You base this rather bizarre claim on what exactly?

The ratio of state-spending to GDP is rather meaningless in terms of the overall influence of the government in the economy. As I pointed out with regard to the fact an award system would eliminate the need for the working for families scheme, a shift toward the command end of the mixed economy would be likely to reduce the size of government spending in relation to GDP. Is this what you are advocating?

Unfortunately at 2001 the accounting rules changed around that date the so numbers before and after cannot be compared directly.

As for your struggle to believe that any post-war government being smaller in real terms than the government was in 1999 I include the following link for you

http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:65S8XiCwApsJ:epress.anu.edu.au/agenda/005/03/5-3-A-2.pdf+post+war+size+of+government+gdp+new+zealand&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=nz

If you have a gander at that you will see that the size of Government as a percentage of GDP in 1973-74 (Under a Labour Government it must be stated) was 28 percent.

I’m not great on maths but I believe 28 percent is less than 34.5 percent wouldn’t you agree..

Yes very well said. Incomprehensible to most people, but very well said.

the Australians have had a flyer. They have already moved smartly into growth mode… The Australian recovery… reflects… a different approach to economic management.

Does he make this stuff up or is he angling for a seat on Rudd’s front bench?

The Australian economy is recovering on the back of stronger-than-expected demand from China and is in fact very patchy with, for instance, a sharp drop in unemployment in WA more than offsetting rises in the “basket case” states of Victoria and NSW. The danger for Australia is far from over.

Yes, the Labour government went into “pump priming” mode but did so by handing out cheques to anyone on a benefit, who spent it on Christmas presents (mostly imported) for their kids this time last year, then another $900 to every taxpayer, who promptly went out and bought an (imported) flat screen TV or new (imported) mag wheels for their Holden.

It provided a bit of a boost for the retail sector but the closures of Australian manufacturing plants have continued.

And as for a “different approach”, the Australian government allows the Reserve Bank to focus solely on inflation at the expense of all other factors, so of course the RBA was the first central bank in the world to raise rates after the GFC and has been doing so every month, including just yesterday even though mortgage payers were begging for them to hold off till after Christmas.

The Governor was talking as though the GFC was a thing of the past, blindly ignoring the state of the economy in the US, Britain and even China all of which will have long term negative impacts on Australia.

Westpac has already announced it’s raising its rates by double the RBA’s rise, so we’re backt to usury-as-normal in the banking sector, except that the government panicked during the GFC and let Westpac buy St George and Commonwealth buy Bankwest, further reducing competition in the banking sector since non-bank lenders were crashing like flies round a barbecue zapper.

This has made business finance almost impossible to obtain and I personally know of several deals, some involving millions, which have fallen over even after contracts have been signed because banks have pulled out, preferring to once again bloat their profits by facilitating property speculation over productive investment.

If that’s doing things differently, I’d like to see Gould’s definition of a government timidly following failed orthodoxy.

In fact when I think about the role of the crown in the conception of New Zealand as a nation state and in pretty much all of its subsequent trading and development between then and the late 1980′s I’d seriously start to wonder if it’s role was ever as small in real terms as it was in 1999.

I’d also be interested to see what countries with comparative sized economies to New Zealand’s have smaller levels of government as the only first world nations I can think of that would have smaller government to gdp ratios than we do also have much greater populations and economies.

There were certainly private sector issues that needed to be sorted by the last government. Stronger regulation of the finance sector would have been a good start and an award system would have been a good idea too (and probably would have negated the need for WFF). However I think your conclusion that this government’s options are limited because it is already too big are based on the fallacious idea that the government is too big.

The problem with National is not ideas but political courage, of which they have absolutely none. All the political capital they will ever have, a weak opposition, and still no willingness to spend any of it doing what they presumably believe is the right thing. Instead they focus group it all the way.

Most of the places that Brownlee wants to open up are either recent metamorphic and heavily faulted or recent volcanic. The probability of finding even remotely viable pockets is bloody low. It is hard enough to even find coal seams large enough to work with machines. Frankly the best bet is offshore in the basins. But even most of those are too unstable for substantive deposits to have formed. Shows up in these mini gas fields and empty oil domes.

We’d be better off working on the tourism. Better chance of a long-term return.

I had however always understood (and have experience) that the deposits are there. Coro for example is loaded and not that difficult to get to (enviro issues aside for a mo). Example being the favona lode found in last few years within 500m (yes 500 metres) of the current Waihi mining company’s processing area. A massive, previously mostly unknown deposit, in about the most perfect location right when there happenned to be a processing plant in operation right above it. Quite a story! And there plenty more.

I will be very interested, from a mining perspective, to see what Brownlee’s ‘stocktake’ comes up with.