Guest Post: Robbery or Reform

A guest post by Owen Jennings:

I am had it with the promises.  Parties of all persuasions trying to outbid each other with my money.  Bah humbug.

The country’s economy is in a mess.  It was in a mess before Covid.  All that Covid has done is hasten the day of reckoning and helped highlight the burgeoning debt.  But the rot was in long before that.  Bill English made a half hearted attempt to pull things together after the growing shambles left by Clark and Cullen.  But there was shambles even before Labour.

We are trying to live a five star lifestyle on a two star income.   We spend like a fat cat and earn like an alley cat.  We want the cake with all the trimmings but we can barely afford the flour and sugar.

How about hearing some honesty and realism from a politician on the hustings.  How about a pretender who stands up and admits to the real problems and offers the country a gutsy, sensible solution?  No more bribes.  No more handouts.  How about the truth?  How about a reform package that deals to the enormous problems that we keep kicking down the road?  Probity before power.  Courage and conviction before comfort and cloying.

Any takers?  No?  ACT maybe?  Or have they resorted to populist vote buying too?

Thereby lies part of the problem.  Any party or politician who promised reform of the magnitude and type required would “be gone by lunchtime”.  The MSM would crucify and then ignore.  We are so conditioned to being promised the moon we think we own it.  There is almost zero understanding of the perilous position we are in.  When you are sucking the tit you don’t want to hear the udder is dry.

What would a party with balls offer?

They would face the debt mountain and the agony that health care and superannuation are rapidly becoming unaffordable.  The change in demographics – short hand for we are getting too many oldies and not enough wealth generators – coupled with demands for more and more fancy healthcare options, has the country heading for a precipice. 

And, no, growth in GDP won’t fix it.  Our real GDP/capita is stuffed.  We don’t know how to work smart, how to achieve higher productivity, how to attract high performers as immigrants, how to figure out shifting investment from low return housing to high tech, how to create an attractive new business investment climate, how to improve the quality of our exports rather than the quantity.

How many politicians are focusing on any of the above?  Instead they are clambering over one another to build a bikeway over a vulnerable harbour bridge.  We want to give ourselves more holidays, more sick days, more guaranteed paypackets – all “nice to have” items but they are an unaffordable distraction.

We are fighting over how to get more low skilled workers into the country when we need high skilled people with capital to invest.

Poverty, homelessness, truancy, crime, drug taking and most of our social ills are dealt to by throwing a seemingly endless amount of money at them. Haven’t we learnt yet?  More money gets you more of what you already have, not less. Good physicians treat causes, not symptoms.

We are becoming a nation of low performing advisors.  Politicians from central Government to community boards cannot make decisions any more.  They don’t have the gumption or the training and they don’t have the guts to deliver. They hide behind faceless consultants and toothless committees.  Costs go up and productivity goes down.

Our once envied and proud Public Service is a shadow of what it once was.  We have gone for quantity not quality.  Can a population of 5 million people (a medium sized city in many places) really justify 150 departments, 26 Cabinet Ministers and Under Secretaries, 80 local authorities, endless numbers of states agencies, 8 universities, all expensive fiefdoms with grossly overpaid staff.  There are populations of 5 million with one governing authority, one hospital, one bureaucracy.

With all of that low productivity army we cannot fix a housing problem, we are lost in a jungle of low quality, inadequate roading, uneconomic rail, battles over ports, broken sewerage and water infrastructure.   Our kids are leaving school poorly educated, often unable to read or write and feeling the world owes them everything.  Our health system is managed by waiting lists and trying to supply ambulances at the bottom of the cliff.  Welfare is about entitlement not need.

Problems are not fixed till they are recognised and fully understood.  Once the focus is clear then its large reform steps, clear explanations, emergency powers and a well constructed plan.  Make labour productivity, less regulation, an investment attractive climate, smaller government, improved incentives and living within our means the cornerstones.

The longer we leave the day of reckoning the harder it will be.  I fear for my grandchildren having to live through the reforms because it won’t be pretty.  It will be as tumultuous as it will be inevitable.

Mention gutsy reformers like Douglas and Richardson and hear the howls of outrage.  The fiddlers fiddle and Rome burns.  Is there a politician who cares?  Do any understand?  Is there a steely spine among them?  I doubt it.  But happen, it will.  Call it necessity.