.....now let’s see if it can deliver?
The electorate has high expectations of the new government. The question is: can it deliver?
Some might say the signs are not promising. Protestors are already marching in the streets. The new Prime Minister has had little experience of managing very diverse politicians in coalition. The economy he inherits is in bad shape, with little indication inflation is falling yet.
Government spending initiated by the outgoing administration – we are told – has got out of hand.
So the new team at the helm has to move NZ away from the concept of co-governance and different rights based on ancestry to a country where every New Zealander has equal rights.
New ministers sitting in their Beehive offices may be asking themselves: “Where do I start?”.
Finance Minister Nicola Willis says she has already discovered what she called ominous “fiscal cliffs” over which NZ could topple.
These are, she claims, basically legal fiddles that fall foul of the “spirit” of the Public Finance Act, which governs how finances can be managed and then disclosed to the public.
“If the government presents a set of books where they say, ‘look, the debt track’s coming down, and we’re getting back into surplus’, but the reality is, that that depends on them stopping funding for things that they’re not intending to stop funding for, then actually, those commitments aren’t worth the paper they are written on.”
Willis said Pharmac – the Government drug buying agency – and the school lunch programmes were only temporarily funded. This meant, she said, the forecast fiscal position was actually much weaker than in the Pre-Election Economic and Fiscal update.
Her gripe is that programmes such as Pharmac were never going to be defunded, so this amounts to clever manipulation of the books.
Luxon has joined Willis in warning that NZ’s finances are not in good shape and he has set his ministers the task of resetting the direction of the country.
He is on record as saying it was “incredibly disappointing” to see the Reserve Bank signal it may need to raise the OCR. This is due, he says, to “economic vandalism by the previous Labour government on a scale not seen before”.
Regardless of the state of the government’s “books”, ministers who have spoken to the news media look remarkably cheerful. They have brushed aside the criticism of health lobbyists who worry about the impact of the move to abolish Labour’s smokefree laws.
So New Zealanders await (with bated breath?) Nicola Willis’ mini-budget on December 20.
Point of Order is a blog focused on politics and the economy run by veteran newspaper reporters Bob Edlin and Ian Templeton
So the new team at the helm has to move NZ away from the concept of co-governance and different rights based on ancestry to a country where every New Zealander has equal rights.
New ministers sitting in their Beehive offices may be asking themselves: “Where do I start?”.
Finance Minister Nicola Willis says she has already discovered what she called ominous “fiscal cliffs” over which NZ could topple.
These are, she claims, basically legal fiddles that fall foul of the “spirit” of the Public Finance Act, which governs how finances can be managed and then disclosed to the public.
“If the government presents a set of books where they say, ‘look, the debt track’s coming down, and we’re getting back into surplus’, but the reality is, that that depends on them stopping funding for things that they’re not intending to stop funding for, then actually, those commitments aren’t worth the paper they are written on.”
Willis said Pharmac – the Government drug buying agency – and the school lunch programmes were only temporarily funded. This meant, she said, the forecast fiscal position was actually much weaker than in the Pre-Election Economic and Fiscal update.
Her gripe is that programmes such as Pharmac were never going to be defunded, so this amounts to clever manipulation of the books.
Luxon has joined Willis in warning that NZ’s finances are not in good shape and he has set his ministers the task of resetting the direction of the country.
He is on record as saying it was “incredibly disappointing” to see the Reserve Bank signal it may need to raise the OCR. This is due, he says, to “economic vandalism by the previous Labour government on a scale not seen before”.
Regardless of the state of the government’s “books”, ministers who have spoken to the news media look remarkably cheerful. They have brushed aside the criticism of health lobbyists who worry about the impact of the move to abolish Labour’s smokefree laws.
So New Zealanders await (with bated breath?) Nicola Willis’ mini-budget on December 20.
Point of Order is a blog focused on politics and the economy run by veteran newspaper reporters Bob Edlin and Ian Templeton
3 comments:
One thing that is a problem is the newly found outrage by the mainstream media about the new government's policies. I would like to see more balanced coverage as the majority of New Zealanders voted for this. We are desperately in need of new alternative media sources.
Maori insist that their demands should be met - and taxpayer funded - without question.
Resistance will be refused and countered by violence.
Bringing down the new coalition is clearly the goal.
Then NZ's demise would be inevitable.
The answer is to not reinstate the funding and say it was the Labor Govt. policy to terminate the funding and a decision will be made in the next parliamentary session to decide if these decisions should be reversed.
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