So it’s all hunky dory, then
Happy days are here again for New Zealand’s economy, so stand by for the trickle-down effect.
WOOHOO! New Zealand’s economy is a rock star again. This is such wonderful news for everyone who calls Aotearoa home. Across the country tomorrow there should be an agreed time when those of us who drink should down shots in celebration.
That’s the sort of thing rock stars would do. Tee-totallers can nominate their drinking friends or relatives to take their shot for them. Can’t wait for all that extra money to flow into areas such as fixing inequality.
Just in time too, because issues like child poverty and homelessness are becoming as normal and as Kiwi as eating an icecream from the dairy on a hot summer’s day.
Still, Finance Minister Bill English didn’t want us to think news of this expected 3.5 per cent rise in economic growth would lead to more money for some of us via tax cuts, so that we could at least pretend to live like rock stars.
He said that type of language was unhelpful.
Maybe New Zealand is the type of rock star who prefers to stay home on weekends and put something away for a rainy day.
Or perhaps a rock star economy is one where more people get to live the high life at the expense of the multitudes who get to watch them have a good time.
What the heck is a rock star economy? And shouldn’t we be careful about what sort of rock star it is?
Australia has just rebounded with 3.3 per cent growth. Not as high as ours. Does that make theirs a lead guitarist economy?
What if ours is like one of those rock stars who burns out really quickly? Like when Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens died in a plane crash while on tour in 1959.
Ideally, we’d want to be like David Bowie – incredibly respected, enduring and forever remembered fondly.
Even if our economy was like Bono, that would be OK because then at least it would be good for the environment.
Just so long as it’s not one of those rock stars who end up crashing and burning in flames of hubris, self-destruction, abuse and addiction. That would suck.
But even in all this delirious good news about the state of the nation, there’s one nagging thought that’s been bringing me down – poor Colin Craig.
I don’t know Craig at all. Even though he has been in the public eye for years during his pursuit of political power, I feel no closer to knowing him.
He’s always been that wellmeaning Christian guy from the Shore with money and ambition, the guy who really wants to be in Parliament.
But now I feel I know more about him than I ever needed to, and it’s not even his fault.
Craig is being sued for defamation and the two-week GETTY IMAGES hearing has revealed intimate details of his relationship with his former press secretary.
I feel for sorry for her too. And still don’t understand why excruciating details, claims and counter-claims of their working time together need to be pored over in public.
Coverage of the trial has read like a long, weird Facebook thread about a relationship that went wrong.
We can only hope that however the court case turns out, the rockstar economy has great things in store for them as well.