Solar Zero 2.0

“In the words of Darryl Kerrigan, ‘tell ‘em he’s dreamin’," says ACT Leader David Seymour in response to Labour’s latest boondoogle proposal.

“When politicians engage in fiscal fantasies, they can’t fix what matters. They take their eye off the health, education and infrastructure balls, and we all fall further behind. All Labour have planted today is the seeds of another cleanup job for the Government after them, if they ever get to kick off this disaster-in-a-can.

“After the disasters of The Green Investment Fund – that lost money hand-over-fist on investments like Solar Zero – and the fiasco of Kiwibuild, Labour’s so-called ‘Future Fund’ is decidedly Back to the Future.

“A Party that learns would have taken a lesson from their last expensive attempts at centralisation. Politicians simply do not make good investment decisions. Young New Zealanders already have billions of reasons to reject any more fiscal adventurism from Labour.

“Take the Green Investment Fund, which went boots and all into Solar Zero. It’s now in tatters, letting down customers as well as the investors who are carrying the can for it. If the last Labour Government had just put the Green Investment Fund in Kiwisaver, we’d all be better off today, but they lost hundreds of millions.

“Kiwibuild was another expensive Labour Disaster. The 'path to prosperity', in that case home ownership, was supposedly for the Government to make more decisions about who built what where. In practice, no politician invests other people’s money as well as the person would invest it themselves.

“Labour won’t tell us how many billions they’d spend on their new ‘Future Fund’. That would be too honest – New Zealanders could see just how badly the government books would be hit, and just how much extra tax we’ll all have to pay.

“They won’t tell us what the investment ‘objectives’ of the Fund will be, other than that the returns will be ‘social’. In other words, bureaucrats will pick winners based on what’s fashionable, not based on what can actually turn a profit.

“What New Zealand needs is a Government with firm discipline, staying in its lane and sticking to its knitting. We need quality public services funded by taxes raised from a growing private economy. As soon as politicians mix their drinks, thinking they are Wolves of Wall Street, the losses to taxpayers present and future start mounting.

“Next year I’ll be asking New Zealanders to vote ACT to keep Labour's loopy ideas and anything like theirs out of power."