A Vision for New Zealand:The beginnings of hope – John Key at the WRCC

Well now, eating for the blogosphere. An interesting concept. Queen Bee seems to have her/his informants everywhere. Adam could be slimmer, could not we all. Yes, Adam has a sense of humour.

Adam notes the postings, on this matter, by David Farrar and Rod Drury. If you want to read John Key’s speech you can get it here. These were all referenced in this posting by The Hive.

Well, as the old-fashioned MSM used to say, your faithful correspondent was at the WRCC lunch where John Key announced National’s broadband policy.

Valiantly, Adam ate his way through the food in order to listen to the big announcement. Fortunately, it was not the traditional rubber chicken, but slightly tough lamb rump. The wine was acceptable, but not great. The waiters/waitresses at Icon at Te Papa could do better.

Although organised by a business group, it was not a partisan event. The WRCC, contrary to what many may think is not like that.

Adam had gone to this lunch with no great expectations. The WRCC had arranged the function at short notice.

Adam thought it was a good idea to listen to Key as Phil Goff is speaking to WRCC on Wednesday. If anything, Adam thought Key might be talking about trade.

To date, Adam was of the view that Key was likely to be a major player in the election, indeed he hoped Key would be the next PM, but he did not think Key had a vision for NZ. He thought that both Clark and Key were politicians who did not do the ‘vision thing’.

Well, Adam admits to being very surprised. For an old cynic he was taken aback.

Others may see it differently, but to Adam, John Key came across as sincere and determined to ensure that New Zealand prospers and grows. In fact Adam thought he perceived that Key has a vision for New Zealand.

Now the nuts and bolts of the policy that Key announced need to be looked at. Further, we need to understand precisely what the amount of spend proposed will buy. It will be essential that when delivered the access cost is small, so that maximum uptake is achieved. Maximum competition for providers across the utility that is the network should be a pre-requisite so as to enable a proliferation of services.

The concept of fibre to the home is visionary, indeed from a politician it might even be termed revolutionary in the context of what it means, in a New Zealand context.

It will enable us to focus on moving to the knowledge based, weightless economy to use David Skilling’s concept.

Furthermore, it will enable NZ to move a long way to sustainability and reduced carbon footprint as a nation.

For the first time, it was clear to Adam that Key is focussed on not just the aspiration of increasing our productivity and national wealth, but on actually providing the means to make it happen.

Forget the precise content of what Key said, it was the vision that he set out and the underlying passion that he conveyed that took Adam by surprise and really made him determined to support Key, in his bid to win the election.

Adam has included in this post the You Tube video posted by John Key, it will be interesting to see if people really have the ability to grasp the scale of the step change that is proposed. This is not about just improving home entertainment options, but the entire way in which we approach the world.