One of the most telling moments in this morning’s Q&A interview with Bill English was when Guyon Espiner asked the Minister: “Cutting spending isn’t really an idea is it? What other ideas have you got to make us more prosperous?”
English then reeled off infrastructure, cutting red tape, public sector productivity and the tax working group. None of which amount to a strategy to address the structural weaknesses of the New Zealand economy surely. Finally Espiner tried again: “What is the key policy you want to implement?” The Minister’s response: a thriving business environment. Which it needs to be said is a goal, not a strategy.
So let’s look at English’s four ideas and how the Government has performed in its first year:
Infrastructure – Delayed the roll out of broadband for a year causing uncertainty, shifted priority from public transport to roads, not much else. Sorry I forgot the bike track.
Cutting red tape – RMA reforms scaled right back in the face of community and expert opposition, Hide’s core services agenda for local government reduced to a PREFU and plain English financial statements. Not much here to make the boat go faster.
Public sector productivity – Job cuts and a wage freeze. It is a kind of productivity increase.
Tax working group – Yet to report but the big idea seems to be a transfer of wealth from ordinary Kiwis to high earners by way of reducing the top rate and bumping up GST.
The Government could claim that it has been focused on riding out the recession. Yet as Brian Fallow writes, its measures here have been “pretty marginal in the overall scheme of things”. The Restart package for those made redundant is helping 5000, while there are 138,000 unemployed and 60,000 on the unemployment benefit. The nine day fortnight is helping just 39 businesses.
Then there is education. Jon Johansson in yesterday’s Herald says: “…the three R’s announcement is so mediocre it barely constitutes an education policy, let along being elevated as one of the six crucial policies to enhance our economic performance as Bill English recently stated”.
So having done serious damage to Kiwisaver as a tool for turning around our poor national savings record, and axed the research and development tax credit, and replaced the Fast Forward Fund for commercialising agricultural technology with an inferior alternative, you are left wondering where is the plan?
I am disappointed with Bill as well.
I would love to hear what Labour would do to boost growth and ‘make us more prosperous’.
[...] Phil Twyford at Red Alert selectively quotes from Fallow’s article to make the point that National is apparently doing nothing much to help us out of the crisis. I don’t think that is the real import of Fallow’s [...]
It reminds me of that song “we’re on the road to nowhere.”
The actual plan is privatisation of SOE’s… But that can’t happen till 2011…
@jeremy – you just wait – it will come in sooner than 2011 – one of the not so capable nats are bound to do something that sells something off – conservation land for mining, school grounds for capitalism – it will be by stealth and by the time its happened – too late! Read the signs – the writing is on the wall.
Hey!
Spud has come up with a great one liner to describe the NACT
government! I can just hear it during question time in the House: Labour… “Did the we’re on the road to nowhere government know blah blah blah?
Ooh I want to hear it, if Labour will use it, I’ll watch, with popcorn
Spuddy’s in moderation
A very fair analysis, but pretty disheartening to see it laid out like that.
Set alongside some other government moves, such as the suspension of payments to the Cullen fund, which cost more than it gained, the planned subsidies for the major greenhouse gas emitters at the expense of ordinary taxpayers, and the apparent intention to privatise at least parts of ACC, the whole picture is looking decidedly depressing.
The Government could claim that it has been focused on riding out the recession.
Heh, Thing is, the righties know that the things they want to do (ya basic neo liberal tookit), will make things worse in regard to the recession. That much they did learn from the Richardson experience. Therefore, not doing it, is a plan for riding out the recession.
The idea that their ideas don’t actually work, is yet to be absorbed.
If national wins again in 2011 (which the polls are suggesting) then by the time I finish uni i’ll have no option but to leave. Australia here I come!!
Honest question to the left: do you think hiring more policy analysts helps makes the country any richer?
Qualification: apart from the owners of Wellington’s commercial buildings like Bob Jones.
@n0exit… You’ll get there just in time for the next Liberal government…
The grass isn’t that much greener my friend…
Boo Hoo, nothing to moan at because the Nats havent slashed and burnt and flogged everything off and things remain the same as when Labour was running the place despite your prediction.
ACC isnt being privatised because you cant do it. Cullen wrote his Kiwisaver legislation so payments were to be suspended when we were in defecit and it took you 9 years to present a dogs breakfast of the ETS legislation at the last moment.
You keep crying wolf it just makes you look irrational.
@JD – we have more policy analysts than any country needs – one thing we seemed to ‘grow’ as a country over the last 9 yrs – and while I am most concerned by the way the right is steering the ship – I see the rocks looming – I think it is good to ‘cull’ this particular trend. Unfortunately, when the Nats said cut back on the bureaucracy, they meant all of it – which means that the front line staff are not being replaced in key areas – eg: Education (such as ed pyschs). By all means cull out the over indulgence of analysts but for goodness sake, boost front line staff – not cut them alongside the others.
“thriving business environment” is code for government sponsored corporate welfare. Watercare and the council funded CCO’s in Auckland will be the first examples of that happening, the second will be the corporatisation/privatisation of SOE’s and things like ACC, the final will be private prisons, tollways PPPs and the like.
This is in lieu of encouraging productivity through better, training, education, wages, scientific progress- which they seem clueless as to how to encourage.
If they follow the first course- there is no way they will be able to reduce taxes and charges.
@David – really? You can’t see what is happening? Would your glasses be rose tinted perchance?
To clarify. The clever thing the Nats do is to do the cutting quietly – with stealth – and to use ways to punish anyone who speaks up to loudly (loss of contracts…) – the cutting of the advisory is one example. Keep watching – keep your ears open – and talk to front line staff in education, health and the police (for a start), and see what really is happening. Just because the media are not picking it up does not mean it is not happening.
n0exit, if things are so bad, why not leave now, why wait til you’ve finished uni?
Excellent comment, Pascal’s Bookie.
I’m not actually having a go at policy analysts as I count several as friends. However what they actually do is still an enigma. The important point is that before 2000 we got along fine without a phalanax of advisors, communication and policy analysts. The nation didn’t suddenly collapse and then suddenly they’re an integral part of the ‘machinary of government’ once Labour gets in.
Oh well I suppose Labour had to have someone to tell them how to spend the increased surplus.
Actually JD, the policy analysts and communications experts began invading the public service in the 1990s, by 1999 they were everywhere. Indeed, many of them were external consultants. I recall a friend of mine discussing how odd it was for him, an external consultant, being hired by a government department to advise on core policy in 1997-98. I recall another acquaintance who discussed how she could get her department’s messages pass Kim Hill (back when she did Nine to Noon) with heaps of charm and personality.
As for advisors, Minister’s offices have had them for donkey’s years, I wouldn’t be able to say if they started in the 90s, or before.
I’d have to disagree with you on that Sean. Communications staff numbers exploded with the Labour govnt in office. Of course it’s vital in any democracy for the people to be aware of policies and given the rise of new mediums such as the internet perhaps such an increase was inevitable. The darker side to this was that information was to be ‘managed’ for PR purposes and was part of the politicisation of the public service just as the Clare Curran affair showed us.