Much of the Labour election policy is lacking in substance and detail and a large number of organisations are concerned about its implementation across many sectors.
I am concerned that the large number of spending promises the new Government has made will sacrifice the hard work over the past decade to get back into surplus and start paying down debt.
The Speech from the Throne must have been disappointing to anyone who was anticipating some detail on the policies Labour campaigned on.
Instead, the speech contained high-level hopes encased in 51 new spending commitments, putting even more pressure on the Government's anticipated spending track and net debt.
It also highlighted that the concessions Labour has yielded to the minority parties are already coming to the surface.
The speech confirmed that the new Government will cut support to regional investment, no longer backing irrigation and water management improvement strategies.
They will increase red tape and monitoring of farmers instead of investing the money in better technologies and practices. The Greens have also confirmed that the new Government will bring in a pricing mechanism for carbon, although avoided giving any details on what the impacts or costs of this would be to sectors such as agriculture.
Again, heartland Greens voters are winning from the proposal to build 100,000 new affordable homes over the next 10 years, as half of all these new houses will be built in Auckland.
This is an urban-based proposal which will draw our skilled regional construction workers to the city. There is no consideration of the far-reaching impact this will have on the regional construction workforces.
It's also important to note that the 100,000 KiwiBuild houses won't actually be 100,000 more - Labour intends to purchase around half of those off existing plans, which won't add to overall supply.
The coalition agreement has also seen the Government agree to plant 100 million trees per year in a Billion Trees Planting Programme - that's 274,000 trees planted every single day.
Apart from these impossible numbers, there are other big questions surrounding this proposal. Who is going to plant them and where will they be planted?
Will the Government buy land to plant these trees? Are they planning on utilising existing agricultural land? Will natives and natural vegetation be prioritised over fast-growing introduced varieties or is this just a numbers game?
Unfortunately, this proposal is affected by the lack of detail that is afflicting most of Labour's policy announcements.
The theme of poorly concocted policy that is untested and expensive also extends to the Government plan to remove fees for the first year of tertiary study.
Labour estimate the cost of paying for the first year of tertiary education at $340 million for just the initial year of implementation. Whatever your political leanings, this is an enormous amount of money - it is critical that this money is directed effectively to those who need it most.
If the purpose of this policy is to ensure that students who would otherwise be unable to attend university are given the opportunity to do so, then shouldn't the funding be targeted to those regional students who face hardship by not being able to live at home to complete tertiary study?
Tertiary fees can be deferred and paid back over time, it is the day-to-day living and the annual costs of the hostels and halls of residence that is the pressing problem facing students.
Has the Government considered bolstering the living away from home support for these students or increased the number of scholarships for families who cannot afford the cost of their children's tertiary accommodation?
Current figures show that drop-out rates for first-year tertiary students are almost one in six in New Zealand.
Giving these kids that drop out a free pass, essentially a local gap year on the taxpayer, is a totally unacceptable return on investment.
Why are the students who are completing their degrees not being prioritised for a free final year of study? Isn't it better policy to reward the hardworking and committed students?
The legacy of poor policy lasts for years, sometimes decades. The irony is that in recent years all the economic risks have been offshore.
Now, just as the world economic outlook is strengthening, all the local risk and uncertainty is being generated domestically by the economic opaqueness and lack of certainty surrounding the new Government.
Alastair Scott is the National Party MP for Wairarapa. Views expressed here are the writer's opinion and not the newspaper's. Email: editor@hbtoday.co.nz.
