Colin Craig | Full Interview

Colin Craig | Full Interview

Just while we’re on record, the first thing I wanted to talk about is your defamation experience, and I just want to be guaranteed that you’re not going to sue us for defamation.
No, that’s fine. That’ll be a no.

Not going to sue us?
Correct.

Great, okay, I’ll say whatever I want then.
As long as it’s true it’s wonderful.

Well it’s all on record, so, you know. Okay, so, you said on the way over here that you’re kind of down in Dunedin to gauge what sort of policies you’re looking for, what your demographic kind of wants to be up to speed on. Here is the university, we have a lot of students, and I’ve scoured through your website, and I can’t really find much on tertiary education. So I was wondering if you could just lay out for me where you sit on student loans and allowances in the tertiary sphere?
The reason we haven’t put our policy out on it is we’re still fine-tuning a couple of the points. We will have a tertiary policy for the election. We’ve made some public comments already, so a couple of the key things we’ve said: first of all we’ve said that a system that sees the student get indebted, the government get indebted, and the university get indebted, clearly isn’t sustainable in the long term, and that’s the system that we currently have. Um, and there are a couple of reasons for that. One of the reasons that I see as a problem is we’ve taken a very broad approach to universities now, whereby we fund bottoms on seats, and we say, look, this is all about getting the maximum number of people through university. I think we have to challenge that thinking and ask whether or not we should be looking at universities as institutions that still hold a primary educational high standard; I’m not going to call it elite, because I don’t think it is elite, but it’s about universities being the very apex of education, or whether it’s about educating the majority. Because what’s changed in New Zealand, and what changed the funding and the economics of it all, was that universities basically doubled in size. Took in a lot more students. Now the upside of that is more people get to go to university, the downside is that it becomes much harder to afford. So I think the current system we have isn’t sustainable, I think that we have to look at the alternatives to that. The ideal is that people shouldn’t be indebted through education; I don’t think that’s a good long-term strategy for us. But the solutions around that aren’t always easy ones. So one of them is we find more funding. If we find more funding where does it come from? Another one is we make it tougher and harder for people to get into university.

So you propose higher standards?
Yeah, a higher standard is likely to be one of the things we end up with. And that’s not to say other people couldn’t work hard, ultimately pay their way through university, but if we’re going to fully fund people, which is the ideal for people at the top of the education capability-wise, we’re going to have to find a way to make it pay. I think one of the other things we’re very big on and we’re doing a lot of work on is how we bring technology into play. Because the systems that we have and the concept of university that we have where everybody hops into a car to a central location… It’s not the most cost effective model. And if you look internationally, you can do an MBA, and you do it by remote learning, these things have high standards, high status, certainly in the business world MBAs are greatly regarded, and yet most of it is done by distance learning. So I think we’re still asking about the absolute best way forward, but we think that the current model has to be reassessed. I don’t think funding bottoms on seats is ultimately the answer, but also create a competition between universities, you know, if we can attract more students here, and that’s not necessarily constructive.

So would you be talking about more funding would you be therefore pro-private universities, looking at those? Or are you looking strictly on a government basis?
No I’m looking strictly at what our government funds. What’s taxpayer funded. I have no problem with private learning institutions, but I don’t think that’s the answer for making it more affordable for people. Generally private institutions don’t make it more affordable.

Yeah. So what about in terms of loans and allowances? Cause that’s always a hotbed of discussion here.
Yeah, we don’t think we’ll be changing a lot in terms of the allowances side of things, but I think the problem we’ve got is that the current system basically gets everyone indebted. So, you know, it’s hard enough to leave university and get a job, then to afford a house, get on with live when you’re also carrying a debt. And short-term, yeah short-term I can see we’ve got a funding problem, what are we going to do, let’s just get people indebted, but it’s not long-term, I believe, the right solution for us as a country. So our goal, ultimately, is to find a way to make higher education fully funded, at least for some. And one of the routes this might work quite well, is to instead of making it a straight after school experience, to bring education much closer to work, so that it’s more of a continuing education, it’s more of a process of I get a job and as part of that job, and as part of professional development, the education is a little more integrated to life experience. Instead of being a standalone, remote, unattached kind of a thing, which it is now for a lot of people who leave university and can’t get a job.

