Government Plans to Please No One

As I pointed out in my previous article there is a primary reason why this Government is one of the worst achieving in a lifetime. They have gone from a transformational narrative to a govern for all narrative. Governing for all simply results in nothing getting done as in practice it is impossible. Whatever decisions are made, they will not be universally popular. You cannot please all of the people all of the time.

A set of policy decisions in one area can quite possibly negatively affect policies in another or the same area. If we take housing for example, the Government has been intent on punishing landlords, whom they regard as rich pricks, when in fact a good number of them have a rental property as a nest egg for their retirement years. The Government brought in so many new regulations that many in the investment housing market are getting out.

This is bad news on four fronts for the Government. It reduces the number of rental houses available; it pushes up the rents tenants have to pay; tenants, therefore, find it harder to save a deposit to buy; and the landlords getting out of the market will be more reliant on government welfare in their retirement years. This is just dopey policy all around. The politics of envy are never a solution to any problem.

Moving on to transport which I wrote about just over a week ago. I see in an opinion piece in the NZ Herald by Simon Wilson that nothing has changed. The new Minister of Transport, Michael Wood, is still banging on about cycleways, walking, getting more people onto public transport (don’t forget your mask), freight efficiency and road safety. Well, as far as our biggest city goes, with the possible exception of freight efficiency, nothing will change. None of the other ideas will make a scrap of difference to vehicle usage in Auckland.

Independent analyst Paul Winton says the $20 billion the Government plans to spend on transport infrastructure will have little impact on emissions. He says what we need is behavioural change with clear leadership from the Government. Persuade people to work from home, treat active travel as public transport, put four times as many buses into service and make space on the road for them. Now there’s a great way to increase emissions while not increasing passenger numbers. Auckland is not suited to these ideas which explains the ever increasing number of cars on the road.

Poverty is another area where the Government has no answers or the wrong answers. There are now six ministers with an oversight of this area, led by Ardern herself. The other five are Robertson in Finance, Sepuloni in Social Development, Davis with Children, Woods in Housing and Little in Health. I’m picking this will end up as too many cooks in the kitchen spoiling the broth. The problem this government has with poverty is a reluctance to take a more targeted approach, as Bill English was starting to do, and focus on those people most in need.

A broad brush approach is not the answer. We need more specific assistance from groups like budgetary advisory services and Plunket, which means bringing Maori more into the mainstream of the various social services. Nothing will work for Maori until the root causes of their problems are tackled. More money is not necessarily the answer, but as with policies implemented in other areas it will no doubt be needed.

This government needs, when implementing policies in one area, to look at possible consequences in other areas, e.g. how their housing policies impact on poverty. Unfortunately I don’t think the government has the wherewithal to accomplish this as they lack the necessary skill set. And remember, Ardern does not intend to lead a transformational Government. In other words, another three years of much talk but no walk.