As we say goodbye to 2022 and welcome in 2023, it’s a good time to catch up on the very best of the Herald columnists we enjoyed reading over the last 12 months. From politics to sport, from business to entertainment and lifestyle, these are the voices and views our
Steven Joyce: Polytechnic mega-merger unravelling at pace
By Steven Joyce
NZ Herald·
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The new NorthTec / Te Pūkenga campus being built at Ngāwhā Innovation and Enterprise Park, near Kaikohe, October 2022. Photo / Supplied
Opinion by Steven Joyce
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The report laments there is no plan to make the new entity financially stable. This is not a surprise. The mega-polytech has so far distinguished itself mostly by setting up an expensive Hamilton-based head office of about 180 people. These folk have yet to achieve much beyond lofty mission statements and a plan to rebrand all the regional polytechs around the country to the new Te Pūkenga name.
This experiment in shuffling the deckchairs and building a bigger bureaucracy has so far cost taxpayers $200m in extra startup funding, which runs out at the end of this year. At that point the mega-polytech’s deficit will only grow.
What KiwiSaver stuff-up says about the state of the Government - September 3
This week’s KiwiSaver GST stuff-up is most fascinating for what it tells us about the state of decision-making in this Government. Whichever way it is being spun, none of the explanations are good.
The suggestion seems to be that the decision to charge GST on KiwiSaver fees slipped into the regular tax bill without the top echelons of government being fully aware of the ramifications of it. And that the failure to mention it in the press release announcing the bill was an unfortunate oversight. Neither explanation stacks up.
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I can tell you from personal experience there are many checks and balances in government to ensure everyone is aware of what Cabinet is deciding on each week, and the financial and political implications of those changes.
In the normal course of events, every paper that goes up must be lodged by the middle of the previous week. That gives Treasury, the Prime Minister’s Office, and every other affected government department time to offer their views on it and prime their minister with their concerns.
Unless all the officials involved were incompetent, which is highly unlikely, and the Prime Minister and Finance Minister can’t read, also unlikely, there is no way they didn’t understand that the Inland Revenue were lodging a bill to increase the tax take by $200 million and reduce people’s KiwiSaver balances accordingly.
Covid rules are gone - let the inquiry begin - September 17
At last we can start to relax a little about Covid-19. The removal of restrictions this week was long overdue. Tuesday was like a new dawn. A return of freedom and normality.
The pandemic response was the biggest public policy intervention in people’s lives, in our lifetimes. From lockdowns to the mask and vaccine mandates, from closing the schools to effectively closing the hospitals. Everybody was affected. Everyone’s life trajectory changed, some permanently.
People died, some from Covid and some from other things that could be traced to the choices we made about Covid.
We owe it to ourselves and to the memory of those lost to stop and take stock.
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We need to examine what worked and what didn’t. What had the biggest positive effect and what was more trouble than it was worth? When should we have moved more quickly, including both into and out of restrictions, and when should we have waited longer?
A Covid inquiry should not be a journey of recrimination or blame. Responding to a pandemic like this was never going to be a game of perfect. This has been a crazy two-and-a-half years of big decisions on top of big decisions where there was no game plan to work from. Nobody could have got everything right.
Why we’ve got ourselves into a dark economic space - October 1
It is looking ever more likely that the economic piper must indeed be paid, with the odds shortening on a worldwide recession in the next 12 months.
It still beggars belief that governments and central bankers didn’t realise what they were flirting with when they opened the fiscal and monetary spigots to such an unprecedented degree during the pandemic. Or that they took no corrective action once it became apparent we had a supply shock rather than a demand shock.
So where did we go so wrong? I blame a trend I’ll call performative policymaking.
Over the last five to eight years there has been a worldwide tendency to make grand rhetorical gestures that instantly sound good, but with little regard for execution risk or consequences, especially economic consequences.
Thus we have things like the “least regrets” super-sized stimulus packages, with little attempt to calibrate them. The decisions to close borders, without exceptions. Or Brexit — which was “taking back control” rather than the more apt “shrinking our economic market”. Or Angela Merkel’s decision to abandon nuclear power after Fukushima, a rash call that left Germany dependent on an unstable Russia for its energy needs.
Our own Government was an early adopter. Who can forget the oil and gas ban that has directly led to burning more coal, KiwiBuild’s 100,000 homes, reportedly dreamt up in the back of a taxi? The plan to slash migration? Or Shane Jones’ 1 billion trees?
Here’s an idea for the Government - try listening - May 14
There were more datapoints this week suggesting the public of New Zealand and its Government are currently inhabiting different planets.
Going on the statements from the Beehive, ministers are clearly focused on growing the public service, doling out a big climate change slush fund, taking the long handle to the public’s preferred means of getting around, implementing co-governance of public assets, and pouring another massive dollop of borrowed cash into the hungry maw that is their giant new health bureaucracy.
The public, on the other hand, are dealing with a runaway cost of living, shrinking household budgets, rising mortgage rates, diminishing asset values, a surge in aggressive criminal activity, long queues at the local hospital, a declining education sector and the growing realisation that economic activity is being frustrated by an obstructionist political class.
The two are talking past each other. And if someone doesn’t start listening soon, we are heading towards a messy divorce.
The first rule in politics is the public is almost always right. That means the one that has to do the listening is the government. They claim they are — but so far there is little sign that anything is changing.
