Amongst their pathetic attempts to justify this blatant vote buying bribe is the idiotic argument that it will in some way improve driving standards and road safety in New Zealand.
What a load of tripe. Who drives, and how they drive, is determined by the driving test, not the number of lessons, or who pays for them. Pass the test and you're are good enough, the law says.
The driving test in NZ is of course woefully inadequate. It is designed to pass people with a bare minimum of driving ability and get them out on the roads as soon as possible, not to prevent poor driving.
If you want to cut back on road fatalities and dangerous traffic accidents, make the test twice as hard, then punish drunk and dangerous driving properly, in such a way that it will act as a real deterrent.
Free lessons will not stop people drink driving, tailgating, overtaking on blind corners, not wearing seatbelts, speeding to impress their mates or failing to indicate. Not, of course, that Kiwis ever do any of those things, as we all know it's only foreign drivers who are less than perfect. Hmm!
If Labour had said they were planning to make the driving test a much more thorough and rigorous examination, and were then going to provide a set number of free lessons for all youngsters so they became skilled enough to pass, it would a much more praiseworthy idea.
But they have not.
What they have done is to identify a group of people as potential Labour voters, and tried to buy their votes with a cheap bribe.
As a flagship policy it is hardly what one wants from a prospective government. We might hope that they would lead with some defined approach to economic management or international relations.
Actually that's unfair; they do have appear to have a defined approach to international relations, which so far seems to be upsetting Australia. This is a bad thing, especially if through our ANZUS ties we get dragged into a war with North Korea. We need Australia on our side.
Free driving lessons are a policy of despair, and an admission of defeat; despair, because offering bribes to impressionable youngsters is the only way they can increase their electoral appeal, and defeat because it confirms that as far as macro issues are concerned, they are clueless, and will simply try and imitate what National are doing very successfully already.
But if bribing teenagers and making enemies of our closest allies are typical of their approach, god help us all if they get their hands on the economy.
Free stuff is always a lie. The government pays for free stuff, and because the government don't produce money themselves, they do so using our money - taxes. If they don't have enough to pay for the free stuff, they tax us some more.
With a short electoral cycle in NZ, they need to get the free stuff out there quickly to give themselves the best chance of re-election, so taxing us some more is the only solution.
If you find that hard to believe, have a word with our local Labour hopefuls; next time you bump into Anna Lorck in the pub, or happen upon Stuart Nash at the racetrack, ask them for an assurance that Labour will not raise taxes.
So if you are young, and thinking of voting for Labour to get free stuff, remember that it just means the bank of mum and dad will have less money. Less money to buy you a car, to pay for your gas, or take you on holiday with them. You'll probably end up worse off, because it won't just be free driving lessons mum and dad are paying for, it will be all the other free stuff Labour promise in order to get their hands on power.
And that's what it's really all about, of course; power. Labour are desperate to get into power, to have the power to make decisions for us, to show us they know best and take responsibility for our lives, to gamble our futures with their hare-brained schemes, which inevitably means punishing workers with higher taxes.
Jerry Flay is a Hawke's Bay based freelance writer. His column, On the Right track, is a perspective from the centre right. All opinions are his and not those of Hawke's Bay Today
