National’s next actions to build a brighter future

“National is building a stronger economy by balancing the books, repaying debt, and creating more jobs.

“If re-elected, I will continue to lead a hardworking, strong, stable, and pragmatic Government. We will begin work immediately on our Post-Election Action Plan to build a brighter future for you and your family.”

John Key

View a pdf of National’s Post-Election Action Plan

Read John Key’s speech notes

Next actions on the economy

• Halve the Budget deficit next year, and be back in surplus in 2014/15.
• Finalise departmental four-year spending plans to ensure spending control targets are met.
• Connect 58,000 premises to ultra-fast broadband, including 221 schools, by July 2012.
• Establish the Crown Water Investment Company to invest up to $400 million from the Future Investment Fund (FIF) in irrigation and water storage to make farm land more productive.
• Introduce legislation to change ACC to allow choice in the work account, reduce business costs, and promote growth.
• Restructure and expand IRL into an Advanced Technology Institute to work with the high-tech manufacturing and services sector.
• Pass legislation to implement the Starting Out Wage to ensure our young people are not locked out of the job market.
• Start constructing the Waterview Connection, and complete Auckland’s Western Ring Route.
• Amend the RMA to have six-month time limits on consenting medium-sized projects.
• Extend the mixed ownership model to four state-owned energy companies, reduce the Government’s stake in Air New Zealand, and use the proceeds to create the FIF.
• Immediately implement the new lower public service staffing cap to keep costs down and help reduce debt.
• Introduce tougher consumer credit laws to target loan sharks and protect consumers.
• Slow the phasing-in of the Emissions Trading Scheme and allow off-setting for pre-1990 forest owners.
• Pass legislation to update the Maritime Transport Act, including for the International Convention on Civil Liability.
• Introduce a competitive new system for processing oil and gas exploration permits.

Next actions on the welfare

• Amend the Social Security Act to comprehensively reform benefits and focus on getting those who can work, back to work.
• Introduce changes to sanction beneficiaries whose recreational use of drugs affects their ability to apply for and secure a job.
• Undertake an urgent review of the Social Security Act to make it easier to prosecute people who defraud the taxpayer.
• Make changes so if someone is on the run from Police, with a warrant out for their arrest, we can stop their benefit.

Next actions on law and order

• Change bail laws to make it harder for those accused of the most serious offences to get bail.
• Introduce Civil Detention Orders to protect the community from a very small number of high-risk offenders who are clinically assessed as being at imminent risk of serious sexual or violent reoffending when released from jail at the end of their sentence.
• Introduce screening of parole applications to allow the Parole Board to reduce the number of unnecessary parole hearings.
• Pass the Search and Surveillance Bill.
• Increase penalties for producing, trading, or possessing child pornography.
• Increase penalties for breaches of protection orders to better protect domestic-violence victims.
• Change the way evidence is heard to better protect vulnerable court participants – especially children.

Next actions on health

• Increase the number of elective operations by at least 4,000 a year – and ensure that all patients booked for elective surgery receive it within no more than four months by the end of 2014.
• Work with DHBs to ensure patients needing a specialist appointment are seen within no more than four months by 2014.
• Ensure that, by the end of 2013, every state house built before 1978 that can be practically insulated is insulated.
• Immediately begin work to expand the Voluntary Bonding Scheme to include more health professions and hard-to-staff regions as needed.
• Begin work with local primary care networks to provide free after-hours GP visits to children under six.
• Roll out a comprehensive after-hours telephone advice service with access to nurses, GPs, and pharmacists.
• Roll out a $12 million nationwide rheumatic fever programme targeting vulnerable communities.

Next actions on education

• Make secondary school performance information available to parents, so they are informed about their child’s learning environment.
• Immediately begin work to develop more effective teacher and principal appraisal.
• Immediately start the review of the Teachers Council, so that our plan to reform and strengthen the Council can be completed as quickly as possible.
• Set a target of 98 per cent of new entrants in school having participated in early childhood education, to be met by 2015, and work to introduce new services in areas of highest need.

Next actions on rebuilding Canterbury

• Receive and assess the CBD recovery plan.
• Provide certainty by finishing the red zone classification process so people can get on with making decisions on where they rebuild.
• Start building a 17,000 seat temporary stadium at Addington so Cantabrians can enjoy the benefits once again of hosting large sporting and cultural events.
• Use CERA’s powers to continue to release land for residential subdivision and ensure there is an adequate supply of land to rebuild.