Was Ardern’s vision really just a dream?

When then-freshly minted Labour leader Jacinda Ardern took on prime minister Bill English in the 2017 election leaders’ debates, she met her opponent’s barrage of facts and figures with something else: a vision, and values.

When English was asked for his vision of New Zealand, he listed achievements of the government, including completing the longawaited Waterview tunnel. ‘‘Waterview is great,’’ Ardern replied, ‘‘but it’s not a vision.’’

Five years in as prime minister, however, the same question must be asked of Ardern as many prophets throughout the ages: was what seemed like a vision really just a dream?

Like a dream recalled on waking, Ardern seems to hold the general feeling of the vision as strongly as ever.

But on trying to home in and reach for specifics, it seems ever out of reach.

When grilled by Q+A host Jack Tame over the weekend about her Government’s record on child poverty, housing and many of the other parts of the vision, Ardern countered that the alternative was to lower her aspirations.

Perhaps not. A vision and $4.50 will still get you a flat white, after all. But the Government could certainly do with lowering its sights to look at the granular detail that makes up its grand impressionistic view of the world.

The clear, clean, modernist lines of the wiring diagrams showing the benefits of a newly centralised polytechnic body, Te Pu¯ kenga, and Health NZ, give way on closer inspection to a muddied lack of detail. The on-the-ground changes necessary to realise benefits are either still in development or woefully stalled.

And as the Government pivots and pirouettes in an attempt to respond to the cost of living crisis, its movements start to resemble playing dodgeball to avoid the ricochet of its last movements.

If a vision should provide a guiding star for action, the Government can at least be accused of a lack of conceptual clarity in its rolling money drops, most recently the Cost of Living payment targeted at workers earning under $70,000 in the past tax year.

The payment was developed almost ‘‘overnight’’, according to Justice Minister Kiritapu Allan: understandable during a unique event like Covid, but less forgivable two years on from the heady days of the wage subsidy.

Problems are appearing, not least philosophically.

Poverty advocates have pointed out that beneficiaries and superannuitants (or at least those who are not double-dipping on employment income and universal super) are on fixed incomes and so most vulnerable to the recent sudden increases in the cost of living.

However, they are specifically excluded from the Cost of Living (COL) payment.

In contrast, those on fixed incomes were in general least affected by Covid-19 lockdowns which forced the closure or downscaling of many businesses. Nonetheless, their winter energy payments were doubled by Ardern and Finance Minister Grant Robertson as part of the elimination strategy.

The thinking does not seem coherent.

Now the COL payment is turning up, like Carmen Sandiego, all around the globe, to high income earners in the UK who have not lived in New Zealand for years. It’s another hit for the Government’s reputation of managerial competence and, possibly, knowledge of geography.

Revenue Minister David Parker said that only 1% of payments had gone astray. But it’s unclear how that figure was reached given the obvious uncertainties in distributing the payment in the first place. Around 2000 recipients opted out of the payment this week, which according to Parker’s estimate means one in 10 of all Kiwis who received it in error were glued to their New Zealand news feeds and logging in to MyIRD to correct the error.

The true number is likely much higher. In a broader sense, however, the payment botchup is only a misshapen sibling of the unclear thinking around the more expensive fuel excise cut.

While there are identifiable people getting the COL payment who are not entitled to it (although, as Parker notes, it would be impracticable to pursue them), many more commuters who have some way to go before joining the ranks of middle-income will be perfectly properly taking advantage of discounted petrol.

We may never get to the bottom of the true waste of the COL. If the correct figure is around 1%, then that is probably a reasonable tradeoff in terms of waste versus administration costs. But Parker, channelling Donald Rumsfeld, admitted, ‘‘you can’t know what you don’t know’’. Fumbling around in the dark on this, the Government is in more ways than one operating in a low-vision environment.