Polity: Key practices 56% truth inflation

Written By: - Date published: 3:48 pm, February 19th, 2014 - 21 comments
Categories: Economy, employment, john key, national, same old national, treasury - Tags:

The original of this post is here.

Here’s the Prime Minister in Question Time yesterday:

Hon David Cunliffe: Is he taking economic advice from Colin Craig and are Māori not looking really hard for jobs as the Māori unemployment rate has increased by 3 percent to almost 13 percent since December 2008?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Again, I go through the issues that have taken place over the course of the last 5 or 6 years. What I do know is that when this Government came in, there were predictions that unemployment would rise to over 10 percent. In fact, that never occurred. Unemployment topped out at, I think, 7.2 or 7.3 percent.

Well I for one would sure like to see where those predictions of 10% unemployment came from, because if we look at Treasury’s official predictions from when John Key took office, the highest unemployment they forecast was only 6.4% – well below the level that National has allowed it to reach.

In fact, here’s a quick chart of Treasury’s December 2008 projections (see p5) of the March quarter unemployment rate, versus the actual March quarter unemployment rate (StatsNZ figures) up to 2013.

Far from outperforming the forecasts as he claims, unemployment under National has always been above the Treasury forecast when he took office, and his performance against the forecasts has recently got worse and worse.

Imagine the outcry if a error this big – on a core policy indicator that matters to many New Zealanders – had been made by a leading opposition politician. Now go looking for any outrage over Key’s error.

21 comments on “Polity: Key practices 56% truth inflation ”

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  1. Tracey 1
    19 February 2014 at 5:39 pm

    Given he believes in giving the public important info he will release his source overnight.

    The herald and others will be on him all week for mis speaking.

    ” Governments and Ministers must enjoy the confidence of the Parliament and, ultimately, the public. Faced with today’s revelations, it is no longer acceptable for Mr Peters to offer bluster and insults where simple, courteous, honest answers are required.

    “It is no longer acceptable or credible for Helen Clark to assert a facade of confidence in her Foreign Affairs Minister and to fail to ask the plain questions of him that she has a duty to the public to ask.”

  2. blue leopard (Get Lost GCSB Bill) 2
    19 February 2014 at 5:56 pm

    I note that National do this type of thing all the time – using ‘comparative language’ (i.e. ‘better than’, ‘improving’ and this above case of ‘better than expected’).

    Their choice of what they then compare the stats with is always dubious. This is what occurred with their notion of the wealth disparity gap ‘improving’ (they pick a time somewhere in the past when it wasn’t great but worse than now and ignore how excellent our income used to be prior to the monolithically stupid neo-liberalist ultraism started being pursued ), or how our wages overall are ‘improving’ (jam together all incomes and use the benefits the wealthiest have experienced to cancel out the lower income group having gone backwards).

    National are very ‘tricky’ and employ weasel words to fool us.

    I wish we had a decent media. At least we have places like The Standard to go to, although this doesn’t help all the people who only get their info from the mainstream media.

  3. One Anonymous Bloke 3
    19 February 2014 at 6:04 pm

    Where’s Paddy “the story” Gower on this one? Is he being a partisan little hack as usual?

    • Akldnut 3.1
      19 February 2014 at 7:30 pm

      Meh……. TV 1 Political reporters = partisan Hacks

    • David H 3.2
      19 February 2014 at 7:58 pm

      Naaa story is already here. Nothing to make up.

    • Stuart Munro 3.3
      20 February 2014 at 12:11 am

      Partisan Hack doesn’t quite cover it I’m afraid. Aparatchik, corrupt apologist or propogandist would be nearer the mark. NZ’s editorial standards have fallen to the level of the North Korean papers – I read a few with a Korean friend doing a research project – very amusing, provided it’s not your own country…

  4. Whatever next 4
    19 February 2014 at 7:49 pm

    Show us the facts John

  5. Lanthanide 5
    19 February 2014 at 11:01 pm

    I don’t think there’s anything particularly radical about this.

    Remember, 2008 was back in the first throes of the GFC. I remember reading articles from economists in the US predicting that the recession s would be worse than the 2001 one, but not as bad the as the 1992-1993 one they had.

    Pretty sure the NZ treasury would have been thinking the same. No mainstream economists were thinking it would get as bad as it did.

    • fender 5.1
      19 February 2014 at 11:53 pm

      No there’s nothing particularly radical about Key plucking figures out of the usual place.

    • Lanthanide 5.2
      20 February 2014 at 9:52 am

      Actually another thing I’m suspicious of is why he’s using treasury’s 2008 forecast instead of one from say 2009 or 2010. I’m sure against the latter predictions, National aren’t doing nearly so bad.

      There’s two sides to this of course: by 2009/2010, treasury had seen National’s policy agenda so had a better idea of where it would be going in terms of unemployment. On the other hand however, they also would have more fully appreciated the GFC and therefore been able to make better forecasts.

      All in all, I think there’s too much uncertainty and a poor backdrop to really lay any particular blame at National for how things panned out. For all we know, their policies helped to stabilise employment more than a Labour government’s would have.

      • lprent 5.2.1
        20 February 2014 at 12:00 pm

        I suspect that is because that was what John Key was claiming. It was at the time he took office that the employment predictions were for 10% unemployment.

        I guess that John Key wasn’t paying attention to what Treasury were actually saying. Kind of scary that…

  6. BLiP 6
    19 February 2014 at 11:39 pm

    ‘

    Speaking of John Key’s lies, there was another one yesterday in this exchange when he said New Zealand now had the lowest level of migration from New Zealand to Australia. David Cunliffe tried to table the documents proving the lie (see at around 13 minutes) but, needless to say, National Ltd™ objected. Does anyone have a link to or copy of the DOX Cunliffe was attempting to table?

    • Draco T Bastard 6.1
      19 February 2014 at 11:51 pm

      Thinking about that I’ve decided that we need a webpage that has a copy of all the stuff tabled in Question Time which includes a copy of the stuff that was objected to as well.

      I also think a reason is needed to support any objection to prevent parties from objecting simply because it upsets them.

  7. felix 7
    20 February 2014 at 12:02 am

    Presumably Key’s lie was easily spotted by one of Labour’s well-informed economic/labour/social development spokespeople and immediately exposed in the follow-up question…

  8. captain hook 8
    20 February 2014 at 11:45 am

    show us the jobs john.
    in a proeprly functioning economy jobs are advertised to be filled.
    the national party way is to have people skulking around adn greasing up employers bums and offering to do deals on wages and conditions that undermine everyone else.
    so one more time donkey.
    where are the jobs?

  9. Tracey 9
    20 February 2014 at 1:39 pm

    A decided lack of right wingers on this thread. I suppose it’s better to say nothing when the Leader is being so blatant in his deception?

  10. Richard@Down South 10
    20 February 2014 at 2:40 pm

    Maybe he means some dude down the street said ‘OI, KEY, BET YOU UNEMPLOYMENT WILL HIT 10%’

    what a waste of space Key is