is a rock solid waste of money - all it will do is encourage more cars into the central city - and we don't have enough carparks as it is - a better option would be to improve the rail service to the Kapiti coast and northern suburbs - it shouldn't take a fuckin hour to go to Pram!