Backseat Driver
National accuse Labour of doing what they have done.
It’s taken time for me to listen.
Thought I could do it all myself
With all these trees I’m nearly missing
I see how I could use some help.
Song written by Ryan Lerman, Daniel Silberstein.
One reason the Labour Party may have delayed announcing their policies was that, inevitably, National would go on the attack, having no policies of their own, and boy, they didn’t keep ‘em waiting. Their approach was clear to see:
National reveals its election strategy: they will lie, and lie, and lie about every Labour announcement. They should focus on their own policies, and not pull their own numbers out of their posteriors, this time.
Simeon Brown has been brandishing his own calculations, assuming that everyone who benefits will receive the maximum saving of $1,200 per year, even though most people will, of course, receive less than that if they use public transport less frequently or only travel a short distance.
The hypocrisy of National claiming that Labour is underestimating the cost or overstating the benefit is unbelievable from a party that, at the last election, campaigned on a promise that a whole lot of people would receive a $250-per-fortnight tax cut, when it turned out that only 249 families received that amount in the entire country!
A bizarre Press Conference.
Nicola Willis held a press conference on Sunday afternoon just to bag Labour, which is pretty pathetic - can you imagine Jacinda calling an emergency press briefing to scowl and howl about a National policy release?
This is the same Nicola Willis who produced a plan at the last election that pretty much every economist in the land said you could drive a bus through. It has proven so, with ongoing deficits and increased borrowing, all the while funding billions of dollars in tax cuts for landlords that we clearly can’t afford.
Nicola Willis criticising someone else's numbers after getting all her own ones wrong? You're having a laugh; she's just not credible.
Good grief, Nicola, you’re the bus driver, even if Christopher is in the back with one of those child’s steering wheels that make him think he’s in control. Maybe keep your eye on the road and stop shrieking hysterically out the window about Labour.
The problem is that Nicola can see holes everywhere, from Grant Robertson to Barbara Edmonds, but she can’t see that she is at the bottom of a pit of her own making, still digging.
On 1 News last night, they reported that we now have the highest youth unemployment since 1994! It is worse than during the GFC or Covid, yet National continues with the landlord tax cut - what they call getting back on track - as they throw the next generation off the train and pretend that everything they touch has turned into something less malodorous than it has.
The Prime Minister’s Breakfast slot
This morning on Breakfast, it wasn’t Nicola who appeared in the prime minister’s usual slot, even though she appears to be the PM to all intents and purposes.
It certainly wasn’t Luxon himself; apparently, his media training is going so well that he’s still at the “for god’s sake, don’t let him appear in front of the nation” stage. No, this morning Luxon sent a second in the form of Deputy PM David Seymour, who apparently has more backbone than the CEO.
Seymour’s attitude seemed to be that any lie Nicola could tell, he could tell an even bigger one. He was an absurd choice to represent the coalition, as he doesn’t believe in spending money on public transport or, seemingly, on any other services, preferring to use government funds to offer people like Paula Bennett enormous pay increases.
Tova began by saying you might have seen Nicola Willis call a press conference yesterday to accuse the Labour Party of hiding an $18b hole, surpassing even the $11b fictitious hole that then-finance minister Steven Joyce claimed to have seen, while nobody else could. She didn’t say the second part, of course.
David just lied, saying that the coalition had reduced spending to achieve a balanced budget, which is simply not true; the government ran a deficit this year and increased borrowing. Tova didn’t say a word, whether she had been instructed not to annoy the government or simply couldn’t believe Seymour’s breathtaking ability to lie straight to her face, contradicting facts; she simply stopped doing her job.
To be fair, I’m sure she’s not the first woman to speak to the ACT leader and end up catatonic and dumbfounded. Seymour rabbited on and on about the achievements of the ACT Party and how, by comparison, Labour were like naughty little children. Tova remained silent, for once speechless, at the tsunami of manure Seymour was unleashing.
Watching him, it was hard to imagine what sort of knuckle-dragging halfwit would fall for his smarmy spiel of self-worship, although I’m sure his backers’ sole consideration is lowering the taxes they would rather avoid.
Finally finding her voice, Tova asked Seymour if he had similarly considered the costings of his coalition partners; I’m sure it will surprise no one that he hadn’t.
