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Monday, February 19, 2024

Mike's Minute: The country is fragile, no pressure Luxon


I watched the Prime Minister's State of the Nation speech yesterday.

It's one of the advantages of modern communications. The livestream brings a level of detail and information to us on any given day that used to be the domain of the six o'clock news.

In its own small way, it’s the devolution of the wider media and its years long role of telling us what happened from their cut down "we wont bore you with too much detail" view of the world.

Anyway, Chris Luxon rolls out the line about $200 billion worth of unfunded projects left from Labour.

All of this may well be true. But the trouble he increasingly faces is the conversation he needs to have with the country as to just how much trouble we are in.

The answer, is a lot.

As I have said any number of times over the years, history will show the previous Labour Government was one of the most ruinous of the modern age.

Although the polls tell a good story for this current Government, they had two in the past week both showing postive signs for all parties and National in particular, plus they are also backed up by the confidence polls, both for the public and business. It's off a low base and remains constrained, but they are trending up.

Despite that, political honeymoons always end, like 100 day plans end.

Rubber hits the road and at some point we turn our attention to those making the decisions here and now and start to wonder out loud how come things are still broken.'Tough love': Luxon paints 'rough' economic outlook amid massive infrastructure deficit

So Luxon's job is to explain just what sort of mess we are in and, more importantly, how a lot of this is a long way from being fixed.

You only have to look at Auckland or Wellington with the pipes, the transport and the general carnage to know this is an increasingly backward country.

Look at the ferries we can't afford, the deficit that becomes a surplus Lord knows when, the inflation Adrian Orr keeps making speeches about, the power system that can't handle a cold morning, far less an surge of EV's, the roads that still aren't fixed a year after a storm and the towns that still aren't fixed a year after a storm.

There is little in this country that is future proofed. There is little in this country that gets done without a budget and timeframe blowout.

We have many, many areas in a parlous state and fundamentals take time.

The danger of the political cycle is people tend to think in three year blocks. This is no time for three year thinking. What this is, is a time for genuine, clear-headed, bold leadership involving some very hard decisions.

That’s Luxon's job this year. No pressure then.

Mike Hosking is a New Zealand television and radio broadcaster. He currently hosts The Mike Hosking Breakfast show on NewstalkZB on weekday mornings - where this article was sourced.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dead right, all we got from rubber lips Robertson, Ardern and Hipkins was “nine years of neglect”. Our dire financial position has got to be hammered out so loudly that even the last government’s greatest cheer leader, Tova O’Brien, will discover that she is grossly out of step with reality and shown up for what she really is, an idiot.

Steve said...

“Rubber lips Robertson” ? More like “clit-lips Robertson …. the bastard should be jailed for the economic carnage that he, Ardern and their “comrades” have bought upon the country

Anonymous said...


It is amazing how many so-called intelligent people think there really is a thing called " government money" - which is separate from tax payer revenue.

This unlimited money will fund all sorts of projects. An endless stream - no problem.

This myth must be dispelled forthwith and the tax take should be highlighted for what it is = the nation's actual means collected from those who work and pay their way.

Anonymous said...

Mike, agree. I do find it almost criminal how after 6 years of the coalition of chaos that it was us, the voters, that voted them in that are actually to blame. The simple fact is I can now find very few that admit voting for them, which in my mind makes most ppl around me, liars.

It now takes the collective effort of all of us to steady the ship, hold the left to account and show them with actual facts and reality ( which they hate) the state they have left us in.

We have effectively saved them from themselves , I actually believe the more relaxed slightly left of centre lefties even realized that the nutters were firmly in charge and taking us to destruction and hell far to quickly.

The problem with all of this is that it's pretty much a waste of time holding the left to account as the left don't take ownership for anything and the current state of the mess we are in is always someone else's fault. I hate fighting with dumb people (lefties) as dumb people never know when they've lost.

Anonymous said...

We can no longer blame just the Lefties and the heritage of Adern et al. The current government is now actively subscribing to the perpetuation of a divided and broke country.

It is relatively easy to put a halt to things that have not started. There are some things which it is reasonably easy to abandon. Other things need a plan - where is that plan?

Yet other things need courage.

So why is the government entering so called treaty discussions with Ngapuhi?

And the easy question - why does PIJF still exist.
We now have the answer. Because it is a smokescreen for the government. If the media does not report on them ( but flaunts it’s own opinions) then the masses don’t know and the government can do its own thing.