Gold cards take public for a ride

Transport card little more than a clever bribe.

We probably shouldn’t sweat the small stuff but the Gold Card is one of those annoying fixtures on New Zealand’s policy landscape. In its own small way, it represents everything wrong with New Zealand politics.

Cynics might think I’m just annoyed because it provides an answer to the question ‘‘what has Winston Peters actually done for the last 20 years,’’ but he probably didn’t even think of it himself, anyway.

If stories around Wellington are true, the way it came about borders on corruption. It was not done to benefit over-65s. It was the work of a very crafty bus company lobbyist who thought ‘‘how can I get an extra few million dollars of taxpayers’ money thrown at our industry?’’

Of course, just asking for money would not work, the private benefit had to be dressed up as some kind of public good. What could sound nobler than combining senior citizens with public transport? So, he fed the idea to New Zealand First, et voila.

Perhaps those less-thanadmirable means could be justified by noble ends, but what is the justification for taxing $26 million dollars a year so that anyone, including millionaires, can take a free ferry to lunch on Waiheke Island?

That’s the second problem, there is no way you can argue that it is ‘good’ policy, only that it is politically popular – such policies are usually known as election bribes.

And as with all of the other (much larger) election bribes introduced by the Helen Clark Government, the present National Government has lacked the gumption to roll them back, no matter how vociferous John Key and Bill English’s criticism was when they were in opposition. Working for Families was ‘‘communism by stealth’’ and interest-free student loans were ‘‘cheese in the mousetrap’’.

But those are still very much with us, and so it is with the Gold Card. The current Minister of Transport is, again very craftily, rolling the Gold Card into regional transport cards such as Auckland’s AT HOP card.

The Gold Card brand is broken up, but the subsidy, including for Waiheke ferries, is still there. One suspects they are more concerned about getting one over Peters than making the right policy decisions.

Perhaps, worst of all, the Gold Card is a political distraction.

Political bribes are clever because they tax many taxpayers a little (so they won’t notice), to give a smaller group of voters something that they will notice.

But clever slicing does not make the pie any bigger, it only distracts us from more important challenges the country faces.

We should be talking about how to make superannuation sustainable, when it currently is not.

We should be talking about how to restore New Zealand’s rate of home building back to 1970s levels, twice what they are now, to avoid a social, economic, and political time bomb going off. We should be talking about the fact that productivity growth has been flat for the past decade, well behind Australia’s, leaving people running to stand still.

Alas, the Government is gingerly dismantling the Gold Card by changing its name.

Bill English could defund the transport subsidies this year, leaving it as a handy card allowing for discounts from businesses who want to offer deals for seniors, but he won’t.

How is a Government meant to take on issues of real magnitude if it is not prepared to deal to one vain and contrived election bribe?