Politics
Jane Clifton
Parliament is always a simmering stovetop of pots calling kettles black, but the Burnt Le Creuset Prize this year goes to National’s Paul Goldsmith. In ringing prosecutorial tones, he recently asked Finance Minister Grant Robertson to admit that three-quarters of current economic growth came from the “sandcastle” foundation of immigration and population growth. That’s what you’d have to call a bottom-carboniser of an accusation.
You’d never have thought, from Goldsmith’s irate demeanour, that reliance on consumption for GDP growth was front and centre of his own party’s policy for nine years, or that this strategy
– if that’s what it can be called – was why wages and productivity stagnated over those years, the under-supplied real-estate market succumbed to tulip fever and infrastructure was straining.
Our headline numbers looked quite good, to the point where an Australian economist gushed that ours was a rock-star economy. The rocker, however, was all rhinestones and no roadies.
This was “never mind the quality, feel the width” economic growth, and we may be stuck with it a while longer because of National’s feelgood non-interventions. To be fair, it meant well. It is easy to forget there was a time under the previous Labour Government when New Zealand was farewelling a stadium’s worth of residents overseas every few months. “Let’s stop our kids having to move to Australia” was one of National’s winning campaign slogans. When that brain drain unexpectedly reversed under National, it was understandably delighted and let it rip. Sadly, it was also cheerfully hands-off about trades and professional training, so we ended up with chronic skills shortages that we’re now increasingly dependent on migrants to fill.
Even the progress the Nats made on unemployment, getting the country as close to full employment as it’s probably possible to be, has had a downside. With wages so low, we even have to import people to do unskilled work. To put it bluntly, so few locals will work for buttons in aged care, on building sites or on farms that we’re increasingly reliant on people from much poorer places, such as the Philippines and the
Pacific Islands, to fill those vital jobs. Consequently, immigration is roaring at a historic pace and economists see no sign of it slowing.
Small wonder Robertson greeted Goldsmith’s attack with a battery-acid smile. In his efforts to restore productivity and growth
in wealth to the economy, the populationgrowth sandcastle’s not his only problem. He’s got the sandbag of a coalition partner shaping up to make immigration a divisive election issue.
RACISM? WHAT RACISM?
Not that we’re calling it that any more, apparently. As New Zealand First has it, we’re to have a Conversation About Population Policy. Unless that’s code for birth control – which would certainly make for a lively campaign – it’ll be just one more round of ‘tis-‘tisn’t about what’s racism and what’s not.
NZ First’s wily Shane Jones is framing the debate as a conversation with Māori, as the prime determinants of its parameters, which may keep ugliness within civilised bounds. But probably not. This will be a discussion about reducing immigration, at a time when we’ve never been less able to do it. Nothing adds vitriol to a debate like impotence.
How galling for the Government, though, that this latest entry on National’s Not-Achieved ledger of its policy promises has been undeliverable because of the skills shortage that was baked in under National.
Still, some policies are better unachieved. Education Minister Chris Hipkins occasioned a massed wiping of brows this week when he canned a proposal to subjugate school boards and principals to the fealty of a new “hub” system.
National, just quietly, was bitterly disappointed, because had this gone ahead, it would have been election gold.
This was “never mind the quality, feel the width” economic growth.
Charged with addressing the wide inequality of achievement between schools, the review taskforce Hipkins convened decided on a startlingly reductionist formula. Since some schools had achieved conspicuously better student outcomes than others, those smarty-britches were to have their wings clipped. Clearly, the report seemed to imply, successful schools had been abusing their freedom and needed to be brought to heel. Annoyingly, it wasn’t necessarily because of money, because poorer schools could often be more successful than richer ones.
The report seemed to assume that, somehow, the thriving schools were prospering at the expense of the failing schools. At the very least, parents who had the cheek to send their children to the successful schools rather than the failing schools should henceforth be prevented from doing so.
HUMBLING THE HUBS
Rather than finding ways that failing schools might learn from successful schools, the proposal was to homogenise the lot of them via governance through a series of regional hubs. Why is it that whenever the word “hub” crops up in a public proposal, things tend to go south? Perhaps it’s because it connotes a “one size fits all” approach. This hub might have meant that a school with a highperforming computing or science department, or a school that put unusually high resourcing into arts subjects to nurture the talents of its students, would be at risk of a compulsory kibosh. How dare one school find a way to excel at maths when another school didn’t.
The Government has now humbled the hubs, which will be confined to dealing mostly with schools’ property management, upskilling of boards and zoning. There’s still room for reductionist mischief given the hubs’ power to crack down on parents’ iniquitous desire to send children to better-performing schools out of zone. And no one has dared crack the obvious advantage that a few schools in extremely wealthy areas have, with donors and skilled, connected and influential parents to help. But at least good schools will be left to keep doing whatever it is they do.
Meanwhile, Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg and Jack Dorsey had best keep their heads down. Not only has Helen Clark unveiled a plan to curtail social media’s vileness, but also on the case is Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters.
Our former prime minister has a multi-point charter, whereas Peters’ battle plan seems to be administering his force-10 scowl while awaiting something more definitive from Internal Affairs.
This is a fearsome political axis in anyone’s terms, and the internet barons had better take preventive action or, who knows, Gareth Morgan might come out of hibernation.
Winston Peters’ battle plan seems to be administering his force- 10 scowl.