Yeah. So you’d promote, perhaps, subsidies for students who have jobs while they’re trying to learn and that sort of thing?
Yeah, that’s right, and working with employers and saying, look hey, if you upgrade your people, now they’re in a field, I mean a classic discussion is around nursing, you put people through nursing degrees, and they realise they don’t actually like nursing when they actually get out and do it. Far better would be to actually introduce people to the practice of nursing, get them practically underway, and then say, okay now let’s get your bachelor’s degree around nursing.

So like an internship-degree hybrid?
Yeah, bringing the actual vocation closer to the degree itself. And this works very well overseas, I see no reason why it wouldn’t work well in New Zealand. And that may not go for everything, but certainly I think it makes the education more relevant, but also gives a reason to give funding. Cause now the person’s working for a firm, that firm’s got an interest in educating people, and that’s a way of bringing more funding to a situation as well.

The thing is though, how are you supposed to get a job if you’re not qualified? Like it’s well and good to say you can put a student in a job after they’ve finished high school, get into a job, then get the education that they need to keep continuing that job, how do you get that job in the first place?
Well I think the thing is, you know, a university degree doesn’t guarantee you a job. The current situation we have is there is not a big difference in New Zealand, and I think this is an important issue, between having a university education and not. Now, in fact, we’re the lowest differential in the OECD for wages paid between tertiary qualified and not. The difference is 18%. On average, tertiary qualified people earn 18% more than non-tertiary qualified people. Now that is by far the lowest in the OECD. Most countries hit around 30%, some do more than that. And I think what it shows is that we’ve begun to put a lot of people through university, we haven’t thought well about what actually that means in terms of jobs and vocations at the other end. And a lot of people go to university almost by default. What do I do next? Oh, go to university. And I know it’s not true of everyone, some people are very clear on what they’re doing, they know what they’re studying, but I think for a lot of others it’s the next step in school. And I think to make that more successful for people, we want to actually more of an idea, if we can, of what they will do well and what they might want a job in, and connecting people to that vocation earlier, rather than just saying ‘here, do your degree, and then start looking for a job’, which can be pretty hard.

So I suppose it’s just when you’re going to start working.
And tying that to practical experience. Overseas this works well, particularly in Europe, there’s a number of countries that do it particularly well where they tie that. And of course the funding then comes from the company organisations very often, cause they’ve got staff, and they realise that person’s committed to us, let’s up-skill them. And it gives you another way of getting money into the situation. Cause education costs, and part of the problem of what we have now is how do we fund it. So that’s a way I see of opening the doors to more people.

Okay, cool. So just to change track a bit, today a youth-led organisation called Generation Zero, which is an environmental organisation, I don’t know if you’ve heard of them, have just released a policy report that says that they’re calling for clean energy. In the past you’ve been quoted on a few things regarding climate change, and I was just wondering if you stand by your argument that it’s not human-caused, that it’s not human influenced.
Oh no I’ve always said human activity does influence climate, but it’s a minor influence. Not the major influence. The major influence, in my view, and far away the biggest influence on us is our sun. I mean, it’s the biggest influence on our climate, seasons, climate change and effect, because we’re slightly a different distance away from the sun. So I think human influence is there, but I don’t rate it as the only factor, I think it’s something that we could spend a lot of time talking about, but I find the most productive thing is to say let’s tidy up and let’s clean up our environment. Things like pollution, we can make a real difference with, at very little cost, and so therefore I would always start at that end of the scale and say ‘why don’t we get toxins out of our environment, why don’t we put research into what we can do with pest control, or weed control, in a much safer, more environmentally way than we currently do. To me those represent much better outcomes for the dollar that we spend.

