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Home / New Zealand

Barry Soper: Why does this government need plethora of experts?

Barry Soper
By Barry Soper
Newstalk ZB's senior political correspondent·Newstalk ZB·
28 Aug, 2018 06:00 PM3 mins to read

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Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern addresses the business community and announced a new advisory group chaired by Air NZ boss Christopher Luxon.
Barry Soper
Opinion by Barry Soper
Barry Soper is Newstalk ZB's senior political correspondent
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COMMENT: The National Party's running a slick Twitter feed at the moment, speeding through 152 titles in 25 seconds, ending with a bill of $170 million and telling the viewer it's money that should have been spent on health and education.

The titles belong to the working groups, reviews, inquiries and councils the Government's appointed since coming to office, and even though some of them are questionable and the cost of them is debatable, there have been a lot of them.

National tells us they've been set up because the Beehive drones are all at sea, they don't know where they're going and they're presided over by the Queen bee who lacks a sting.

They'll now have to add the Business Advisory Council to their list. It's Jacinda Ardern's answer to what she says has been the elephant in the room, a lack of business confidence in her Government.

Well when she turned up to breakfast with business boffins in Auckland the elephant was spectacularly shown the door, with her declaring the lack of confidence was "a flashing great neon sign with giant lights and fireworks going off behind it."

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She wants to talk about it and to that end she did what this Government's become expert at: setting up a group to address it and tell her where things are going wrong.

And running true to form she's appointed the chairman but no-one else at this stage.

At least one business leader wasn't impressed, saying the chairman, Air New Zealand boss Christopher Luxon's effectively running a government monopoly and has a conflict of interest.

Yeah well Luxon's no slug, last week announcing his company's second biggest ever profit and it's not as though he's crawled out from the garden patch. He came back to the country after running Unilever in Canada and has held other business roles around the world. So he's well-suited to the job.

It seems that some businesses will never give this Government the benefit of the doubt but that's not to say the Beehive's innocent of creating the doubt in the first place.

Discover more

Airlines

Ardern: Slumping business confidence 'a flashing great neon sign with giant lights'

27 Aug 08:10 PM
Opinion

Comment: Why Ardern's posting of Luxon is a masterstroke

27 Aug 10:19 PM
Economy

Liam Dann: Inside the PM's business charm offensive

27 Aug 11:01 PM
Editorial

Editorial: The two vital words PM told business

28 Aug 05:00 PM

To lessen that Ardern offered an olive branch, saying their controversial collective bargaining for industry-wide Fair Pay Agreements will be limited to just two low paid industries during this term of Government.

That was always likely to be the case anyway, considering by the time born-again Jim Bolger's working group reports back to the Beehive and legislation's in place, the election will be looming.

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But with all the advice this Government is now waiting on with its plethora of experts in place, by this time next year it'll be so well informed that surely we can all expect to finally have confidence in where it's heading.

If we don't then at the next election the flashing great neon sign with giant lights and fireworks will likely read: National.

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