Mike Hosking: Government has no connection with regular New Zealanders

 

You can see why Labour has dropped 10 points in the polls.

Yes, the cycle bridge and its pending back down is a good example of just how wildly out of touch they are with regular New Zealanders like us. But the supermarket report the other day was almost next level in its madness.

Firstly, these reports achieve nothing. They seem to fail to understand that just drumming up reports that lead nowhere merely marks you out as a hot air merchant. You aren't saving 33 cents a litre after the petrol probe, and you aren't going to save $1.20 on washing powder after this latest one.

But it was the David Clark's comment about all options being on the table when asked whether the government would set up their own supermarket that marks them out as truly loopy. The fact they don't see that as North Korea-ish is an insight into their naivety and delusion.

And now, come on in Poto Williams. She let the police run riot with their "we don’t arrest our way out of this" approach to crime. She's also in charge of wood, sort of. In her capacity as Building and Construction Minister she's highlighted the issues around timber. Namely you can't get any, and if you can, it costs a lot.

One of her options she announced, in her best Cuban accent, was to limit the amount of timber we send offshore. Perfect. Just how many contracts with offshore markets do you think she's going to bulldoze through?

And what's she going to do? We grow the trees, and they get excellent international prices, because that’s what we do as an exporting country. We grow stuff that gets top dollar all over the world.

So is she going to wander up to Bob, who grows the trees, and say "that field of pine is mine the contract with China and Japan is off?"

What's she going to do next? Offer international prices? Or is she just going to do a local council SNA type of thing and go "these trees are of significant national interest so we will just grab them, thanks very much."

The fact we are even talking about this is embarrassing. It's dangerous, it's mad, and it's economic sabotage.

The only hope is it's yet another one of those David Clark type utterances that someone one, somewhere deep in the Beehive who still has some of their faculties properly attached, takes this and tries to bury never to be uttered publicly ever again.

This government is full of people who don't get it, who wouldn’t pass NCEA Economics Level 1, and most embarrassingly don’t seem to realise that saying this stuff out loud leads to 10 point drops in polls.

Mike Hosking is a New Zealand television and radio broadcaster. He currently hosts The Mike Hosking Breakfast show on NewstalkZB on weekday mornings.