What’s your motivation for that then? Like are you thinking you like the clean environment, or is it… why do you want to do that?
Look I think as a country we are a very young country in terms of age and settlement. We do have the potential to have, I think, one of the cleanest, greenest, best environments in the world, and to maintain it at an almost pristine level. But that will take a certain amount of commitment and an emissions trading scheme is doing nothing to achieve that. Whereas if we instead set up and said, let’s clean up all our rivers and make it our goal, I think we’d get a lot further and we’d achieve something that’s quite real in terms of outcomes. And I would much prefer to spend time and energy on environmental issues where we deliver an absolute result that can make a difference in people’s lives than to talk about an emissions trading scheme which is very remote, isn’t changing anyone’s behaviour actually. And I think until we get countries like America and China on board we’re dreaming if we think we can change the climate.

Ah, that’s one of the things that the report actually touches on. You know, it’s a moral responsibility, but then I suppose that goes hand-in-hand with if you believe that humans are causing it the most then it makes sense to believe that humans should clean it up the most. What about renewable energy? I mean you talked about the sun, you know, if it’s causing climate change, then it can also cause the energy…
I mean, look, the sun’s a wonderful source of energy and I think looking at renewable sources of energy makes a lot of sense, and for us as a nation, most of our energy is hydro, which is a renewable source, and it’s seasonal, and that’s one of the problems. I’m not a huge fan of wind generation because it’s not economic, but I think some of the things we can do, basic things we can do, that make a lot of sense, are what if we took all of the water heaters in all of our houses in this country and changed them to heat transfer systems, which saves about three quarters of the energy in terms of heating homes. Now that’s a huge difference. And it’s economically viable to do that. I think we need to be a little bit more innovative in how we do our energy. But as I say, I don’t think the economics support windmills, but I think solar, I think water, these are elements that we have a lot of in New Zealand. Wind? It’s difficult because you have such a bit environmental effect by putting in a lot of wind turbines.

So if you could name a party in government that you’d closely align yourself with on the environmental standards, cause some of what you’re saying is, you know…
There are some areas here where we could definitely work with the Greens, for example, we couldn’t work with them on other areas but when it comes to cleaning up New Zealand’s rivers? Absolutely in the same space. And I think that’s one of the attractions of MMP for me, is that you don’t have to agree with everyone on everything, but if you can find something you do agree on, you can make progress. And I like that idea.

So, I can get it in words, on recording, you would support cleaning up our climate, you would support renewable energy, so long as it’s economically viable.
That’s right. Let’s go for the most economic sources.

Cool. So just to move onto a couple of other issues, I suppose you’ve seen the news today, about you know, the Big Gay Rainbow in Pakuranga ceasing to exist, I was just wondering what you would think about going for the Pakuranga seat? There’ve been talks with a bit of a deal with National…
Look, first of all, my understanding is Maurice Williamson is doing the typical resign as a minister, but stay on as an MP. And we’ve seen this with Peter Dunne, when he refused to disclose his information, to a governmental enquiry after the leaked information at the top level. And look what happened to him? He’s back as a minister all over again. I think his track record is someone who resigns as a minister can get back in the good books fairly quickly. I don’t know whether he will or not. It’s not terminal to resign as a minister, it’s very temporary by the look of it, you can be forgiven quite quickly. Having said that, I did grow up in Pakuranga, I played for Pakuranga cricket club, my father taught at Pakuranga College, so there are a lot of ties to that community, we did very well in the vote there last time, and we have a good support base there, so never rule anything out.

Hmm interesting. Yeah I went to St Kent’s, so I know the area.
Yeah, you know the area very well.

So just with the legal highs, all that drama going on in the government, it’s brought up the conversation around legalising cannabis, and often it’s considered less dangerous than legal highs, I mean you kind of look at the facts for yourself. So do you think cannabis should be legal?
No I don’t, but I don’t think we should make legal highs legal either. So I sit in that very, I guess, conservative anti-drug space.

