‘‘At Labour’s launch you could close your eyes and pretend to be at a National Party conference without much effort.’’
You get applause for a lot of odd things at political rallies. But it was still surprising when a single solitary voice from the sea of red at Auckland Town Hall yesterday yelled ‘‘yeah!’’ after Labour leader Jacinda Ardern said the party would be purposefully not spending $14 billion from its Covid fund, to save in case of a second wave.
The idea of coronavirus shutting down the entire country again isn’t exactly exciting to most people, and fiscal prudence isn’t usually what gets a Labour crowd going.
And yet that whoop was joined by widespread applause, as was Ardern’s praise of her finance minister, Grant Robertson, for keeping the spending tight ahead of the crisis. There was even a line with some praise for former National Prime Minister John Key. You could close your eyes and, without much effort, pretend you were at a National Party conference.
This was Labour’s campaign launch and first real policy release. Finally, after three years of only promoting things that could pass the Winston Peters test, Ardern had a chance to release some properly Labour Party policy, the kind of ‘‘transformation’’ stuff she had been itching to do all term but couldn’t get away with.
Instead, she launched a hiring subsidy so centrist that the National Party already built it in 2012, albeit in a different form. And it isn’t even new spending: The whole $311 million package comes from left-over money unspent by the extension to the wage subsidy.
The hiring subsidy may well be good public policy. It would pay a bonus of up to $22,000 per employee for businesses taking on or retaining
people at risk of long-term unemployment, for a maximum of 40,000 jobs across the country. The job would need to be sustainable, and the business couldn’t just use the subsidy to keep their entire workforce on.
Ardern was unable to say exactly how many net jobs would actually be added – presumably, if a job is sustainable in the long-term it could well already exist – but even if it doesn’t create new jobs it does incentivise people to take a second look at someone they might have previously rejected, which is probably a good thing. The scheme is far more targeted than National’s proposed JobStart policy, which would have paid $10,000 to everyone who took on a full-time worker during a set of months.
But what it isn’t is particularly Labour. BusinessNZ were effusive in their praise for it, and even National leader Judith Collins was only able to muster a ‘‘we did it first’’. This was Ardern’s first chance in a long while to set out what her party stood for, outside of the binds of Peters, and she released a policy that you would probably get 119 votes for in Parliament. Indeed, it’s hard to see why the Government wouldn’t just put it into effect before the election, if it was such a good idea and the money is just lying around unspent.
It makes total sense for Labour to campaign from the centre. Centrism is probably the route to keeping that huge swath of voters Ardern won over during lockdown on their side through September 19. The party’s base loves Ardern and hates Collins enough that they would probably be out door-knocking if Ardern announced a business tax cut next.
But voters do deserve a contest of ideas, and not just one fought between the Green Party and ACT, who have released policies that really tap into the ideologies of each party. At some point we could all use a little less triangulation and bit more of an ideological clash.
The party’s base loves Jacinda Ardern and hates Judith Collins enough that they would probably be out door-knocking if Ardern announced a business tax cut next.