It’s no secret that the international legacy media just adore Jacinda Ardern. And why wouldn’t they? A young, female socialist – Ardern ticks nearly every intersectional box. Except ethnicity, perhaps, but she does try to make up for that by playing dress-ups in ethnic costume with all the enthusiasm of Justin Trudeau doing a Bollywood routine.
But hugs and magazine covers are no substitute for competence. As at least some in the Australian media have realised that New Zealand desperately needs competence rather than cuddles.
New Zealand’s economy is in strife. Without major change, our constitutional cousin is in decline. Its public finances are in tatters, its biggest export, tourism, has been obliterated[…]and New Zealand police now can enter people’s homes without a warrant.
But they’ll do it kindly, no doubt.
Meanwhile, pay no attention to that collapsing economy.
New Zealand ranks fourth last in the OECD for labour productivity growth, and last for multi-factor productivity growth, according to economist Michael Reddell, based on OECD data. Health and education are gobbling up more of the budget as the population ages, with less and less to show for it[…]
Like Australia, New Zealand is pouring more and more cash every year into public health and education systems, and getting worse and worse results to show for it. Like Australia, too, New Zealand is pouring rivers of government money into its panicked response to COVID-19.
In one year, New Zealand has blown 30 years of hard-fought fiscal rectitude. Its public debt will explode from the equivalent of 19 per cent of gross domestic product last year to 54 per cent by 2022, on the government’s own figures.
Unlike New Zealand, though, Australia has a robust resources sector. Despite the best efforts of troughers and woke corporations, reliable coal energy still dominates Australian industry and mineral exports are surging again – not being closed down.
Exports as a share of GDP have been rising, and narrowing the gap on imports.
New Zealand’s share of exports in GDP has been falling steadily for nearly a decade.
That makes Labour’s ban on oil and gas exploration all the more bizarre.
With 0.3 per cent of global GDP, New Zealand can only shoot itself in the foot by shunning fossil fuels. The Prime Minister and Finance Minister, who have not worked in the private sector, spruik the totems of modern left governments — renewable energy, trees, higher tax, equality — but without much to show for it. Plans for a billion trees and 100,000 houses have come close to almost naught [sic], and a capital-gains tax was dumped[…]
New Zealand’s international investment position was negative $171bn at the end of last year, more than half its GDP[…]New Zealand Initiative chief executive Oliver Hartwich said. “Even Mexico, Nigeria and Venezuela are not as indebted to the rest of the world as New Zealand.”
Rather than being the cause, the Wuhan pandemic has only brought into stark relief the impending economic disaster fomented by the Ardern government.
The nation’s draconian response to the coronavirus was questionable, given it is an island with a massive moat and a small population spread over an area the size of Italy. Despite those obvious advantages, the stringency of its lockdown was higher than practically any other country[…]
In any case, it wasn’t outsized compassion that drove the lockdown sledgehammer but the brutal reality of an underfunded health system. With about 140 intensive care unit beds and few ventilators — far fewer than Australia per capita — it was woefully underprepared.
The Ardern government now seems to have little real idea how to pull New Zealand back from the brink of economic disaster – a disaster largely of their own making.
“The real problem with the Ardern government is they have no idea whatsoever apart from how to throw money at things,” [former Treasurer Roger] Douglas told The Australian. The targeted “investment” approach to welfare pioneered when previous prime minister Bill English was treasurer has been junked in favour of open slather. “Our $12bn wage subsidy, for instance; about a third was a donation to people who don’t need it,” he said, explaining how well-off lawyers and accountants had obtained the payments.
With Ardern effectively committed to a closed-border policy until such time as a vaccine is found, and with the government shunning the resources industry, it’s hard to see just how Labour can possibly revive New Zealand’s dying economy. Even if Labour should come up with a viable plan, there’s even less reason to be confident that a government whose hallmark to date has been sheer incompetence could or would even implement it.
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