The price of political promises

Similar battles over numbers occur at most elections. ‘Show me the money’’, former National leader John Key once cried, and the resulting arguments usually spread more heat than light.

That’s why the proposal for an independent body to cost the parties’ promises is a good one. The clash of ideas is too important to be left to the politicians and their followers. An independent expert would provide hard facts to help voters make up their minds. And that would be a boost for democracy.

It’s striking that this proposal has the support from the right as well as the left, from free-market lobbyists and from the Greens. And it’s also firmly based in democratic experience. The model is the United States Congressional Budget Office, which since 1974 has provided non-partisan budget and economic information to Congress. The CBO has, in fact, annoyed both left and rightleaning presidents as well as Republican and Democrat Congresses. Its careful numbercrunching of President Trump’s proposals to replace Obamacare, for instance, have infuriated the president and helped sink his projects. But the CBO also caused trouble for President Barack Obama, and earlier Bill Clinton, with its analyses of their healthcare proposals. In other words, the CBO has done what it was supposed to do – provide a careful and non-political analysis of proposals of the greatest importance to the US economy. Professional economists unite in praising the office. And both sides of the aisle in Congress have agreed over time to support it.

The New Zealand proposal is for a part-time commissioner whose job would be to assess parties’ election proposals. But perhaps this is too restricted a role. The American body is fulltime and examines the president’s budget proposals every year. In fact, the office was born of a row between Congress and President Richard Nixon. Congress wanted its own body to reduce its reliance on the president’s Office of Management and Budget.

Why not have something similar in New Zealand to help the public assess the Government’s budget measures? The New Zealand proposal is for the commissioner to be a former head of Treasury, or a former AuditorGeneral. An auditor-general would be better; Treasury’s reputation still suffers from its neo-liberal adventures of the 1980s and 1990s.

It’s also vital that the commissioner is appointed by parliament rather than any government. He or she must be nobody’s stooge.