100 Day Plan countdown: The clock ticks as Luxon looks at what’s next
Friday, 23 February 2024
The deadline for the Government’s 100 Day Plan is edging closer, with a sizeable number of commitments still to tick off before that deadline arrives on March 8.
The plan was a cornerstone of both National’s election campaign, and then of subsequent coalition documents signed in November. The Government has been proceeding through various bills, and passing a number of changes with Parliament under urgency - for all three stages of the bills.
Prior to Christmas, it brought back 90-day trial periods for new employees for all businesses, reinstated the Resource Management Act (which it will replace later), repealed the clean car discount and did away with a flagship Labour change - Fair Pay Agreements.
An independent review into Kāinga Ora was launched, the Government started the disestablishment of Te Pūkenga, cancelled Auckland Light Rail and pulled out of Let’s Get Wellington Moving. The Reserve Bank’s dual policy mandate was also changed, removing the requirement to consider employment levels.
Items still on the ‘to-do’ list include introducing legislation to ban gang patches, stop gang members gathering in public, and stop known gang offenders from communicating with one another; introducing legislation to disestablish the Māori Health Authority and to repeal the changes to the Smokefree laws introduced by the last Government, but not yet in effect.
More broadly, the plan has been intended to create the impression - backed by the reality of changes - of a Government in action. Political observers note that it has revealed some stars, as well as some interesting dynamics, as the achievements have been ticked off. Having made it a centrepiece, if anything significant isn’t achieved, then Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and his Government will be under pressure to explain why.
Luxon is confident the Government will get the plan done, saying legislation was being drafted to introduce to the House, while acknowledging, “we’ve got some big things we’re taking on”.
“Fast Track consenting is a pretty big one, we knocked off the RMA before Christmas.”
“We’re working through our law and order package right now,” he said on Monday.
The 100 Day Plan idea is not a new one and is a political device regularly used by US presidents. In 2017 the new Labour-led coalition government's first such plan saw it make a range of promises - to set up a ministerial inquiry on mental health, an inquiry into the abuse of children in state care, and to bring in legislation to pass the Families Package and increase paid parental leave from the middle of the next year.
The 100 day committee making sure it gets done is made up of the top MPs from each party - Deputy PM Winston Peters and Shane Jones from NZ First, ACT leader David Seymour and his deputy Brooke van Velden, and eight National MPs, including deputy chair Chris Bishop, Nicola Willis, Simeon Brown, Paul Goldsmith, Shane Reti, Erica Stanford and Judith Collins.
While the Government still expects to tick everything off its list, it won’t necessarily be straightforward.
Political commentator Joshua James named the gang legislation as a potential hurdle for the Government.
“All three of those things are going to run into a core problem of the infringing of civil or human rights, in particular around the freedom of speech,” he said.
James said that there was clearly was a concern around crime from the public, “so for the National Party to convince the national electorate this is a good piece of legislation, they have to show that it will reduce crime”.
“I think they will struggle to make that connection.”
If they could make that connection, however, James said it could generate political capital at the end of the first 100 days.
But there have clearly been hiccups. The repeal of the Smokefree legislation has been problematic for the Government, giving Labour airtime to whack the Government over not doing enough to stop smoking. James said it had been “a gift to the Opposition”.
The Government’s response has been that the old laws weren’t workable and has been at pains to point out that nothing will actually change for the public.
Massey University politics professor Richard Shaw said “what we've seen quite a lot is the undoing of things, which you would expect with a new government”.
“There's some really interesting positioning between coalition partners, one government, three parties.”
On the Government’s performance so far, James said, as a whole, it was “really quite strong”.
“The coalition as a whole has been functioning remarkably well, considering that this was going to be one of the two ‘coalitions of chaos’.”
He did, however, say that political management of coalitions is always difficult.
“This looks like a government from the Roman Republic. It’s got a kind of triumvirate of people [Christopher Luxon, Winston Peters, David Seymour] and it isn’t clear all of the time who is the most significant of them. Clearly Luxon is because he’s the prime minister, but ACT, given they got 8% of the vote, are getting an awful lot of agenda time and airtime.”
Shaw described Luxon as having to manage two flanks, saying that the 100-day plan was beginning to reveal some of the dynamics between the three governing parties..
He said that it has also given a sense of which ministers are begging to shine.
“I think it was really good to to hear [Transport and Local Government minister] Simeon Brown answering some really tough questions in the media over the past few days. To sit there and be grilled about infrastructure for such a long amount of time. I think it's a really good sign that he is open to these kinds of conversations.”
However James said the shared limelight with Luxon’s coalition partners, David Seymour and Winston Peters, could “make it difficult in the long term if this coalition Government sticks out three years”.
“It will be very difficult for the National Party ministers to go into the election and point to all of the areas where they have succeeded.
