KEY POINTS:
Somebody please use a laser on John Key's forehead to tattoo the message: "This is not business as usual."
Just 35 days out from an election in which Key will become Prime Minister - if the polls become reality - the National Leader has still not divulged his plan for preventing the economy heading for the knacker's yard.
National's private polling is telling its strategists that voters want to know now (not in December after Key gets to cobble together another coalition of the self-interested) whether he does indeed have a plan for New Zealand.
Or, whether he's just another vanilla politician who wants to sleepwalk to victory instead of telling us just what hard calls his party would make to smash the big delusion that "everything's OK".
Yesterday the heat was going on Key and his finance spokesman Bill English that they must flesh out their proposals on Wednesday with their vaunted tax cuts to put an end to scathing criticism that the National leader has suffered over his ostrich-like response to the international credit crisis.
They have already brought forward the tax cuts package announcement which was earlier timetabled for later in the week. But this will not now be announced in isolation.
Key is expected to finally confirm Labour's Future Fund and other high-expenditure policies such as the $700 million boost to foreign affairs will be scuppered. Bigger deficits will be run and red tape will go so infrastructure projects can be sped up.
As one of the first to put the boot into Key this week, I'd say about time.
I have been profoundly shocked at Key's extraordinary failure to say anything meaningful, let alone outline National's proposed responses, as many of us experienced nights of sleep deprivation as we watched on US television the extraordinary pressure on the US Congress to vote in a credible scheme to avert another Great Depression.
The international crisis is not just a business issue. What's happening is remarkably like the conditions which gave rise to mass human misery during the 1930s.
The ostrich mentality is not just a Key trait.
Behind the scenes Finance Minister Michael Cullen is telling worried business people that it is just too volatile right now for the Government to judge an appropriate response.
Cullen knows tax revenues have already been hammered through three successive quarters of economic recession. But this is nothing compared with what's coming down the track as Kiwi companies corralled by the current credit lines squeeze reverse investment plans and switch into headcount reduction mode.
But take a look across the ditch, Michael. Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is already into full-scale Keynesian pump priming. Rudd is mounting a raid on Australia's multibillion-dollar infrastructure fund in an attempt to stave off the full effects of the global financial crisis.
He's not going to dole out the cash directly to hard-pressed Aussies. Rather he will use it to bring forward a raft of infrastructure projects which will spark growth and employment.
Red tape is being slashed so more companies can join Government in investing in public-private partnerships in roading and elsewhere.
A crackdown is also planned on unscrupulous lenders who might use the credit crunch to do homeowners out of their investments.
Like Helen Clark and Key here (and Cullen), Rudd initially focused on reassuring Australian punters their banking system was sound. He's now had the reality check.
If Key and Clark believe they can get through this campaign without directly confronting the issues they are reckoning without the Peters factor. The current international conditions provide an all too easy platform from which the New Zealand First leader can milk valid worries - particularly those of the elderly.
He launches his campaign at Auckland's Waipuna Lodge tomorrow. It will be a typically Peters show: Maori superstar John Rowles crooning old favourites and Peters mining proven themes.
Peters' old favourites, the winebox villains, are not likely to feature much in the campaign rhetoric, apart from his claims that they are somehow linked to a conspiracy to reveal his party has been a major beneficiary of secret big-business donations.
There is real anger out there in voting land. Those that put their savings in the Petricevic and Bryers companies are not alone. Plenty of retirees who lost a good deal of their savings in the finance companies' implosion will not be able to make up the balance again.
We are not alone in seeking answers to this crisis which will see much overstretched bad loans and reckless lending exposed in coming months. But we are alone in not seeking solutions. Pathetic really.
