Politics
Policy promises are one thing but the means of delivery is another.
Jane Clifton
When Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern declared 2019 the year of delivery, she would have been smarter to couch it more in terms of an infomercial: “But wait! There’s more …”
And most especially, “Send no money now!”
Because, for governments, delivery is very often more like devilry. Finding enough money to do what needs doing has been the least of the coalition’s problems. Many of last year’s new Budget allocations for health and education are still sitting untouched in 2020 as officials scramble to get the people and the infrastructure in place to spend it. We can’t get enough teachers or health professionals because there’s a global skills shortage. We can’t get new infrastructure built for them because not only is there a global construction skills shortage, but also many of our builders have gone under after unrealistic contract-squeezing – government tenders among the major long-time culprits.
While we, belatedly, try to train new skilled workers, we’re dependent on migrant labour, and that puts more pressure on the infrastructure and workers we don’t have enough of.
In transport, there are so many literal and figurative roadblocks to progress that if all the reports on road, rail and ports were laid end to end, then at least you could cycle from Auckland to Marsden Pt along them, which would be some progress. Each option carries outrageous expense, inconvenience and unfairness, so no politician wants to go near that particular tranche of decision-making
– except for Transport
Minister Phil Twyford, who feels the fear and doesn’t do it anyway, which is why the Cabinet now has him on remote-controlled wheel lock.
It’s depressing to wonder whether, by now, the extra emissions from interminably stalled Auckland traffic vastly exceed those that would take place on the new highways the Greens refuse to let the Government build to ease the congestion.
PGF UBER ALLES
The Provincial Growth Fund promised a more Uber-esque delivery mechanism, but has yielded little in time for election boasting rights. Its projects are heavily subject to workforce and seasonal delays. But perhaps its besetting problem is that it’s an attempt to address a question that hasn’t openly been put: do we want a country dominated by an explosive Auckland, with a straggle of ever-atrophying subordinate regions, or do we want to share our economic growth around? The further unanswered question is, can governments force more even spread of growth without creating counter-productive
inefficiencies?
Rather than a delivery issue, these and many other Government policies are like a pot-luck consignment deal, à la NZSale. We sign up in advance for a shipment, and the Government then does its best to backfill the order and produce the goods. Sometimes they arrive by Christmas, sometimes they don’t. The Commerce Commission is looking into NZSale’s consignment delays, but the Government faces a less merciful judgment call at the
The problem is it takes more than an electoral cycle to feel the possible benefits of Government changes.
ballot box this year. Its problem is that the future possible benefits from most of the big changes it’s making are of a sort that take more than an electoral cycle to be felt. Power and petrol prices should come down, new houses and schools will be built, more tradies and engineers can be schooled up, but only on a Sir Humphrey schedule: in the fullness of time, insofar as circumstances are propitious and subject to the absence of deleterious countervailing circumstances.
Or, look at it this way: at least we don’t have Australia’s problems.
What are delivered, with brainchurning regularity, are reports. This Government has ordered scores on all the things it wants to get right, and is always having to commission
more into things that might or might not have been got wrong. The most momentous to come this year is the inquiry into the Christchurch mosque shootings, but there’s also Operation Burnham and the new hearings into historical child abuse in state care.
THE ABCD OF THE POLLING BOOTH
But as ever in politics, the less profound issues stand to cause the most ructions. The next election could well hinge on the findings of the Electoral Commission’s investigation into whether New Zealand First’s long-time use of a blind trust to accept donations is A. naughty, B. sneaky, C. too clever by half or D. actually illegal. A through C, at least, seem likely to get a “proven”. If it’s D, the party might not survive.
There’s also the inquiry into the National
Party’s receipt of donations from the firm of a Chinese fast-food magnate who also exports Mongolian racehorses (hopefully there is no supply chain synchronicity there). The question here is whether it’s illegal or just canny to split such donations into smaller amounts as though they came from several individuals rather than one source. The exiled former party fundraiser, JamiLee Ross, still smoulders on the backbench with a, “But wait, there’s more!” air about him, so National can’t relax until this matter is settled.
All parties except the Greens have accepted donations from foreign interests, and have responded in rather squirrelly ways when asked to justify them. The disclosure law is about to be tightened, and public beadiness about the issue is such that the first party to get pinged on even a technical malfeasance will do serious dogbox time.
We’re also soon to be told whether Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters’ privacy was breached when details of his overpaid pension leaked during the last election campaign.
The import of this judgment should pale alongside the suspense over whether Brexit kneecaps our export trade, or whether the China-versusUS tariff spat does; whether Australia’s devastating fires will kneecap our tourist industry as well as its own; and whether, if tourism slumps, our dairy industry can survive new emissions and water rules and Fonterra’s erratic leadership to preserve this country’s export earnings; and whether the All Blacks can bounce back from the Rugby World Cup.
But somehow in our politics, all (even yet-to-be-built) roads lead to Peters. Whether he’ll again get to choose the government will overhang the 2020 election like Miss Havisham’s cobwebbed chandeliers. The only prospect of light relief is from Judith Collins, whose new bid not to become National’s version of Dickens’ jilted bride is to release a tell-all book.
The net effect is bound to be pure Madame Defarge.
The election could hinge on the findings of the investigation into New Zealand First’s use of a blind trust.