This Government's multi-billion dollar regional package, released with grandiose fanfare on Friday, could be a stroke of political genius.
It wraps up a bunch of stuff the Government would do anyway in a nicely packaged programme with a title and tangible outcomes people can get their head around.
Anyone can order a cheeseburger, small fries and a drink, but it's better when it's called a Happy Meal. This is the Government's Happy Meal.
A couple of ground rules though, before we get too carried away.
Firstly, you need to work out what wasn't going to get done. And that is the National Party's claim: a lot of the stuff was in the pipeline anyway. So extract that out and look at what would not have been done, and those are the potential gains to be made.
Secondly, and probably more importantly, how much of the money leads to genuine growth expansion and ongoing prosperity as opposed to it being a local sugar hit that dies when the money runs out? There is a good reason some of regional New Zealand has trouble, and that is because people and businesses can't, or don't, want to operate there. The Government throwing money in works as long as the money is available. But if that's all there is, that's little more than a welfare programme and a recipe for long-term disappointment and disaster.