Simon Bridges
Wellington, February 7, 2019
The National Party of New Zealand will lead the Policy Debate in 2019 by releasing eight discussion documents with new ideas to tackle the serious issues facing New Zealanders and to help ensure New Zealand remains a great place to live, work and raise a family.
Wide-ranging issues
National is a hard-working, constructive Opposition focused on holding the Government to account and putting forward ideas to improve the lives of New Zealanders.
As a part of that, we are undertaking the biggest policy development process by an opposition in over a decade, and that ensuring New Zealanders can have their say.
Our policy discussion documents will cover issues including the Economy, Law & Order, Infrastructure, Education and Health.
You will see us stick to our core principles like ensuring New Zealanders can keep more of what they earn and providing world class public services.
We will also propose some new thinking for discussion, and take the feedback on board.
Focus on Environment
Our first discussion document will be released this month and focus on the environment. We know New Zealanders trust us to look after the economy, we want them to know they can trust us with the environment as well.
These documents build on the first phase of our policy development process – our ‘Have Your Say Campaign,’ which has seen 10,000 New Zealanders so far give us their ideas for improving their lives in areas including families, small business, looking after our seniors and supporting rural New Zealand.
Our final ‘Have Your Say Campaign’ will be targeted at young New Zealanders.
We want to hear from them how we can help make their lives better and create more opportunities for them here in New Zealand.
Year of Delivery
We agree with the Prime Minister that this is the year of delivery.
But we won’t be waiting for the Government; we will get on with delivering our positive plans and proposals throughout 2019 and 2020 so New Zealanders know what National will do in the 2020s.
We will also continue to put forward proposals and members bills on issues we think are important in this term in Parliament, as well as working with the Government on areas in which we agree, like tackling climate change and reducing child poverty.
We are doing the work in Opposition so that should we earn the right to govern again in 2020 we will hit the ground running.
Unlike this Government, we won’t be reliant on hundreds of reviews and working groups and we won’t allow New Zealand to stall.
Simon Bridges is Leader of the National Party of New Zealand and Leader of the Opposition in Parliament.
