Espiner on Labour hypocrisy

I was expecting yesterday in the House to be a bloodbath, but from the sounds of it Labour overplayed their hand, and National got some useful shots away on Field, Air New Zealand and the Electoral Finance Bill.  A draw is what one journalist called it.

In terms if private sector involvement, Colin Espiner makes some observations:

The way Labour’s senior ministers are beginning to sound, the involvement of any private enterprise whatsoever in the state sector is becoming as heretical as the Catholic Church embracing Islam.

Isn’t this the Government that … passed legislation specifically enabling the formation of PPPs in the transport sector?

Isn’t this the same Government that frequently enters into its own public-private arrangements with sponsors for big events?

It’s certainly the same Government, as National’s education spokeswoman Katherine Rich pointed out in the House today, that is quite happy to let private providers virtually run the early childhood sector, own the buildings of around 300 state schools and 100 private schools, and build and own the Ministry of Education’s headquarters in Wellington.

Rich also served Education Minister Steve Maharey’s pious whingeing about PPPs right back at him, with a lovely quote dredged up from Trevor Mallard speaking to the devil incarnate itself – the New Zealand Infrastructure Council – last November.

“We want to see more action,” Mallard enthused to the assembled developers and financiers that make up the council. “And there is a more important issue than whether new construction is privately or publicly funded. The Government is open-minded about the use of public-private partnerships.”

Oh really? Well, until it becomes politically expedient to say otherwise, anyway.

Another reminder of how two-faced Labour is becoming on the private sector came from National’s deputy Bill English in Parliament today, who reminded Finance Minister Michael Cullen that despite his new-found aversion to selling state assets, the Government appeared to need a process to protect the sale of sensitive Crown land.

“It may come as a shock to the member to know that the Crown has been selling and buying land since approximately 1840,” Cullen replied, before realising he’d effectively made English’s point.

Private contractors and companies work in every facet of government and the public sector, from the self-employed muffin lady at the Department of Work and Income to the private software developers working with the Ministry of Education to put computer-assisted learning programmes in schools.

The public education system pays private schools to educate thousands of New Zealanders and couldn’t cope if the network fell over tomorrow. Ditto the public health sector, which would be lost without the network of independent GPs, specialists, private hospitals, and surgeons that the state pays to meet the services that the public system is too stretched to provide.

Sure, there’s arguments over how far it should all go. But don’t let Labour fool you into thinking that somehow National wants to take the country in “a radical new direction” as Steve Maharey said in Parliament today. Most of National’s policies to date are actually incredibly mild, and certainly no different to what happens in the UK, or Australia, or Canada, or any other social-democratic Western country with which we like to compare ourselves.

I’v quoted so much of Colin’s article I probably owe him royalties.  Good to see him linking to source material such as oral questions also – a real feature of blogging.

Colins’ final words are also worth noting – for both National and Labour:

National’s big mistake has been doing such a lousy sales job on those policies, but there are signs that it is finally taking the argument back to Labour. It’ll be interesting to see just how far the Government wants to push this.

Besides risking accusations of scare-mongering, it’s probably seriously annoying the business community, which won’t take kindly to being portrayed as some sort of rapacious beast intent on asset-stripping the state sector. OK, sure, that has happened a couple of times in the past actually – the sale of Telecom springs to mind. But to argue that the private sector doesn’t have some expertise that can be used for the benefit of all is – well, socialist, I guess.

And that’s fine. It’s a legitimate political philosophy with a proud pedigree, if somewhat chequered in practice. But I doubt Labour in 2007 would accept such an epithet. Which is why I can detect a certain whiff of a word beginning with ”H” around the Beehive at the moment. It’s a word which you’re not allowed to use in Parliament but I can here – hypocrisy.

Indeed.  The same word applies to the fury over Key saying the war in Iraq was over – statements Clark has also made.