After meandering tentatively for several months on a number of issues that gripped the country last year – not least of all the deleterious effects of the financial crisis – the National government seems to have mustered both the muscle and the pluck to well and truly swing into action in the first quarter of this year.
Despite almost getting a “do nothing government” tag toward the end of last year because of a growing perception of slow movement and lukewarm, half-hearted responses to a slew of problems, the government and the prime minister himself managed to keep approval ratings remarkably high.
As the clock winds down to next year’s election, the government seems to have realised it was high time it showed some gumption to achieve the things it had long promised before the goodwill begins to wear out.
And so, in a great hurry as it were it has recently announced action on a range of issues from tax reform and benefit restructure to discussions about opening a tiny fraction of conservation land for exploiting the nation’s potential wealth in natural resources and minerals. This has stirred the Kiwi policy pot more vigorously and noisily than it has been in the past several years.
Having inherited near empty coffers from the previous government’s ill conceived big spending initiatives and social engineering largesse this government also had to face the effects of one of the world’s worst financial crisis. The situation is so dire that the government is borrowing at the rate of $240 million a week to meet its budget deficit.
Assuming the government could muster all the courage at its command including throwing political caution to the winds enough to be voted out at the next poll, no amount of tax restructuring can hope to get the country out of this debt hole. In fact there is no single solution and the challenge has to be met on several fronts. That is hopefully what the government intends to do having decided to act on so many critical issues all at once.
The benefit restructure announced last week is a step in the right direction. Though it is already being criticised as being too weak and cosmetic in some quarters, the very fact that a subject almost elevated to a holy cow status by the previous regime has been opened up for discussion is a development that needs to be lauded.
True, the revised benefit criteria announced might not go far enough but more importantly, a strong signal has been sent that the government means business and will not tolerate long term rort of the system – something that has been happening in no small measure going by anecdotal evidence that is available plentifully.
It is small wonder that the reaction from the hardworking members of the Indian community to the announced reform has been positive as can be gauged from the unanimously affirmative responses of our jury to a question on the subject (page 30).
The other front that the government has courageously opened is the one on opening a tiny fraction of conservation land for exploiting natural resources. The government needs to do that. It is one of the most promising avenues that gives the biggest chance to lead this country with such a tiny population out of its present financial morass the quickest.
Of course there will be the naysayers, the tree huggers and the philosophers who will despair as is only their wont. Opinion is already sharply divided on whether New Zealand should go ahead on mining particularly as it is likely to hurt the clean and green image of the country, which indeed is the country’s biggest draw card.
No matter what the real merits of this claim, the tagline has brought tremendous success to the country’s tourism.
Encouragingly, as this issue goes to print, the tourism industry has said that the mining idea, at the level that it is being planned, is unlikely to hinder tourism. They are right. The idea is too vital and much too important to be ignored because of idle idealism that has led this country nowhere in the past decade.
It is heartening to see the government go hammer and tongs at so many issues all at once. The fear, however, is if between now and the run up to next year’s poll it will have bitten more than it can chew.
And there are even more things being piled up on its plate. It has to decide whether to go ahead with its ETS, which will push energy prices up based on a premise the kind of which has been discredited since the Copenhagen fiasco and has been all but abandoned in several countries including our transtasman neighbour. And then, of course, there is the supercity.
So much to chew, so little time.