The Pledge.

Luxon's personal guarantee.

What does the word pledge make you think of?

A solemn vow, or sacred oath? Allegiance to a flag? One definition is a security given for future payment. It might make you think of a noble, and chivalrous intent? Or perhaps, the smell of furniture polish?

Let’s go with a commitment to deliver something promised, come what may.

Yesterday Christopher Luxon announced his pledge to the nation. I didn’t watch but I imagine it was a polished performance (I’m so sorry).

So no new policies then, for the campaign launch?

No last minute free dental announcement? No emergency revenue measures to cater for the fact that the last batch served up by Nicola Willis, only days ago, turned out to be a steaming pile of dingo kidneys? Leading economist Shamubeel Eaqub describing the projected revenue as “Bullshit” on Saturday.

Ok, let’s go through these pledges, see what they’re actually promising, and whether there might be any pitfalls.

Lower inflation and grow the economy

It does rather look as if inflation is coming down, and the economy is improving Still this is definitely something they should be focused on.

The problem is that a big part of National’s plan is to open up our housing to foreign speculators for a price, with that revenue flowing into the economy in the form of tax cuts. If people then spend that money it will cause inflation to rise.

Challenged on this by Jack Tame yesterday, Nicola Willis confirmed that it would not be inflationary if everyone saved their tax cut, instead of spending it.

Which rather defeats the whole idea of the tax cuts addressing the cost of living. If people are just supposed to keep it in their bank account. It’s almost like Nicola let the cat out of the bag. That the whole tax package isn’t about the cost of living at all, but is about transferring more wealth into bank accounts that are already quite full.

Let you keep more of what you earn

As you might be aware a lot of people have raised concerns about National announcing their policy of letting people overseas buy our homes for a fee, without considering international agreements which may preclude us from doing that.

The good news is that National did ask for advice. The bad news is that they asked about tax agreements two days after announcing the policy, as was reported on Newshub last night.

More bad news, some experts are saying it might well jeopardise our FTA with by far our largest export market, China ($22.5b). Far ahead of Australia ($8.03b), the United States ($7.18b), Japan ($3.76b), and South Korea ($2.06b).

In worse news, even if the Chinese say “sweet as” to this arrangement, which is what Nicola Willis said on Q&A that she thought might happen, it’s still not looking good.

This issue, and the other highly optimistic assumptions Nicola has made, have models suggesting between a $1.3b and $2.4b short fall. That’s just from this revenue stream, before you get into the fact that National seemingly have only just heard of VPNs.

That’s right, Nicola Willis assumes everyone will pay a tax on online gambling, rather than take this trivial step to avoid it. Because, she says, Kiwis like to just do the right thing. Me thinks Mrs Willis might want to have a chat with some of her party’s major benefactors on their views on avoiding taxes.

In case you’re unfamiliar with a VPN, a Virtual Private Network allows you to pretend you’re in a different jurisdiction. So, for example, if you’d like to view some of the high quality content from the BBC, that’s only available in the UK, this will give you access quicker than you can say “actually I’m Bob from Hertfordshire”. Or, of course allow you to avoid paying tax if you use online gambling.

The problem with what looks to be a large shortfall in planned revenue is that Christopher has now given his solemn pledge that you can keep more of your money in the form of tax cuts. You’d think a man who spent his career in marketing would be used to offering a disclaimer.

Oh yes, there is one, right where it say “up to $100 per fortnight”. We all know what the term “up to” means in a promotion.

Big Sale Now - up to 50% off! We all know that means there will be a very small proportion of products that are 50% off, and an awfully large proportion of sale items with a whole lot less off.

If push comes to shove Luxon just needs to clarify a bit. For example, the people at the higher end of the squeezed middle got up to $100 per fortnight, but that simply wasn’t affordable for the lower end as well, given the lower than expected revenue.

Build infrastructure

Roads, Roads, Roads. Think lots of photos of Simeon Brown and Chris Bishop with hard hats and ready shovels.

Getty Images.

Oh, and this time perhaps some sort of bucket devices. In case health funding decreases lead to excrement coming down the walls in a public hospital. Like last time.

Restore law & order

Before becoming Prime Minister John Key campaigned on cracking down on crime and gangs. Once elected his government cut police funding, which lead to the closure of many community police stations. Gangs, believe it or not, continued to exist.