Why?
I do think though that we have this strange situation of double standards. And by that I would say here we are, the government, and I know they’ve pulled back from it, but nonetheless, they sort of committed towards, let’s legalise these substances, yet on the other hand they’ll go after somebody who’s smoking, and have all sorts of plans about what to do to them. I mean we charge an enormous amount of tax on cigarettes. But we don’t treat alcohol consistently with that. We don’t make someone buying a beer, or an RTD, we don’t have the same approach, we say you know what, this is using up 70% of our accident and emergency resources, so you’re going to pay a bit more for it. I would like to see some sort of consistency here, where we go, here’s the standards that we have, here’s the way that we will approach it. My concern around legalising any sort of mind-altering substances is there are long-term effects. We can already see long-term effects from other substance abuse. Alcohol, for example, very long-term effects on families, children, on the young, you know, you’ve got pregnant mums who drink too much, and actually these are very major effects on our society, they harm individuals, homes, and communities. So I sit in that fairly restrictive space that says I don’t believe we should go down the track of saying that these things are mainstream, that they should have legal standing in our country.

And that’s because of effects, because they go broader than just the individual?
They do. And it’s not a case of individual freedom alone, individual freedom must surely be balanced against the cost to a community.

Cool. You said a couple of years ago that kids sent to school without lunch should go without in the past, and regarding the talk recently with different policies and how our child poverty problem is going, do you stand by that? Do you still say…?
I don’t remember saying that, I know that we’ve said it’s the responsibility of parents, and we should be making the parents step up, and I certainly stand by that. And I think there are some good examples of it where if you ask and expect parents to do more they will, but if you give them a free pass, if you say ‘you know what, we’re going to provide lunch at school’, I believe many parents will make the choice not to supply lunch to their child. Because that’s the easy option now. We’ve given you a way out of your responsibilities and people will take those ways out. So I think what we have to be doing is we have to say we expect every child to have a lunch at school, and we expect every parent to provide it. And there’s no one in this country who is not receiving or able to receive support from this country to make it happen.

People still live below the poverty line, though, and there’s no way to guarantee that any parent will be a good parent. You can introduce all these consequences, but there will always be people who slip through the cracks, so I’m just wondering how you can say ‘no, we won’t support children getting lunch in schools cause everyone will do it and that’s a bad thing’.
We want every child to have a lunch in school, but that process surely has to go back to the parent, and say to the parent ‘your child didn’t have a lunch today, we had to feed your child, and so you now have less money in your dole or in your benefit, or if you’re not able to supply, then clearly you haven’t taken advantage of the support we can give.’ Because the support in this country is generous.

You think it’s comprehensive enough?
I think there are some faults and some problems with it, but in terms of internationally, we have very generous support in terms of welfare.

So you think if people are living below the poverty line, and people don’t have the resources to feed their children, then it’s their fault for not taking the benefits?
Well if they’re not taking advantage of the benefits that are there then they may well struggle to get by. I accept that, I don’t think the minimum wage in NZ is enough to get by, and we know that because most people on the minimum wage have to get subsidised by the government, particularly if they have children, and so I think there are some issues around general affordability, and I don’t think that the right answer is to actually build some enormous welfare state. But at the moment we do provide support and additional support and emergency relief support to anyone who can’t feed their children. So I do think there’s a problem if someone’s in a situation where they can’t fund it and can’t afford it, then yeah, something’s gone wrong in terms of how they’re accessing what’s available to them in terms of support.

