Bill Ralston: Early days but it's all good

They did it. They have passed 100 days in power. Woo-hoo. Only 900 or more to go now before they face another election. Being in government is a marathon not a sprint but there is no doubt National has had a dream start.

Well, apart from encountering a global recession, a huge shortfall in tax, and rocketing unemployment, plus the fact every other warning light on the dashboard of our economy is flashing bright red.

Still, polls show the overwhelming majority of New Zealanders, even National's opponents, don't blame National for that situation. Yet. The sad truth for the Government is that it can do very little about the recession.

It might have been able to remedy the little one that began here just over a year ago, well before the rest of the world, but the second recession that struck when the remainder of the planet decided to join us in a massive slump is impossible for us to overcome alone.

National can try to keep morale up with its little fiscal stimulus package and flourishes like the Job Creation Summit but until our trading partners start opening their wallets again we are, to use a technical phrase, porked.

All we can try to do is weather it as best we can and hope Obama isn't just all rhetoric.

Before we all collectively slit our wrists it's worth pointing out that unless you are a director of a finance company, a car dealer or property developer the chances are you will come through this recession without too much damage. Just don't try to sell your house now and realise the loss.

By the way, if you don't own a home and reckon there is little chance of you being made redundant then maybe BNZ economist Tony Alexander is right, you should buy one.

Interest rates are low and houses are much more affordable now, so there will never be a better time.

The Government's task for the next 900 days is to look competent, appear to be trying its best to help those who do get in trouble, and not be distracted by the trivia that habitually afflicts all administrations.

To date John Key has done exactly that and it has worked.

His CEO leadership style is reassuring. His moments of glorious goofiness, dancing with transvestites and doing the occasional face plant when exiting a stage, have made him seem endearingly human in contrast with Helen Clark's austere aloofness of the previous decade.

Helen exercised highly centralised power. She had a cabinet of one.

Key runs a much more collaborative leadership. There appears to be an inner cabinet consisting of him, Bill English, Steven Joyce, Simon Power, Gerry Brownlee, Murray McCully and Tony Ryall who drive policy and performance but, broadly, he seems to leave his ministers to do their jobs without heavy interference.

Most seem to relish that freedom. Environment Minister Nick Smith, who seemed loopy when in opposition, has done a splendid job unravelling the tangle of the Resource Management Act and now looks quite sensible.

Police and Corrections Minister Judith "Crusher" Collins is a perfect fit for her portfolios, whether giving her slack prison boss a Liverpool kiss or pulverising the cars of boy racers, she makes Act's David Garrett look like a liberal limp-wristed pantywaist.

Education Minister Anne Tolley earned the undying loyalty of a future generation of voters by letting the evil pie and sausage roll sneak back into tuckshops across the nation.

The other tough sheila at the cabinet table, Paula Bennett, may have copped the sneers of the chardonnay set for her Westie ways and raising a family that sounds increasingly like the cast of Outrageous Fortune but the electorate only seem to have embraced her for it.

The first 100 days programme was all about looking competent and appearing to honour National's election promises.

Sadly, most of those promises were made in an entirely different pre-election economic climate when it seemed like we could afford them.

Still, Key seems determined to stick by those pledges even if it makes Bill English's job harder when writing the next Budget.

As long as the Government doesn't back away from its promised tax cuts it will survive even the blackest budget that English may have to devise.

In these times families are looking forward to even a small amount of tax relief and it is the one promise National cannot afford to break.

The Government can take a holiday on making contributions to the Super Fund. It can even axe the damn thing and nick the fast diminishing $12 billion to further boost the economy.

Most people won't mind the loss of an abstract concept involving billions of bucks.

They will spit the dummy if they find the Government reneges on giving them that extra $20 a week.