Today was another “Is that it?” day for National.
Bill English’s Chamber of Commerce speech had been hyped as his first major of the year, that would fill in the gaps commentators drove several buses through in Mr Key’s Opening address to Parliament.
Problem was, it was so lacking in new ideas that even Simon Power’s timid response to the worthy Capital Markets taskforce report upstaged it.
Mr English’s line was essentially:
- NZ needs to export more, earn more and save more – all incontrovertible truisms with which we agree totally.
- NZ’s economic dolrums are all Labour’s fault – get a grip Bill, you have been Finance Minister for 15 months and that is “so 2008″. Heard of the global financial crisis? Just get on with it.
- The “common thread” in National’s plan (at least he has found one) is resource extraction (digging up national parks) and farming (sound familiar?) – but nothing much on smarts, innovation or value added. For that matter nothing on productivity or how to build it properly and sustainably (skills, technology and capital).
- Deregulation will usher in a new nirvana – now that is even older than 2008! Try 1998!
- His rich mates will still get their massive top rate tax cut, at least equal to the trust rate (collective “phew” in donor boardrooms).
- The working stiff can still hope for “compensation” on GST (which is surely going up to 15%) and, wait for it, an acknowledgement that it will add 2% to inflation (but no mention of compo for that).
- Oh, and he announced the Kopu Bridge upgrade for the 12th time!
All in all, you can’t help wondering how he filled his lost decade in opposition, because there is no sign of a new idea 15 months into government.
Come to think of it, this far in, just one extra kilometer of broadband fibre would have been nice too. Labour’s Broadband Investment Fund package was ready to roll out the day after the election.
Where does it leave Kiwis?
On the good side, perhaps there is the glimmering of a shared view of the nature of some of the economic problems: savings, investment and exports.
But there is a vast gulf between National’s implicit “strategy” of “mine it or farm it”, and the needs of a globalised world market where value increasingly attaches to smarts and mobile factors.
And while we are on it, how about some recogition that some of the value that is created here is bled off us by a financial system that is almost enitelry overseas owned.
Who is really being “farmed” or “mined” here?
Answer, the poor old working stiff who tries their best to make ends meet and raise a family. Welcome to the brave new National world – you get your GST supersized at the drive-though while all the fine dining is at someone else’s table.
English got seriously served on TV3 News.
I’ve been reading “Left Turn” again, which is rather good.
What made me laugh was “waiting in the wings is the talented 38 year old Bill English”
Yeah, that’s my sum contribution to this debate as there’s absolutely nothing new to pick over anymore from the Nats. Time to turn the attention to historical performances, and look to understand what’s going to get the nats gone in 2011.
very off topic, but seems to make some people smile.
John, John, with a nose so long
You’ve been lying all along
Come on now, don’t play games
Where’s my 50, you said I’d gain?
2 years in, your grin is scarce
My job situation is rather fierce
You said there’d be growth, and I could vote
To make NZ better than most
Now I wonder, what’s the plan
Is there one, or are you just a sham?
You never had my vote, so my mud won’t stick
but for the others, I bet they feel tricked
So come on now, play your cards
I’m sick of you being an arse
I want a leader, not a preener
So perhaps its time to scrub off that veneer
agreed that he got a good kicking on telle! Then tries to downplay the womans question as insignificant and that she is not a big deal…ummm…nice one Bill – such a big man…not.
Shudder, brave new world is right.
@Parkdrive – LOL
Logistical nightmare won’t open.
Can someone tell me is this the same party that wants to restrict numbers of uni & tech students to save money. Guess Ms Roy needs more bus drivers for her ’step change’.
Didn’t he say that Labour left the books in good shape? I’m sure someone will be able to pull out that quote next time he tries to deflect blame for the economic state we are in.
In this post Mr Cunliffe blames our economic position on the global financial crisis.
What can English do to overcome the negative affects of that?
Just asking.