David boasted of being the handbrake on the coalition and of putting a stop to his colleagues’ expensive policies; I’m sure Nicola will be delighted that someone else is taking the credit for all her austerity, after she has had to take the flak for appearing to be an inhuman, uncaring monster lacking empathy for her fellow Kiwis.
It was beyond farcical as Seymour claimed that with Labour’s public transport policy there will be “less service, less frequent, less reliable, less clean, and hopefully not, but you could get less security, and there will be fewer people taking public transport under this scheme”. It was absolute nonsense, and again I wondered what sort of person could be taken in by such obvious deception.
As David began to explain that Winston and Christopher had a lot of charm, though not as much as he did, I decided it might be a good time to stop watching before some inanimate object took flight and crashed into the TV screen.
Barbara Edmonds responds.
The programme showed some of Nicola’s somewhat manic interview from Sunday as she lectured the public, “The simple reality is this. The New Zealand government can’t continually borrow to fund uncosted election promises; that way lies credit downgrades, interest rate hikes, and a dangerous debt spiral.”
Then she disappeared in a puff of smoke due to the sheer hypocrisy of the fact that she has been borrowing for tax cuts, and all of those things have happened under her watch.
She didn’t, of course, but Barbara Edmonds’ expression suggested she really ought to have. Tova asked the Labour representative about her working, and she responded warmly and confidently, explaining that Auckland Transport had done the modelling, assessing both the existing $50 price cap and the $20 price cap that Labour are promising. Barbara said they applied that model across the country.
Edmonds said they had released some of the working and that she was happy to provide TVNZ with the full costing. Her calm, assured manner was so refreshing after the smugness of Seymour and Willis’s desperate obsession with Labour.
Where Tova had remained silent with Seymour, she sensed blood in the water with Labour and made a series of unfounded accusations about Labour transport spokesperson Tangi Utikere’s performance on Q&A, which I thought had been quite good.
Barbara brought the discussion back to the cost of living, which is the driver of the policy, and it was a good reminder that, for all the coalition's finger-pointing and claims that the sky will fall, what we’re talking about here is providing assistance to Kiwis at a time when it is greatly needed.
She also pointed out that if we want to talk about fiscal holes, the government has a $56b gaping chasm in its budget for roads of national significance.
Edmonds was open and focused on everyday New Zealanders; I can see her doing very well when we get into the campaign proper. She is professional and empathetic, with a far better understanding of New Zealanders' lives than Nicola will ever have.
The absurd thing is that if the coalition were that worried about transparency, they could’ve easily done something about it.
Independent Costings.
Our electoral contests have devolved into a morass of claims and counterclaims, with each side questioning the other’s figures, leaving people to make their decisions based on partisan calls about whom they believe, rather than on the details provided.
There have long been calls for publicly funded costings of political policies, but not all the parties who are busy pointing fingers actually support that level of transparency.
The Greens have called for an independent Policy Costings Unit since 2016, estimated to cost just $1-3 million annually. Labour supports this in principle, but it didn’t progress when they were in government, as they had one or two other priorities, like Covid.
To be fair to National, Nicola Willis has also sought to put such a mechanism in place, but it seems to have been an easy cop-out to say it can’t go any further, as both ACT and NZ First oppose such analysis of political promises and are unwilling to help their coalition partners.
National could have easily passed the measure with the opposition's support, but inter-coalition relationships were clearly deemed more important than the transparency they bleat about. Or, to put it another way, Nicola only has herself and her party to blame.
Meanwhile, Christopher looks happy behind his pretend steering wheel, smiling and waving as he lets Willis, Bishop, Brown, Peters, and Seymour do the talking for him.
Have a good Monday, folks. To finish, here is a photo of your next Prime Minister and Finance Minister. They look pretty good, don’t they? Let’s do this!
Writing Nick’s Kōrero is my full-time job, and attracting subscribers during a cost of living crisis is very slow progress. If you’re able to and would like to, please support this newsletter and my work by subscribing today. 🙂
Ngā mihi,
Nick.
To end today, here’s “Backseat Driver” ft. slimdan from Scary Pockets.
Nicola going through the list of policies that Labour will reinstate as if they were bad things that Aotearoans don't want. When, in fact, they're exactly what we want. Has she given up and decided to campaign for Labour? Asking for a friend. 😉🤣
Watching Barbara on Breakfast today was so refreshing. She didn't get annoyed at Tova bringing up past issues she just calmly replied, no hate or attacking anyone else. Such a change