But you’d support having a system to check up on, and say, slap on the wrist, say ‘no no no, need to be feeding your children’.
I actually think we should be doing that. It is a legal responsibility of parents to supply the needs of their children, and if they fail to do that then I actually think we should be holding them to account. We don’t do that very well, we have a society that has child abuse at a phenomenal level, is increasing, and I actually think we’ve been really slack about looking after the youngest and most vulnerable in our society. And I actually think going to parents and saying ‘you know what? This is your child and you haven’t fed them or you haven’t clothed them, and we expect more of you to play your role, is actually the right thing to do.’ Might sound a bit, you know, tough, because it wouldn’t always be easy, but if we don’t set that standard, we won’t get – now not every parent would rise to that, but many would, if they were challenged to. I’m someone who does believe in setting expectations and getting people to live up to that. Now, traditionally, most people would’ve been chased up by their mum, or whatever, there was a social structure there that provided that support. I think we have to acknowledge it’s not always there now. Our view of social welfare’s very different to what we have now, we actually think that social welfare workers shouldn’t sit behind desks, we think they should actually be out there, with people in their homes, one day every fortnight or something like that. And many people don’t have skills. I mean I could give many examples of this, but there are people in our society who don’t know how to clean a house. Who don’t know how to cook a meal, really. Or maybe they don’t have the motivation to because there’s no one helping them do it.

So you’d prefer programmes that support in-home help like that.
Yeah, we believe Plunket and Karitane nurses makes a lot of sense instead of being hospital-centric or expecting people to always come to you. Because that’s not going to happen. It might in some cases, but there are a lot of people who start falling through the cracks. And I don’t think it’s an accident that Maori health outcomes started declining the moment we pulled out the Karitane nurses. See I think Karitane nurses didn’t just look after kids, I think they brought into the home a standard that says ‘hey you know what, we could place, you could do this, this is the way to run a household.’ And that rubs off, that mentoring, that sort of assistance is really valuable.

We’re sort of starting to run out of time here, so I’m just going to move onto a few, you know, Critic-student-media questions.
Oh, go for it.

What’s your favourite conspiracy?
Ahhh.

The moon landing?
No, no, see I don’t- this is the thing, I don’t answer conspiracy questions because I don’t know them very well. But I think, and I wouldn’t have a clue about it, but I think the whole JFK thing has a lot of mystery attached to it. If I was going to get deeply into thinking about a conspiracy…

[Colin’s Press Advisor] Which you’re not.
Which I’m not. I mean everybody talks about it, I have no idea what the conspiracy is, but I’m sure it would be exciting.

Okay, JFK. Not the moon landing.
Nah.

Nah. That’s not fun.
I don’t think so.

One last question. This one you have to answer.
Oh, okay, compulsory answer question. Go for it.

Shoot, shag, marry: Jacinda Ardern, Judith Collins, Metiria Turei.
And that’s a question?!

That is a question.
Okay… I’m trying to look for some similarity between them but all I’m finding is a whole lot of differences. Um… okay, don’t know Jacinda Ardern, but she and I have a few disagreements. Definitely not marry. Judith Collins? Errr don’t know. Metiria Turei? Time for celibacy. Have you got that down there as an option? Monkhood or whatever they call it.

You can only shoot one! You’ve got to marry one and shag the other.
What was the order you gave them to me in?

Jacinda Ardern, Judith Collins, Metiria Turei. No particular order.
Look, that’s such a tough question. I should consult my wife on this one. However, I will go with the following order: I’ll shoot Judith Collins cause I think she’s tough enough to take it, um, shag, well, aw gee, nobody, cause I’m married and it’s not an option for me. Um, marry, again, it’d be problematic, but let’s say my wife died, and I had to re-marry. Who’ve I got left? Jacinda Ardern and Metiria Turei.

But if your wife died, you’d have to shag one too then, cause you’re out of the whole marriage thing.
Yeah no I don’t know if I want to go there. Um, I’ve shot Judith Collins cause I think she can take it, Metiria’s the one with the nice jackets, eh? Yeah. Fashion, yeah, good. Marry. By default, that’s not looking good is it? But I’ll leave it at that.

Can I get it in your words?
Yeah, definitely time to consider other options. There you go, that’s my answer.

Fantastic, thank you for answering that.
This article first appeared in Issue 11, 2014.
Posted 10:37am Wednesday 14th May 2014 by Carys Goodwin.