THanks Topcat – he sure did. Wouldn’t have been so good if we had followed his advice on early tax cuts…
David, that is what is so scary, if the nats had won in 2005, I feel that we (NZ) would be in the same financial state as Iceland, Ireland, Greece etc. etc. Keep up the good work in the House:)
I really hope you hold onto Finance until Labour’s next term David… Having a Rhodes Scholar in charge of the books would be great…
Actually, I distinctly remember that in 1985/6 from the 4th Labour government. Specifically, it was about Telecom and, 30+ years later, we’re having to pay the profiteers billions of dollars that we can’t afford to get our telecommunications back up to scratch.
It does appear that Labour may, finally, be starting to realise that they really screwed things up in the 1980s.
If National had won in 2k5 the deficit would have ballooned out immediately on NACTs first tax cuts and then ballooned again as the beginnings of the GFC hit and then exploded as NACT cut taxes again to “drive growth”. The top 1% would have been fine though.
National haven’t got a clue as to how the economy works. All they have is a belief of how the economy works and that belief is based upon their own desires.
@Draco
You have my respect over that last comment bro, Realizing the mistakes of the 1980s is a really important priority for labour, reversing them is the next step.
‘Deregulation will usher in a new nirvana’… That boils so many nerves in my brain that if I started to talk I would forget about half of them by the time I had finished…
It’s like they have a solution to problems in the economy, and when the solution fails, they say ‘Oh it’s not that we were wrong we just didn’t do Enough of what we knew was right’, that National after the deregulations of the 1980s, and after all the crap that followed, their answer is to Deregulate even more? Use fiscal and monetary policies to balance the economy even less? Sell what scarce few state assets we actually have left?
It’s not that they have no brains, well maybe that too but, there is a real element of Stubbornness in national, they have a conservative mindset that they have always had deregulation as a policy and it just has to be right, and if it get’s our economy into the state it’s in now, it’s only that way because there wasn’t ENOUGH deregulation, because Labour doesn’t let them do enough, and it’s all Labours fault!
What is it about politicians and economists that results them in having religious-like fervour about ideologies. They think you can create the perfect society simply by applying unproven failed tenets about taxation and government investment.
This started in the 1980s with Reagan. Since then the US economy has gone in a spectacular decline, its current account deficit growth has become spectacular, government services like health and education are in crises and they are facing a GDP decline of 20%.
Why would NZ ever want to replicate that?
Isn’t it time we started cutting the ideological crap out of our lives?
One word to support Topcats statement about Regans deregulation: ENRON
All in all, you can’t help wondering how he filled his lost decade in opposition, because there is no sign of a new idea 15 months into government.
To be fair to Bill English, he isn’t the only National MP in this position. Nick Smith’s approach to ACC really looks much the same the ideas in the late 90s. In fact, come to think of it, many government policies remind me of the 90s. It’s like the National party was defeated in 1999, but did not once during the following decade reconsider their policies. They just got angry that they weren’t on the treasury benches, and stayed angry.
Topcat,
Actually some politicians become poster boys for a philosophy and then stick to it because of the advantage it provides (politically or speaking circuit).
Pre 80s, Rob Muldoon (one of the most able finance ministers worldwide – period) often argued for deregulation and sensible incentives for business to bloom. This was his foreign persona, but at home he argued that we should not be beholden to IMF policy and definitely should not deregulate and globalize our economy until after the worldwide crash he saw coming in the mid 80’s, otherwise we will get our best business swallowed into branch offices of foreign companies. Muldoon wrote this in 1979 (Hmmm).
Rodger Douglas on the other hand still argued for price controls and farm/business subsidies and protectionist policies going into the 84 election. Then he won and the IMF got hold of him.
And Sean,
Nats only got into govt by endorsing many of the Clark Govt policies that they knew they wouldn’t change “in the first term”, while attempting to stay silent on what they really wanted.
Remember the Bill English tapes on privatization. The first term is ’set it up’ (see ACC) the second term ‘let the hammer fall’.