KEY POINTS:
This week's seen a classic lesson in how to steal defeat from the jaws of victory. The Labour Government has taken this country from 14 years of surpluses to nine years of deficits.
This reckless disregard for other people's money is outrageous. If Labour Ministers were executives and managers in the private sector, the Serious Fraud Office would investigate.
How many Labour shareholders - those who voted them into office - will state publicly they voted for the coffers to be emptied? That they signed off on their choice of politicians taking us from a $5.6 billion surplus last June, to the country facing a $31 million deficit, rising to $3b by 2012?
This is the price we're all paying for the election bribes of 2005 to tertiary students and childcare centres, for the political decision to pay, pay and pay again for the rail network. And they're still at it - last week they spent $50m on a South Island farm.
Furthermore, they took economic growth and genetically engineered it into a stunted toad. Repealing the Employment Contracts Act was a good thing, they said. They champion the Resource Management Act because it protects the environment but to hell with a better standard of living for the working family. We'd rather save the planet, obsessing over global warming, than save the poor and panic about profligate Government spending.
Who made a fuss when the Government trilled on about "work-life" balance, making four weeks' annual leave compulsory? In select committee, we heard submissions warning it would severely damage productivity, increase costs, stall wage rises and ultimately hurt the very people Labour and the Greens sought to favour, but nobody listened.
Labour and the Greens wouldn't allow workers from the lower echelons of the labour force to have the choice of trading extra weeks' leave for cash, so they could afford to take the kids on holiday. Nanny knows what's good for ignorant peasants, who lack tertiary or union qualification.
It's time politicians - including National and Act - took advice from those who really generate the wealth and pay the taxes.
MPs thanked Owen Glenn for his generosity but he's just another tax exile. The $7m he gave to the University of Auckland's business school is peanuts compared with what he, and his tax exile mates, would have paid in taxes, levies and GST if they'd stayed.
I suggest MPs talk to successful farmers about how to ensure financial security lasts not just one lifetime but through several generations.
When the cow cockies received good payouts recently, they didn't blow them on extra holidays, telling the grass to keep growing, thistles to stop seeding, cows to stop producing milk and take care of themselves for five weeks. They didn't leave pregnancy-testing kits dotted around the paddocks, along with grass staggers or mastitis medication for Friesians to help themselves, in case they felt a bit poorly while the boss was sunning himself offshore, working on his work-life balance.
Back when the wool cheques flowed in, putting sheep farmers in clover, I don't recall Dad spending the extra dough on a clapped-out, under-used, money-draining transport system just because the rest of his family felt sentimental about travelling by train. When my brothers and I threatened to leave home, I don't recall his chucking extra money at us, or telling us to forget about repaying any money we owed him just to buy our loyalty. Farmers know good times don't last forever. As they pull on their boots and curse the huntaways, good farmers know when dairying peaks and sheep and beef are at their nadir, it's only a matter of time before the situation reverses.
So what would farmers do if they found someone had spent all the savings? I doubt they'd cut interest rates, as the economically illiterate "experts" advocated this week. For every borrower, there's also a lender, so don't punish savers because risk-takers have loans they can't service.
In times of drought, farmers don't round up the sheep, they allow more space. Open all the gates when the grass disappears, Dad always said, and let stock go where they will. Given freedom, sheep keep growing, to reproduce and create income.
Thus it's welcome that National will continue with tax cuts, and ignore those who talk of "borrowing to fund" tax cuts - it's simply us keeping more of what's ours. But they'll need to do more in the upcoming drought than open the gates. Reckless spending must be stopped.
Wayleggo, mate, if the Nats don't take a stick to student loan interest, early childhood bribes, beneficiaries who refuse to work and unions holding the country to ransom, we will all be working hard on our work-life balance.
