Watching an election campaign in a democracy can be depressing. It’s not the Nicky Hager book which makes me depressed – as one of Hager’s past targets, I know about the extent to which he is prone to exaggerate and distort the truth, even to the extent of asserting things which are just factually wrong.
No, what I find depressing is the scene of so many would-be emperors fiddling while the country is, if not actually burning, threatened by fires approaching from almost every direction.
The New Zealand government is just about to climb back to a tiny fiscal surplus after years of deficit which have seen a big increase in the government’s debt and the complete depletion of the reserves of the Earthquake Commission. We won’t actually start repaying some of that increased debt for several more years. Pity help us if we get hit by another major natural disaster – a big earthquake in Wellington or an outbreak of foot and mouth disease.
And the world around us? Australia’s economy weak. Japan barely growing. China – our largest export market – potentially facing a very sharp downturn in its property market and a more general slowing in its economy. The European Union in recession, exacerbated by tension between Ukraine and Russia. The Middle East beset by sectarian violence. Only the US showing signs of moderate growth, though even there the growth is unusually slow coming out of a deep recession.
So what do our politicians talk about? Increased spending on healthcare; increased spending on parental leave; waiving GST on food; increasing our already-high (by international standards) minimum wages; more spending on cycle-ways; smaller class sizes; large tax-free thresholds; still more highly subsidised tertiary education – oh yes, and what Cameron Slater may or may not have said about Len Brown.
The leader of only one political party seems to be warning about the risks and, since this is not a political column, I’m not going to name him. But the fact that his party is barely registering in the polls just illustrates my point: we New Zealanders like to be told that everything is just fine, that it doesn’t matter that we are still markedly poorer than our Australian cousins, that it doesn’t matter that we will be dangerously exposed when the next global downturn – or the next big natural disaster – comes our way.
I plan to give my party vote to the party which acknowledges that, despite modest progress over the last few years, we have some distance to travel before we can feel comfortable that we are out of the woods, and that right now proposing to increase government spending is grossly irresponsible. I’m looking for a political leader willing to be totally honest with the electorate – in other words, somebody willing to lead.
Copyright © 2024 Don Brash.