Garth George: Joe Public wears by-products of bureaucratic blundering

I am convinced that the people who run this country, both locally and nationally, have lost the plot. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I believe that they lost the plot 20-odd years ago and have never found it again.

These thoughts came to me during the week between writing the last column and this one simply by reading the Herald each day and noting how many things have gone wrong and how politicians and bureaucrats of all colours and philosophies seem to be scrambling ineffectually to try to remedy them.

There seems to be abroad the idea that these things just happen, but that is absurd. They are all the result of stupid mistakes made along the way and it seems an awful lot of the chickens are coming home to roost in a rush.

And it seems to be taken for granted that when things turn to custard, it's the public's fault.

That has to be so because it is the public who are penalised while the politicians and bureaucrats go about fighting rearguard actions trying to clean up the messes they have made.

Yet the only fault that can properly be attributed to the public is that they have, from time to time, elected the dunderheads who purportedly run the nation on their behalf.

Let's start in the middle of last week when the price of petrol and diesel began once again to go off the clock.

Perhaps, just after the first oil shock of the early 1970s and in the period since, it has never occurred to any of our "leaders" that something should be done to make plans designed to ensure such a thing never caught us napping again.

But the opportunity, if it ever entered anyone's mind, wasn't taken to build up in this faraway place a national oil reserve which might shield us from the regular knee-jerk price reactions that seem to happen any time anyone so much as farts in any oil-producing country.

So who pays? The public are forced to pay through the nose for overpriced motor fuel and that includes men and women who are in competitive transport businesses - cab drivers, couriers, truckers.

The only people who don't suffer are the politicians and bureaucrats who drive perk vehicles and the executives and shareholders of the big, grasping oil multinationals.

And, of course, the Government cleans up in extra excise duty and GST and would never dream of giving the public a break by lowering one or both.

With the economy allegedly teetering on the brink of a slump - or a recession at best - job losses have already happened. There were more than 340 last week alone. So another slice of our industry is hived off to China or some other Asian place where workers are lucky to be paid even subsistence wages.

And all and sundry of those who supposedly know about these things - including union bosses, it seems - bang on about the high dollar, as if that is to blame.

But once again, it's the public who pay because all our imports are dearer, and it astounds me that no one seems overly concerned at the awful human tragedy that always comes to people who suddenly lose their jobs.

And, in the meantime, interest rates go up and up until they are again verging on the usurious and the public gets the blame for that, too - we're buying too many homes for ourselves - and many pay the penalty by having to struggle to find the extra dollars required to service their mortgages.

The banks and their overseas shareholders, of course, keep growing fatter. (Which reminds me: the woman who ripped off banks for more than half a million in mortgage money last month should be given a medal rather than be arrested.) But the rearguard action that takes the cake is the rort conceived by the three bozos who preside over three Auckland cities - Hubbard, Harvey and Curtis - who are off cap in hand to beg Wellington to let them toll existing roads.

The only people to derive any credit from this sordid scheme are George Wood of North Shore and Mike Lee of the ARC, who have refused to have a bar of it.

I must say I nearly choked on my toast when confronted with this newspaper's specious editorial endorsement of the plan. Reading mealy-mouthed words like "political courage" and "it's good to see three of Auckland's mayors offering leadership" made me want to puke.

Why should the poor motorist, who is not to blame for traffic congestion, be made to pay tolls to use roads that he or she has paid for in taxes of one sort or another over and over again?

The reason for congestion and the state of Auckland's roads - and other essential infrastructure as well -is that successive Governments and local authorities have for decades skimped on spending on these necessities and instead lashed out on fancy gewgaws to impress the populace and get them re-elected.

The chronic myopia of triennially elected politicians and the bureaucrats who depend on them for their livelihoods is the real cause of the expensive chaos that surrounds us. But you can bet your bottom dollar they'll never own up to it.

They'll just continue to blame you and me - and send us the bill.