John MacDonald: State of the nation or slate of the nation?

When I saw yesterday morning that ACT Party leader David Seymour was going to be giving what was billed as a “State of the Nation” speech, I didn’t quite anticipate how pompous he was going to be. 

I saw afterwards that one of the news websites was saying that they had planned to run a livestream of the speech provided by the party itself, but they couldn’t because it was too shaky. 

And I wasn’t sure whether they were referring to technological issues or the content of the speech itself. 

So I went and had a read through his speech notes. 

For a state of the nation, he talked a lot about other countries. His trip to America over the holidays, Trump. He said: “Nearly everywhere you look offshore, there be dragons”. He went all Shakespeare on it there, for a minute. 

But, when he did bring things back to the nation he was assessing the state of, he launched a remarkable attack on Helen Clark, John Key and Jacinda Ardern - saying the past 20-or-so years have been what he called “lost decades”, thanks to their governments. 

He said they ran the place without values. They made bad policies. And that Helen Clark, John Key and Jacinda Ardern had created a dependency on the government to fix our problems, and that they eroded the idea that we are the ones who can actually make a real difference in our lives. 

A couple quotes: "The sad truth is, the values that made New Zealand strong, unified, and productive have been eroded over the last 25 or so years. 

“The most important value, is that you can make a difference in your own life, and the lives of those you care about. In fact, you are the only person who can do that. 

“We lost decades because too few people stood up to publicly defend these basic values. When did you last hear a New Zealand leader say that a person’s hard work, success, and wealth should be celebrated? That business is a force for good. That profit is a good thing.” 

And, apparently, Helen Clark, John Key and Jacinda Ardern are to blame. 

Unlike Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, who appears to have finally stopped talking as if he’s running an election campaign, David Seymour’s so-called “State of the Nation” speech yesterday sounded like something he would have trotted out hundreds of times last year, before the election. 

It was more “slate” of the nation than state of the nation. Beneficiaries were targeted. “If you accept welfare from other taxpayers, certain responsibilities come with it.” 

Parents were targeted. “Making sure your kids show up to school every day - with lunch - is your responsibility.” 

Crims were targeted. “If you break the law, you are responsible. Not your mental health, or your workplace.” I wonder who he was having a go at there? 

To sum it up, David Seymour reckons we’ve gone soft over the past 25 years and, instead of being prepared to make our lives better ourselves, more and more of us expect the government to fix everything. 

But what David Seymour seems to have forgotten, is that there have always been deadbeats in New Zealand. 

There have always been parents who don’t give a damn about their kids. There have always been people quite happy to sit on a benefit when they’re quite capable of earning money themselves. 

There have always been people in New Zealand who commit crimes but think everyone else and everything else is to blame, instead of taking responsibility themselves. 

In his speech yesterday, David Seymour quoted the rapper Eminem. But I’m going to quote Blam Blam Blam from their 1981 classic, There is No Depression in New Zealand.