Marc Alexander: A bureaucratic solution is often worse than the problem it attempted to fix

While the jaw-droppingly inept back-down on class sizes is a humiliating defeat for the Education Minister, for the government it is all the more embarrassing for two reasons. First, coming as close as it did just a short week from the announcement of the policy in the budget, the fanfare of the zero budget has dimmed abruptly – tripped over by its own recklessness and providing evidence of the zero-ness of its architects. It’s extraordinary that the cabinet would sign off on it in the first place. Not to have expected the public backlash being as deep as it was shows just how out of touch this government has become. Given that John Key defended sending his own kids to private schools because they “have smaller classes...” (May 2005), it beggars belief that he would think other parents would not share the same concerns. The spin that class sizes had little to do with student success was not credibly believed by anyone other than a handful of pencil pushers in the ministry and obviously, the restricted intelligences convening around the cabinet table.

The second reason the back-track was so humbling was the sheer audaciousness with which Hekia Parata was forced to defend the policy. Something echoed by a currently overseas Key enjoying the hospitality of her Majesty’s jubilee celebrations. The U-turn was obviously a political decision with one eye on the polls, but what galls is that in announcing the reversal, Hekia Parata never once said she was ‘wrong”.

Marc Alexander: NZ Idle

The zero budget released last week was an exercise in managing perceptions rather than achieving anything of lasting value. While the buzzwords of ‘prudence’, ‘restrained’, and ‘sensible’ were bandied about in the tranche of media statements belching out of the Beehive, a closer inspection reveals what wasn’t done to get our economy off the critical list. 

For a start, nothing other than lip-service was done to realistically improve our woeful lack of productivity. With an average growth of a meagre 0.2% growth over the last seven years, it’s no wonder that wages have stagnated and, along with it, our living standards. Given that the major reason is our lack of being able to attract greater capitalization of labour (i.e. investing in technologies to improve productivity), the first thing that should have been tackled was our archaic levels of depreciation. Put simply, you cannot expect to compete with state of art word processors while thumping away on clunky type-writers. We need to depreciate our means of production faster and innovate technologically quicker.

Marc Alexander: Labour or National... Is there much of a difference anymore?

The last few years have prompted a number of people to become increasingly cynical about politics and all the more suspicious of fidelity to one party or another. Grumpy voters can’t see much of a difference in our expensively elected ‘party pamphlets’ hawking their party’s latest propaganda like trained parrots – only less cute. The public now discerns the divide between Labour and National as simply one of degree rather than a fundamental difference of principles.

Labour is seen to be the protector of ‘workers’ rights’ and seemingly has no problem in gouging the pockets of the rich to do so, handing out as many entitlements as they need to woo voters (think ‘Working for families’; progressive tax system etc). National meanwhile, champions ‘business’ but when push comes to shove, has little problem with extorting as much money from the ranks of the employed to help defray the cost of economic failure for those businesses deemed ‘too big to be allowed to fail’.

Marc Alexander: The case against race-based rights - The Waitangi fish-hook.

To supporters of the ever increasing cash payouts from the treaty of Waitangi grievance industry, it means racial and social justice – a means of compensation for past and present discrimination supposedly borne from colonialism. To critics, it has only perpetuated the problem of discrimination while creating a host of new problems.

Philosophically, to show prejudice in favour of maori (whether in terms of rights to collect shellfish from the foreshore denied other citizens; specifically funded projects for health, education and so on centred on maori-centric world views; or even the statutory requirement to have maori seats on councils, ethics boards etc) contradicts the obvious dictum that you cannot do away with race-based discrimination by policies which promote it.