So what should National have been doing the past year?
First, anti-competitive behavior should've been criminalized & penalties increased by a factor of 100. When Foodstuffs was found guilty of buying up land near its stores & putting covenants on the titles before re-selling so no-one could start up a supermarket close by, the fine worked out at about $10,000 per store - a slap of the wrist. Why didn't National criminalize anti-competitive behavior under Sir John Key? Because Big Business lobbied against it. The NZ Initiative, the private sector economic adviser to National, stated at the time, "Three cheers for competition (& Paul Goldsmith): On Tuesday, Minister of Commerce Goldsmith decided not to proceed with the .. criminalization of cartel behavior". Foodstuffs is a board member of the Initiative. PM Luxon & Finance Minister Willis should've made a strong statement of intent upon being elected that NZ's consumers would no longer be fleeced by Big Business. They should've adopted US President Teddy Roosevelt's approach to monopolies - "Talk quietly and Carry a Big Stick". Willis and Luxon have talked a big game, yet carried a tooth-pick. Their legal approach should've borrowed from ex-New York Attorney General's Elliot Spitzer's - fearsome. He prosecuted some of the most legendary icons on Wall Street.
Second, the likes of Fulton Hogan, Fletcher Building & Tonkin-Taylor, of which Lester Levy, the newly appointed boss of Health NZ, was Chair, should've been removed from further involvement in the future of infrastructure in NZ. Due to the failure to get large projects built on time & within budget these past 20 years, deals should've been done under China's Belt & Road Initiative which they offered us - like to build a second Harbour Bridge in Auckland, do what tunnels & infrastructure Wellington needed to stop that city failing, rebuild Dunedin hospital, complete all outstanding motorway projects, and install high-speed rail from Auckland to Hamilton to Tauranga, all before the next election. The workers would've come from China and then gone back to China after the jobs were done. That's a fast track. I'm no fan of China's politics, but the economic benefits to NZ would've outweighed the costs.
Third, the red-tape & regulations holding up foreign investment in NZ should've already been torn down a year ago (aside from the banning of foreign capital to buy unproductive real-estate assets). The Coalition is doing too little on this front, and is already too late.
Fourth, our model of health-care should've immediately been reformed upon National taking office, toward either the French, Singaporean or Taiwanese models (the latter was designed by my former colleague at Princeton, Uwe Reinhardt). That is, all Kiwis should be free to choose from where they get their health-care, public or private, with the bill paid by social insurance / the government. That shift would've led to a boom in private sector health-care investments. Since its the biggest sector in the country by employment, a boom in GDP would've followed, on top of the boom coming from the freeing up of foreign investment, massive infrastructure programs and greater competition, as our inbred corporate class realized they couldn't stack the cards against the consumer without going to jail.
These policies are called disruptive. Had they been done, NZ would be in a boom now, and National on the way to a landslide win in Election 2026. You can't steer NZ to prosperity with a conservative, Sir Bill English, steady-as-she-goes, style Finance Minister, who worked for Sir John Key, who's not bold enough to do the above policies, and a PM who's not willing to take risks & who hangs out with .. Sir John Key. There's still time to change.
Second, the likes of Fulton Hogan, Fletcher Building & Tonkin-Taylor, of which Lester Levy, the newly appointed boss of Health NZ, was Chair, should've been removed from further involvement in the future of infrastructure in NZ. Due to the failure to get large projects built on time & within budget these past 20 years, deals should've been done under China's Belt & Road Initiative which they offered us - like to build a second Harbour Bridge in Auckland, do what tunnels & infrastructure Wellington needed to stop that city failing, rebuild Dunedin hospital, complete all outstanding motorway projects, and install high-speed rail from Auckland to Hamilton to Tauranga, all before the next election. The workers would've come from China and then gone back to China after the jobs were done. That's a fast track. I'm no fan of China's politics, but the economic benefits to NZ would've outweighed the costs.
Third, the red-tape & regulations holding up foreign investment in NZ should've already been torn down a year ago (aside from the banning of foreign capital to buy unproductive real-estate assets). The Coalition is doing too little on this front, and is already too late.
Fourth, our model of health-care should've immediately been reformed upon National taking office, toward either the French, Singaporean or Taiwanese models (the latter was designed by my former colleague at Princeton, Uwe Reinhardt). That is, all Kiwis should be free to choose from where they get their health-care, public or private, with the bill paid by social insurance / the government. That shift would've led to a boom in private sector health-care investments. Since its the biggest sector in the country by employment, a boom in GDP would've followed, on top of the boom coming from the freeing up of foreign investment, massive infrastructure programs and greater competition, as our inbred corporate class realized they couldn't stack the cards against the consumer without going to jail.
These policies are called disruptive. Had they been done, NZ would be in a boom now, and National on the way to a landslide win in Election 2026. You can't steer NZ to prosperity with a conservative, Sir Bill English, steady-as-she-goes, style Finance Minister, who worked for Sir John Key, who's not bold enough to do the above policies, and a PM who's not willing to take risks & who hangs out with .. Sir John Key. There's still time to change.
Professor Robert MacCulloch holds the Matthew S. Abel Chair of Macroeconomics at Auckland University. He has previously worked at the Reserve Bank, Oxford University, and the London School of Economics. He runs the blog Down to Earth Kiwi from where this article was sourced.
4 comments:
Not to mention secret meetings with Blackrock.
Robert, Robert, Robert all these great ideas won’t happen as Nicola is going through all the department budgets line by line. She won’t have time as she is obviously a slow reader.
Not sure about the second one. I agree we need to bring in others for large infrastructure projects, but China? Their track record of building, then enforcing draconian rules should rule them out. Their quality is also often rather dodgy at best.
There are plenty of other options out there, no need to pick the worst from the outset.
The National Party and "anti competitive behavior".
Oh dear where do Is start -
[1] - selling off a very good internal airway business (NAC) to the then developing Air NZ, which then ensured that no competition on internal airway business could be established, when it did ensured thru political pandering's had them shut down;
[2] - the BNZ and the issues that arose, that "where shrouded in secrecy, until a certain young MP decided to open a winebox or two";
[3] - the "skullduggery of Law Firms" (Auckland based) that had the Commerce Commission & Serious Fraud office "look the other way and the IRS was hobbled in action they wanted to take".
Strange and in line with [3] above that the Commerce Commission took a long time on the Foodstuffs "potential merger" and the data that came to light, which would have been known prior, which on that basis no Govt Dept "stood up, stepped in and said Nah.." , not on our watch.
Next time I think I will vote for Josef Stalin, he will surely make things happen, based on his past history.
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