Mike's Minute: The election night message was clear

What I enjoyed most about Saturday night was the message.

What National and Act have argued for, and got support for, is to take this country back to what it was - aspirational, successful, outward looking and positive.

For years we were the rockstar economy. When tragedy and upset struck as it did with the earthquake and the Global Financial Crisis, we didn’t buckle and we didn’t sink. We backed ourselves to work through and walk out the other side better off for the experience.

What we have had for the past six years, and certainly three years, is a small-minded, inward-looking, miserable little country that lost its way.

Top down leadership counts and when that leadership lacks any real grunt and fills that gap with slogans and one-liners, everyone under it suffers.

The lack of leadership these past few years has been as depressing as it has been astonishing, and the sadness was you didn’t have to look back that far to see it didn't have to be that way. Because until recently, it wasn’t.

There is nothing wrong with political divergence of thought or ideology. But extremism, which is in part what we have been delivered these past handful of years, never sits well in a country like ours.

Mix that with arrogance, and an arrogance driven by incompetence, and you had a recipe for the sort of disaster we have had to endure.

The National/Act message is not just about tax cuts and welfare settings and public service numbers. It's about vision.

It's about being better, it's about incentive, it's about opportunity, it's about backing yourself and improving and it's about being relentless, positive and aspirational.

These are powerful and useful qualities and, when applied well, can lead you anywhere you want to go. It applies to every single one of us individually, it applies to groups and companies and teams and it applies to countries.

We have not been what we can be, or anywhere close. That, fingers crossed, is about to change.

The adults are back, they seem to have thought about what they want to do and how they want to do it.

The task is massive given the state of the place. But the attitude, at least to this point, is right. We are good when we want to be.

We are winners if we are determined.

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