Labour fiddles as growth burns
Labourwonthe election butwe elected a conservative government. Gonefrom the governmentprogramme announced inthe speech from the throne is anypromise of “transformational change”. Insteadwe have the false promise of every Tory, “stability and certainty”.
Thegovernment’spriorities are “affordable housing andhomelessness, child poverty, and the global climate crisis”.
“The Labour Governmentwill have three overarching objectives: To keep Newzealanders safe fromcovid-19: To accelerate our economic recovery: To lay the foundations for a better future.”
Judith Collins could have written mostof thespeech. Housing is National’spriority too.
Bill English had amore ambitious programmeto tackle the causes of poverty.
Thezerocarbon Actwasbipartisan legislation.
Newzealand’s response to Covid has been bipartisan.
Every government pledges to “accelerate our recovery” and to “lay the foundations for a better future”.
It is a plan to fiddlewith government programmes, not to reform them.
In the next three years Labour has setno targets. Labour has only set targets for somefuture government: “2025”, “2030” and “the next 10 years”.
Progress is to be measured not by results but byhowmuchtaxpayer moneyis spent addressing anissue.
Consensus is not initself a bad thing. Weonly have to look at America to seehowdangerous it iswhenthere is noconsensus to accept the result of the ballot box. Whereconsensus is dangerous iswhenit is tomutually agree to ignoreproblems.
Not one party mentioned in Parliament’s first debate the IMF report that predicts, onpresent economic settings, New Zealanders’ incomes by 2025 will be lower than today. Five years of no incomegrowth. Being poorer willmeanit is harder to afford hospitals, education and other government services. Having lower incomeswill notmakeit easier to achieve any of the Government’s goals.
Weknowthe reasons wewill be poorer. Government spending is out of control. Newzealand is Covid-free butnowestern country has increased government spending faster than Newzealand. Rapidly increasing government debt and our dreadful productivitymeanswewill bepoorer.
Labour’spreviouscommitment to balancing the books has gone and been replaced with ameaningless assurance that “all government spending decisions aremadewith particular consideration for the sustainability of thecrown’s long-term fiscal position”.
Labour appears to havenoplan to ever return to the necessity of funding current spending out of current income.
Improvingproductivity should have been top of the Government’s priorities. Withoutproductive growth wecannot afford a first-world health system. The reasonnewzealand lockeddownfor five weekswas because our hospitals could not cope with even amild Covid outbreak.
Thanks torodney Hidewehave a world-class Productivity Commission. Weknowthe reasons for ourpoor
productivity growth. It is the combination ofmany things. David Seymourin his good speech to Parliament’s first debate is correct that poor government regulations are destroying productivity growth.
Thecommission has been very critical of our education outcomes. Despite massive increases in education spendingnewzealand keeps slipping downthe international education test scores. Newzealand pupilsnowleave school the worst readers inthe Englishspeaking world.
Toimprove productivityweneed transformational change.
Stealing National’s claim to be good managers helped win the election but Labourdoes not have theministerial ability to deliver managerialism. Manyministers cannot follow the Cabinet Manual.
In Labour’s first term ministersclare Curran, Meka Whaitiri, David Clark, Iain Lees-galloway and Phil Twyford— stripped of his Civil Aviation Authority role for using a cellphone ona plane— had to resign.
Thenewcabinet ministersseemevenmore accident prone. Lastweek Peeni Henare, thenew Minister of Defence, gave a false statement to the media.
His statement indicatedhe wants todo awaywith anonpolitical civil service and “tomove forward” ministers should sack departmental heads.
Henare told the media that ahead of adepartment “may be vacating in a couple of hours” because “if wewant tomoveforward, weneed to look at the people running these organisations”.
Theminister responsible fororanga Tamariki, Kelvin Davis, and chief executivegrainne Moss issuedpress statements denying shewasresigning. Bynot rebuking Henare theprime Minister lets stand the concern that Labour intends to politicise civil service appointments. Thenwewill have chaos.
Labour has not got the talent to run ona record of management. Better to campaign on a record of getting spending under control and having achieved transformational productivity growth.
Whatis the point of the Labour Party if it is not a party of reform?