So, just who is this Paul Goldsmith?
On the periphery of our collective consciousness lurks a curious figure. Slight. Bookish. A pianist even. A walking understatement.
He’s best known for running to lose the Epsom electorate and there is no prospect he will be dragooned into Dancing With The Stars.
New Zealand has not yet turned its attention towards Paul Goldsmith.
Before grafting his way into Parliament he was a writer. Far more copies of his books will have been purchased than read, I suspect.
The most curious was co-authored with former Labour minister Michael Bassett on the history of Puketutu Island where, as it happens, my wife enjoyed her first wedding reception.
Most of his efforts were hagiographies; Don Brash, John Banks, Doug Myers, Alan Gibbs and even Fletcher Building.
Yet none of these matter as much as the 384 pages he produced on the history of taxation in New Zealand.
The title; We Won, You Lost, Eat That! is a deliberate misquotation of Sir Michael Cullen’s parliamentary retort; ‘‘Eat that! We won, you lost’’ that became briefly infamous at the start of Cullen’s reign as finance minister.
It is hard to imagine a less interesting topic, except perhaps the history of Puketutu Island. There won’t be a movie version.
Yet the book surprises.
The author weaves taxation and the role it played in our development from struggling colonial beginnings up to the Cullen era into a comprehensible and enjoyable narrative.
Long forgotten debates are made relevant by a writer who has dug into the minutiae and enjoys an intuitive sense of the larger trends of our political economy.
The book is surely going to get a reprint.
Prime ministers set the big picture. Ardern generates the aura and general direction of her Government, but it is Grant Robertson who runs the engine room.
The same dynamic played out in most post-Muldoon administrations.
Strong finance ministers can surpass their prime ministers in changing the nation’s economic trajectory, as
Cullen, Douglas and Richardson have demonstrated.
Goldsmith was briefly a minister in the last government, where he tinkered in junior offices of state without leaving any significant mark.
So, who is Paul Goldsmith and what can we expect if he becomes finance minister in a little over six months?
Well. For a start, he has a black belt in taekwondo, which indicates there is more steel to him than penning semiauthorised biographies, throwing elections and tinkling on the piano would indicate.
In his maiden speech he hinted as to what he might do if he achieved high office: ‘‘I have no desire to follow the political tradition of talking grandly about helping, but at the same time stripping cash from struggling companies through taxes, and piling on the costs to comply with all manner of ‘‘nice-to-have’’ regulation…
‘‘Our way of life is being challenged by too much government spending, too much debt, and too much drift as we fall behind other more dynamic countries.’’
He has succeeded in not talking grandly, but can he complete the second part of his ambition?
If fate conspires to elevate him to the office held by characters as diverse as John Ballance and David Caygill he will be uniquely aware of the historical importance of his office.
Douglas did some of his best writing and thinking after he left office. Goldsmith has the advantage of writing his book before his ascendancy and the reader is not left wondering about the author’s perspective on the corrosive effects of an oppressive tax burden.
Nor his admiration of the more freewheeling radicals of past decades such as Sir Bob Jones and David Henderson (the Christchurch one).
But such knowledge can be a burden; being the only player on the team who can kick for goal creates its own pressures.
In his book on tax he writes that Sir Roger Douglas was the first finance minister to understand deadweight loss.
Goldsmith eloquently describes the concept as ‘‘the costs to the economy caused by the behaviour responses individuals made to the tax system, such as to choose leisure over work…’’
Goldsmith will be the second, and he will be conscious that little progress has been made since David Lange called a ‘‘cup of tea’’ on Douglas’ reforms.
He will also recall that he wrote: ‘‘The prospect of any repeat of such rapid reform is negligible under the MMP system.’’
Yet destiny has conspired to place Goldsmith, the author of this grim prediction, as the only man in a generation who can defy it.
He owes it to his biographer, even if he is that person, not to let this opportunity
pass.