National’s terrible deal making

• mickysavage
• 9 years ago
• Categories: Economy, Globalisation, Hekia parata, john key, national, same old national, slippery, Steven Joyce
• Tags: cycle way, murray mccully, novopay, Rio Tinto, serco, sheepgate, TPPA, warner bros

(Graphic from Lamia)

We are well into this National Government’s third term and the weaknesses are now very clear.

John Key’s reputation as a formidable wheeler dealer deal maker is clearly mythological rather than real. And a series of deals have been completed based entirely on a prejudice that private enterprise does things better than the state.  But the reality does not match National’s ideologically blinkered view.

These deals include the following and there are multiple posts on The Standard on each one.

• Novopay – the go live decision that has cost us $45 million was signed off by English, Joyce and Foss despite the awareness that there were multiple faults with the system at the time.
• Tiwai Point and Rio Tinto – where a foreign multinational corporation exploited the Government’s insistence of partially privatising our power companies and was paid $30 million dollars to continue in business for a short period of time.
• Warner Brothers – a threat to move filming overseas when clearly this would not happen resulted in $30 million tax credits, rushed legislation and some manufactured news for John Key.  Irish Bill’s analysis here is compulsory reading if you want to understand the extent of the duplicity that National engaged in.
• Saudi sheep – where we have the payment of a failed bribe, a sheep farm in a Saudi desert where most of the lambs died, negotiation of a MOU with a foreign state where National’s behaviour has been described as duplicitous and an active attempt to avoid legal and bureaucratic oversight.
• Trans Pacific partnership – where we are giving up our sovereignty, Pharmac’s effectiveness and opening up our Government being sued whenever it acts in the public good all for the possibility of a minuscule increase in overseas markets for milk we currently produce at a loss.
• Sky City – where the Government has sold legislative provisions, engaged in a contractual process described as banana republic stuff without the bananas and created future increased problem gambling and misery for a convention centre with hopelessly optimistic predictions of job creation and economic activity.
• Serco – it has become abundantly clear that the so called innovative approach does not exist and Serco’s profits depend on cutting prison officer numbers and allowing the gangs to take over.  Inmate deaths, the hiding of violent incidents because they affect the bottom line, rampant drug taking and prisoner violence appear to have become the norm.
• Charter schools – where instead of closing a failing charter school as recommended Hekia Parata gave that school more money.

And National’s economic strategy?  It appears to be a combination of trust private enterprise, multiple dairy conversions, a cycleway (remember that?), building holiday highways, an Auckland real estate boom and precious little else.  National clearly lacks the skills to create a modern economy and a modern state.  Without heavy borrowing and the Christchurch rebuild our economy would be in tatters.

It is not only the lack of substance that is becoming increasing clear.  It is also that National’s and Key’s style in creating a media narrative that does not match reality is now being increasingly clear.  About time.

Andrea Vance said this in this morning’s Sunday Star Times:

The Government signed up to the OGP – an international initiative – two years ago. Last year it ponied up $50,000 to support the organisation. As a member it is bound to commit to “ambitious commitments to foster transparency, accountability and public participation.”

As such it is obliged to ask the public for their ideas and concerns. But its first action was to limit that feedback window to a little over three weeks – a move Transparency International labelled “insulting.”

Around the same time that Guy was delivering his Saudi speech, Key told a TV interviewer: “We’ve been way more transparent than any other Government that’s been around, I mean we’re the people who opened up disclosure in Parliament in a major way.”

Transparency in real life and political transparency are two very different things.  National is adept in proliferating information that displaces the facts or obfuscates.  The truth often comes out in the wash – as it did with the official papers on the Saudi deal – but by then it is too late.

It doesn’t matter that many of National’s claims about the Saudi deal are disproved by the documents, because the Government’s version has taken root and most people have moved on.

Hopefully now there will be increased analysis of the reality behind National’s performance.  Because if the deals described above are indications then National’s reputation as a dealmaker needs to be reviewed.  Urgently.