A range of interesting political/economic comment today in the Herald:
Fran O’Sullivan joins the left-wing and groups like Federated Farmers in calling on the Key Government to sort out monetary policy. At the moment, the Reserve Bank is tasked solely with controlling inflation with interest rates as its only real tool, while the exchange is free and no-one has a job of keeping it in a stable range to assist exporters. The result is massive currency fluctations as hot money from overseas comes in to take advnatage of our higher interest rates then flees at the slightest sign of trouble. Something does need to be done but I think O’Sullivan’s barking up the wrong tree if she expects a former currency trader and a former Treasury official Dipton-based farmer to do anything about it.
Brian Gaynor writes about the success of Kiwisaver, which will compete with the Cullen Fund, Working for Families, minimum wage increases, improved work rights, restored public services, and interest-free student loans as the greatest legacy of the Fifth Labour Government. He reveals that, despite National’s claims that reducing the minimum contributions from employers and Kiwisavers to 2% would help more people join, in fact most new members since the change are contributing 4% (350,000 more members since November – 850,000 to 1.2 million – 150,000, 12%, on contributing 2%). Like The Standard‘s writers were saying at the time, the Kiwisaver clawbacks were all about National looking after business, reducing the cost to them, not getting more people in Kiwisaver.
The Herald editorial calls on Key to “rescind” his promise to resign from Parliament before changing superannuation entitlements. That’s basically the Herald saying ‘if you do it, John, we’ll give you a free-ride, nudge, nudge’.
Well, I don’t know about you but where I come from, you can’t just “rescind” a promise, especially when people have voted in good faith based on that promise. The promise not to muck around with super, like the promise not to privatise public assets, was important in shoring up National’s support when it had been plunging following Bill English’s drunken comments about selling Kiwibank. New Zealanders elected Key after he made his empathatic promise that super was safe. They won’t forgive him if he breaks his word on that one.
Brian Fallow skewers Key’s ‘do-nothing’ approach to running the economy:
the measures the Government undertook to “take the sharp edges off the recession” have been useful but pretty marginal in the overall scheme of things.
The ReStart package of assistance for people made redundant has benefited just over 5000 people since its inception in December. But there are 138,000 people officially unemployed and 60,000 drawing the unemployment benefit.
The Job Support scheme, supporting firms which shift to a nine-day fortnight, has just 39 businesses taking part. There have been tax changes to ease cashflow pressures on smaller businesses, though they do not reduce their final tax bills. The “rolling maul” and the Jobs Summit have not left deep footprints.
What then of progress towards addressing the economy’s deep-seated structural weaknesses and achieving the “step change” in economic performance the Prime Minister likes to speak of?
Brian says things will need to change next year and the government will start to take more action. But with a PM whose priority is being popular and a finance minister who, as others have noted, seems to think of him as a mere observer of events, I’m not sure.
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