Roll forward 15 years and we have the same rhetoric on law and order. But that has to be tempered this time with nine years of inaction when National were last in power.

Some readers might recall a previous newsletter pointed out that National’s pledge to “Restore Law and Order” is one they seem to have gotten from elsewhere.

The fact that their major policy in this area of sending young offenders to military Boot Camps, has failed everywhere it’s been tried is neither here nor there to National.

This is about saying what people want to hear, and they want to hear “Lock em up”.

Lift school achievement

The three ‘R’s and no phones. Sorted.

Oh, and bring back National Standards so teachers spend more time doing paperwork and measuring, and less time teaching. Brilliant.

The mobile phone ban is classic National policy. It sounds good but it actually does bugger all. What are they going to ban next? Vaping in the loos? Fighting after school?

Christopher Luxon speaking at the National Party launch. (Source: 1News)

Cut health waiting times

This is a worthy goal, and one that anyone who has had the misfortune of spending time in an Emergency Department recently would support.

Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be any indication of how, or by how much.

There is a plan to train more people by opening a third Medical School. But given how long it takes to train a doctor that seems like quite a long term strategy to reducing waiting lists.

National have announced the funding of 13 specific cancer treatments. I’ve written previously on the merits, or otherwise, of having politicians involved in selecting which treatments are funded:

Pharmac or Politicians?

Aside from throwing Pharmac under a bus in terms of their negotiating position with large pharmaceutical companies, National appear to have neglected to provide funding for any additional staff to administer these cancer treatments. Actually worsening the pressure on existing staff.

I don’t in any way blame our medical professionals for the current waiting times. These people are at breaking point and we’re putting too much pressure on them already.

We need to increase health funding so that our services can be staffed at a more sustainable level, and we need to keep raising the incomes of these, and other, essential workers.

I can’t see either of those things happening under a National government who will be desperately looking for every little bit of money they can find to fund tax cuts. Cuts that we can’t actually afford if we want to do things like sort out waiting times.

Support seniors

It’s a grim announcement that starts with a commitment to keep an existing programme, the Winter Energy Payment. Still I’m sure National must be aware that anyone who has considered how their negotiations with ACT on cutting government spending might go, will take this with a grain of salt.

How odd to lead off by saying they’re not going to get rid of something. It’d be like saying they were going to keep Lunches in Schools under the “Support children” section. Except that there is no “Support children” pledge, and National are making no such commitment to keep funding that programme.

National leader Christopher Luxon at the launch of its 2023 election campaign. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone.

Beyond not axing the Winter Energy Payment, National’s commitment to seniors seems to be the bare minimum of annual increases.

As for the tax relief for seniors, intended to help with the increases in the cost of living, that must be hard to take seriously. $600 per couple, per year. Or to put it another way $6 a week per person.

If you measure it in subscriptions to Nick’s Kōrero then $600 seems like a lot. A couple could buy seven annual subscriptions for that, and really they only need the one. But if you start talking about rates, food, and electricity cost increases, then $6 per week doesn’t seem like much support at all.

Deliver Net Zero Carbon by 2050

This is incredibly unambitious, and like the promise on the Winter Energy Payment, is something we already have. The Key government signed NZ up to the Paris Agreement back in 2016, which has the goal of zero carbon by 2050.

It seems odd that National would boast about this commitment to an existing commitment, until you look at the next part.

New technology to reduce agricultural emissions. National are committed to using new, as of yet uninvented, technology. What’s missing though is doing anything else to reduce the half of NZ’s emissions that come from our agricultural sector.

This is a commitment to doing as little as possible and prioritising farming profits over the planet.

In a rare piece of self reflection, Christopher Luxon closed by saying New Zealand couldn’t take three years of the same old, failed, policies. I have to say that I fully agreed with him. But they are leaving it awfully late to come up with some new ones.

There really wasn’t much to get excited about by this pledge card. It’s all stuff National had already announced. It seems a bit odd to hold a rally just to say “we really meant it”. Surely they must have been intending to unveil the tax policies, that were announced mid week, at the launch.

I can only assume they got fed up with being asked questions about policies they wouldn’t confirm. That it just became too much parroting that they had a plan, without being able to say what it was.

After the coverage this weekend National must be wondering if announcing policies, that can then be questioned, was such a good idea after all.

This song is called “Promise”, but it has nothing to do with the ones on the pledge card. It’s a bit more real than that. You might want a tissue.