What’s at Stake?

The Haps

The nation farewells Jim Bolger who, with Ruth Richardson, gave New Zealand balanced budgets and pushed union mediocrity out of (most) workplace(s). His Government also commenced the Treaty settlement process, modern New Zealand would not be the same without him.

Te Pāti Māori keep showing zero respect for anyone else, but will Māori electorate voters give them the heave? Meanwhile ACT’s campaign to free University of Auckland students from the compulsory matauranga Māori courses has succeeded for most degrees. A few holdout departments still insist on indoctrinating their paying customers.

New charter schools are opening all over the country, showing one size doesn’t fit all, and education can be different. Today’s announcement of a partnership with the Phoenix football team to run an elite sports school will not be for every student. For those with the talent and who want a crack at an elite sports journey while keeping their academic bases covered, though, it is a perfect example of how charter schools show education can be different, and better.

What’s at Stake?

Labour have managed to keep their polling up by refusing to release any policy for two years. We don’t really mind because their policies are terrible, but if there’s any chance they could get in next year then we need to know what they are.

Today they broke their self-imposed silence to share their first policy in two years. They’ve done a great service by showing us voters what’s at stake next year. If you thought Labour might be the sensible ballast to the raving Greens and Te Pāti Māori, you needn’t seek that refuge any longer.

Labour’s promised (threatened?) ‘Future Fund’ would take the dividends from the few profitable businesses the Government owns (mainly power companies). It would put them into more business ventures. The Government would lose the dividends it’s currently using for general funds. It would need to borrow more, tax more, or spend less elsewhere.

So the fund is a red herring. All they’re really saying is that they’d stop collecting the dividends for general purposes and use them for something else. Then they’d probably borrow more to cover that loss, unless they decided to tax more. The net result is your taxes go into business investments Labour think will be politically popular.

Then the fund would start ‘investing in New Zealand businesses.’ It’s like the Green Investment Fund all over again. That’s the one that invested in Solar Zero, the one that is now letting down customers all over the country and which has lost the taxpayer $115 million, unless the liquidators can get something back.

Kiwibuild was the same in many ways, the underlying idea was that if politicians and bureaucrats could get more active in the economy, they could outperform the private sector. Of course, Kiwbuild became a byword for government incompetence, with the homes costing far more than private ones, being overspec’d and in the wrong places to meet the market.

The Provincial Growth Fund was founded on the same mistake – the belief politicians could tell what businesses to invest in. Of course they couldn’t. If they could they would not be politicians. They would be rich. If they still decided to be politicians they would not need to fundraise, they could just use the proceeds of their Midas touch to fund their campaigns.

There is a darker side to all this. New Zealand is a small country. How do you settle a line call? How do you know which businesses to invest in? Who do you really trust? Who did you go to school with? Whose bach have you visited? Do they have a boat? Is it nice?

New Zealand thankfully doesn’t have the kind of corruption others around the world face, with brown paper bags, but giving a few politicians and officials billions of other people’s money to hand out is always a questionable idea. It’s especially questionable when they don’t stand to be rewarded handsomely for making good investments like investors in the private sector. They’re either bloody talented and public spirited, or it’s not going to work.

The truth is that in politics and in life there are no shortcuts. There are no get-rich-quick schemes for countries, no matter how much we wish for one. Labour’s idea amounts to taking money currently being managed conservatively for the taxpayer benefit, and having a flutter in a very public way to play on that desperate wish.

What’s worse, such fiscal fantasies distract attention from fixing what matters. Every day the ACT Party is cutting red tape and pushing for value out of taxpayer money. Another failure of the last Labour Government is that trying to take shortcuts stopped them doing the hard graft that the current Government must now catch up on.

It won’t work, and Labour have finally given us an up-to-date, concrete example of why We. Must. Keep. Them. Out.