“Normally it's the smaller parties in coalition governments who can't talk and get airtime about their achievements. But I think the personalities of Seymour and Peters create a reverse effect where they are getting more airtime than perhaps the National Party.”
What happens after the 100 days?
Luxon has promised to “roll into a quarter two set of activities” once the 100 days is up.
That means his 100 Day committee, which he chairs and is made up of top ministers and party leaders, would morph into a “strategy committee”.
“On March the eighth, I'll actually stop the 100 Day committee, I will chair then the strategy committee, which will actually be a big focus on delivery and getting things done.
“And so the work of the 100 Day committee gets transferred into the strategy committee,” he said.
Shaw said keeping the 100 day-type plan going was “probably a useful high level discipline”.
“It’s a rhetorical device for providing the impression and perhaps the reality of momentum … but the parliamentary legislative agenda doesn’t lean that way, and politics will intervene, stuff will upend that.“
But Shaw said the message discipline has been good and the Government is telling a story about getting on with business.
“What comes immediately to mind is that it appeals as a message. It’s a good story to tell. We have business discipline. We come from business, we know how this stuff works,” he said.
“It will appeal to a certain kind of person and that is probably its primary function.”
The Government’s 100 Day Plan
Complete:
Stop work on the Income Insurance Scheme.
Stop work on Industry Transformation Plans.
Begin efforts to double renewable energy production, including a national policy statement on renewable electricity generation.
Withdraw central government from Let’s Get Wellington Moving.
Introduce legislation to narrow the Reserve Bank’s mandate to price stability.
Repeal the Clean Car Discount scheme by 31 December 2023.
Stop blanket speed limit reductions and start work on replacing the Land Transport Rule: Setting of Speed Limits 2022.
Stop central government work on the Auckland Light Rail project.
Repeal the Fair Pay Agreement legislation.
Introduce legislation to restore 90-day trial periods for all businesses.
Begin work on a National Infrastructure Agency.
Introduce legislation to repeal the Water Services Entities Act 2022.
Begin to cease implementation of new Significant Natural Areas and seek advice on operation of the areas.
Begin work to enable more houses to be built, by implementing the Going for Housing Growth policy and making the Medium Density Residential Standards optional for councils.
Introduce legislation to remove the Auckland Fuel Tax.
Abolish the previous government’s prisoner reduction target.
Begin work to crack down on serious youth offending.
Enable more virtual participation in court proceedings.
Begin to repeal and replace Part 6 of the Arms Act 1983 relating to clubs and ranges.
Sign a Memorandum of Understanding with Waikato University to progress a third medical school.
Require primary and intermediate schools to teach an hour of reading, writing and maths per day starting in 2024.
Ban the use of cellphones in schools.
Appoint an expert group to redesign the English and maths curricula for primary school students.
Improve security for the health workforce in hospital emergency departments.
Take first steps to extend free breast cancer screening to those aged up to 74.
Stop all work on He Puapua.
By 1 December 2023, lodge a reservation against adopting amendments to WHO health regulations to allow the Government to consider these against a “national interest test”.
Commission an independent review into Kainga Ora’s financial situation, procurement and asset management
Begin work on delivering better public services and strengthening democracy.
Mostly complete:
Stop work on the Lake Onslow pumped hydro scheme.
Stop taxpayer funding for section 27 cultural reports.
Begin disestablishing Te Pūkenga.
On the to do list (as at Monday, February 19):
Meet with councils and communities to establish regional requirements for recovery from Cyclone Gabrielle and other recent major flooding events.
Make any additional Orders in Council needed to speed up cyclone and flood recovery efforts.
Start reducing public sector expenditure, including consultant and contractor expenditure. (Many public services have begun doing this)
Cancel fuel tax hikes.
Begin work on a new GPS reflecting the new Roads of National Significance and new public transport priorities. (Transport Minister Simeon Brown has signalled this will be released in the coming weeks).
Start work to improve the quality of regulation.
Repeal the Spatial Planning and Natural and Built Environment Act and introduce a fast-track consenting regime.
Take policy decisions to amend the Overseas Investment Act 2005 to make it easier for build-to-rent housing to be developed in New Zealand.
Introduce legislation to ban gang patches, stop gang members gathering in public, and stop known gang offenders from communicating with one another.
Give police greater powers to search gang members for firearms and make gang membership an aggravating factor at sentencing.
Introduce legislation to extend eligibility to offence-based rehabilitation programmes to remand prisoners.
Set five major targets for health system, including for wait times and cancer treatment.
Introduce legislation to disestablish the Māori Health Authority.
Repeal amendments to the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products Act 1990 and regulations.
Allow the sale of cold medication containing pseudoephedrine.
Begin work to repeal the Therapeutic Products Act 2023.
Establish a priority one category on the social housing waitlist to move families out of emergency housing into permanent homes more quickly.