The Press fails Clark

Today’s Press editorial:

Prime Minister Helen Clark has had two opportunities so far this year for big, stage-managed and headline-grabbing pronouncements on her Government’s election-year agenda, …

Twice, she has let down those voters hoping for imaginative and robust proposals to attend to the nation’s needs. She seems more preoccupied for now with simply pressing voters’ buttons, while side-stepping the inevitable questions that seek the substance behind these set-piece speeches…

Perhaps the only real clarity that can be taken from Clark’s speech is the signal that, if returned to office, she intends her Government to redouble its Wellington-knows-best efforts and continue to attempt to rescue suffering taxpayers by spending their money for them on ill-conceived pipe dreams.

The reactive nature of the housing policy carries some uncanny echoes of Clark’s state-of-the-nation speech a couple of weeks earlier, when she vowed to raise the school or training leaving age to 18, but with none of the detail in place to provide answers to the many questions immediately prompted…

Considering one of the “new”policies announced is actually 14 years old, there really is no excuse for the lack of detail.