We have a new government and they've made a lot of promises. The two documents between National-ACT and National-NZFirst contain a total of 213 different commitments with measurable outcomes. At least, that's how many I've got in my spreadsheet once I untangled duplicates and removed items too vague to judge success or failure on.
Some of these promises are very good, and some of the promises are very bad—everyone will have their own tastes. I've had emails from both Hobson's Pledge and Family First with some of their favourite commitments, which I will include in the data and expand with other lobby groups.
Since I'm putting some distance between myself and politics for the next few years and making more time for hobby projects and commentary, I've decided to put those two passions together and start on a coding project this summer to give everyone an open source visualised tracking tool on how the Coalition Government is delivering on its promises.
There's still more to analyse, as National has also committed to keeping their pledge card, fiscal plan, tax plan, 100-day plan, and 100-point economic plan (with exceptions from the ACT and NZ First coalition deals).
I started work on the commitment tracker last Saturday, and now we have a 49 point 100-day plan unveiled to make it easier to know which items to keep an eye on. However, the first one with a timeframe is due today:
By December 1, 2023, lodge a reservation against adopting amendments to WHO health regulations to allow the government to consider these against a “national interest test”.
The funny part is that while I can find a dozen articles of presstitutes crying about the Coalition being captured by "conspiracy theories", what I can't find is confirmation that it has been fulfilled.
Does anyone have a source on if this has really been done by the deadline? It's possible action will be delayed, but if I can't find confirmation it's been done then it will be the first to go into the "failed" column. [EDIT: Winston Peters confirmed via email that this item was completed.]
You can try out the app right now in your browser: https://dieuwedeboer.github.io/coalition-tracker-nz/
The code and documentation for the app can be found here: https://github.com/dieuwedeboer/coalition-tracker-nz
At the moment it's a bit boring: almost every item is "yet to be started" and I haven't yet implemented filtering tools so that you can find what you're looking for quickly.
However, I have been sick this week, so I've only put a few hours in so far. This is also why today's column is not some kind of witty punditry on obscure-yet-important cultural developments.
I'll be updating the tool regularly, proving summaries on Twitter, and having a bit of fun making tweaks throughout the Parliamentary term.
It's great to have a Government provide a complete list of measurable policies it wants to implement. We can lobby them to deliver on the good commitments, try to pressure them out of the bad ones, and come the next election we can have a good feeling for their competency, priorities, and use these metrics to inform voters.