Grant Robertson gave his valedictory speech last night. It was very well crafted and gave a real insight into his time in Parliament. No analysis is necessary because he summarised things up very well. But there are three areas where what he said needs repeating.
About the Covid period he elegantly recorded in a factual way what happened. He said this:
I remember vividly the day we shut the borders. We did it on a teleconference of Cabinet. I was in Jacinda’s electorate office with her. When the call ended, we looked at each other and recognised the enormity of what we had done. It felt very heavy. I tried to lighten the moment by noting that I knew when we went into coalition with New Zealand First our immigration policy might change, but I didn’t think it would go this far. Jacinda didn’t laugh.
As finance Minister, I was looking at some dire forecasts. Globally, financial markets were in freefall. We were told that bond markets could dry up, Treasury were forecasting 13.5 percent unemployment and mass business failures.
We were heading into unknown territory at every turn. Early on, we knew Air New Zealand was in trouble. The border closures here and overseas were cutting their revenue to next to nothing overnight. We pulled together the $900 million loan package in a very short few days.
When it came time to announce it, it coincided with the directive for Beehive staff to work from home. We scrambled out a media release, I hand-wrote some talking points, and headed down on my own to the theatrette to announce it. A small number of journalists were sitting there. After I had finished speaking, one of them said, “Why have you done this?” I said, “Because Air NZ would be insolvent in months if we didn’t.” Everyone just kind of nodded. As I walked out, Pattrick Smellie said to me, “On any other day, that would have been the biggest financial story of the year.” I agreed, as we stood in the Beehive foyer with staff coming by carrying screens and printers, wondering if they would ever be coming back.
As we got into lockdown, we settled into some routines. There were only seven staff actually working in the Beehive. I was completely alone on the seventh floor. Of course, no shops were open, and at the beginning we hadn’t been to the supermarket. Like some kind of latter-day Bruno Lawerence in the movie The Quiet Earth, I roamed the office in search of food, eventually stealing the bread from Kelvin Davis’s freezer. Things improved dramatically on the catering front when Leroy Taylor began his daily sausage roll – making.
The Government’s approach to the virus was to go hard and early. In the finance space, this translated to focusing on cash flow and confidence. The wage subsidy was the centrepiece of this support. We wanted a scheme that would keep people in their jobs and save businesses at the same time. We also knew that it needed to be available quickly and for long enough to give confidence. The work done by the Ministry of Social Development in particular to make this happen was positively heroic. At one point, they were processing 21 applications a minute.
In the 2020 election campaign, I remember being in Featherston one day, waiting outside the community centre for an announcement. A filthy ute came past, and my first thought was that Kieran McAnulty had arrived. But it wasn’t. It was a builder who had pulled over to talk to us. He walked over to me and shook my hand. He told the story of telling his employees, his various contracts they had were cancelled, that he would probably have to let them go. He and his wife sat down one night to look into the wage subsidy. They filled out the forms and were gobsmacked when the money was in their account the next day. Every single one of those staff had their job kept. In the end, across the lockdowns, the wage subsidy paid out $19 billion and protected more than 1.8 million jobs.
There were many other schemes that we developed fast: the Small Business Cashflow Loan Scheme, the Business Finance Guarantee Scheme, COVID-19 Income Relief Payment, the leave support payment. The combined result of all of this and the hard mahi of New Zealanders was that unemployment never went above 5.4 percent, and it actually fell to record lows and business failures were lower than in a normal year.
And you don’t need to take my word for it: New Zealand was one of only a handful of countries to have its credit rating upgraded during the pandemic by the international ratings agencies. It’s worth noting that those credit ratings have been maintained throughout our time in Government.
Now, these great results, of course, pale into insignificance in the face of the one statistic that matters: the number of lives saved. On that measure, New Zealand stood head and shoulders above others, with lower death rates than in normal years. Those statistics are real people. We know exactly who they were, if we look around the rest of the world. They were our grandparents, neighbours, kaumātua, and kuia. To coin a phrase: they are us. Savings those lives trumps any statistics or any hate on social media.
He clearly expressed a preference for a capital gains tax:
Alongside the things that I am proud of, there are of course things I could talk about that we did not get to do. I’m just going to talk about one, and my colleagues will not be surprised: New Zealand’s tax system is unfair and unbalanced. We are almost alone in the OECD in terms of not properly taxing assets and wealth in some form. Our current system entrenches inequality. It’s not my place any longer to say specifically what the answer is here, but I do know that the answers are out there. This is not a message for my party alone. The truth is that we need some political consensus about this to ensure we get it right and that it sticks.
But it is his comments about Te Ao Māori that really struck a chord with me. I would have loved to see Winston Peters’ and David Seymour’s faces as he said this:
One of the greatest joys of my life has been connecting more closely to Te Ao Māori, in large part through Alf, his whānau, and the mighty Ngati Porou iwi. They have welcomed me more than could ever be expected. No trip to Ruatōria is complete without being spotted at the Four Square, and the steady stream of visitors to wherever we are staying to share the unrivalled subtle and quiet East Coast wisdom. But one thing I have learnt from my contact with hapū and iwi across the motu: if Māori are doing well, if Māori are supported and enabled, if Māori are given their rangatiranga, we are all better off.
Te Tiriti has been dishonoured by Pākehā settlers, and it has been contentious. It has also been remarkable. It has given our country so much. It’s the framework through which we have sought to right wrongs, to give hope, to come together. It’s an imperfect partnership, but it is one that sets us apart from many other nations in giving place and voice to indigenous people. It sickens me when people use our journey as a nation, and the role and place of Māori, as a political punching bag.
My message to rangatahi and tamariki is that what we are seeing now is but a blip; a small, ugly footnote to the progress we have made, and that you will make in the future. Kia kaha.
He was an exceptional Minister of Finance during an unprecedented time. Go well Grant. And to the remaining Labour Party MPs you gotta give ’em hope.
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