Hip pocket sugar hit not enough

It’s taking some getting used to the words ‘‘Prime Minister Chris Hipkins’’, even if he has made his first days in the job look effortless and largely faultless.

Hipkins has brought focus and a sense of purpose back to a Government that was drifting and looked increasingly out of touch.

Now for the hard bit.

The polls confirm a lift for Labour under Hipkins. But it may be short.

Incoming prime ministers usually get a honeymoon from voters because they accept that a new Government needs time to put policies in place.

That’s not true for Hipkins. He sat around the same Cabinet table as Jacinda Ardern. He was in her inner circle.

Hipkins has only a small window in which to persuade voters he represents genuine change.

There were sighs of relief when Hipkins extended the petrol tax cut and cheap public transport.

But that won’t make people feel any richer; they’ve already been pocketing those savings. And Hipkins had little room to manoeuvre anyway. After promising a laser focus on the cost of living, it was always unlikely that he would wave through public transport and petrol price rises barely days later.

So what else? Tax cuts, bigger subsidies (for childcare, for instance), a boost to Working for Families – they might all make a difference at the margins, but they all come at significant cost. The sting in the tail is they will likely only fuel the very thing that is putting pressure on household budgets, inflation.

So the upcoming Budget is going to be critical. Not just for what it says about Labour’s prospects, but for what it says about our priorities as a country.

Some policies are likely for the chop – such as Auckland light rail, the public broadcasting merger, and the $3.6 billion income insurance scheme, for instance – to free up some money.

But the $64 million question is whether that money should be spent on hip pocket policies. Or here’s a better way of phrasing that question – is it where you, the voter, want that money spent?

Apart from the widespread devastation, loss of life and stories of individual hardship repeated over and over again in the recent extreme weather events that have hammered Auckland, Northland, the Coromandel, Gisborne and elsewhere, we have seen the effect of neglected infrastructure, years of poor decision-making, and lack of preparedness which are the result of decades of a preoccupation with hip pocket policies.

Policies that might have set us on the path to being a wealthier nation are too often neglected in favour of short-termism at the ballot box.

The chickens are coming home to roost everywhere.

At hospital emergency departments, desperately sick people are waiting six or seven hours to be seen, and surgical waiting lists grow longer and longer.

Tens of millions of dollars are spent promoting pie in the sky policies like a zero road toll, and introducing lower speed limits. Meanwhile cheap fixes and underinvestment in a decent rail system have left us fuming about potholed roads.

Billions of dollars have been thrown at the education system over the years, yet that doesn’t seem to have plugged any of the skills shortages where they hurt most.

Worse, we have nearly killed the golden goose – our reputation as a clean, green country that holds up our trade and tourism sectors – because we have let our rivers and streams and beaches become degraded and unswimmable and we pay lip service to environmentalism.

Too many children and families live in poverty.

No Government over recent decades has covered themselves in glory on these fronts and National is hardly testing Labour when it comes to big-picture stuff. It prefers to dabble around in populist policies like crime and Three Waters, with its racial dog whistle.

But we’re the real problem. Politicians promise us what they think we want to hear.

It’s understandable that at a time when people feel poorer, policies with a less immediate dividend – like infrastructure and skills and technology and the environment – might feel like the wrong answer.

But if not now, when?

In the weather devastation we have seen the result of decades of a preoccupation with hip pocket policies.