Often when I encounter Dr Don Brash, images out of the Cold War Dr Strangelove movie crowd my mind.
You might remember the plot – a wacky US general decides to attack Russia with a nuclear arsenal to thwart a communist plot to infect Americans with fluoridated water. The downside is that such an attack would have consequences more calamitous than communist plots. Undeterred, the mad general refuses to withdraw the attack command. Eventually it becomes known the Russians have an invention know as the doomsday device that will wipe out life in the event of a nuclear attack. Given Stanley Kubrick directed the movie, the end is not pretty.
After reading Taskforce 2025, Closing the Gap with Australia, a prescription for New Zealand’s economic fortunes vis-à-vis Australia, it is evident Dr Brash is reaching for the nuclear option. He is a doomsday economic thinker who favours exterminating socio-economic life as we know it. He favours a flat tax of 20 percent, a concept rejected by former Prime Minister David Lange in the 1980s. As in the 1980s, Dr Brash does not outline practically how to run a public sector with such a thin revenue base and not create an ungovernable society.
The 2025 luminaries propose liquidating the super fund without acknowledging that the Aussie savings pool is a key part of their enviable economic infrastructure. They think wages are too high and wish to dispense with the minimum wage. Apparently the way to lessen the income gap is to shrink New Zealand wages. If that is not unnerving enough, 2025s believe the current superannuation levels are too generous and the age of eligibility is too soft. To show balance, they are also anxious to slash our youth rates – bizarre, indulgence for the young and restless and destitution for the old and vulnerable.
The SOE sell-off is back like a regrettable chestnut. Predictably, the 2025ers ignore the major flaws to this approach.
I refer to the public animus towards privatisation and the inevitability of such ploys leading to a worsening of our balance-of-payment woes. Soon we will be furnished with the findings of the Capital Investment Taskforce. Hopefully this group will take a more sophisticated approach to this highly divisive area.
There is a genuine issue related to the thin capital markets in New Zealand. Significant parts of our tradable sector are tied up in collective ownership. Progress will not be made by blindly rehearsing the lines of the 1980s.
There is a thread running through this taskforce, tying together its nostrums. Public expenditure in classic public good areas is inherently bad and ought to be slashed. 2025s have a mindset hostile to subsidised doctors’ visits, pre-school education and university education. Such 2025 gems reflect an ideological cord between the Dr Brash and his National Party.
Prime Minister John Key needs to stop focusing on Australian thresholds and develop strategies for the people and resources of our country. He has had a year to do so. Perhaps he is already infected by Dr Don Strangelove’s fluoridated economic water.
