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Well, I suppose it’s nice to know that the great minds who get the big bucks for pontificating in the national daily are thinking alike to your humble correspondent. In my Insight column today I argue that Jacinda Ardern’s landslide election win may well turn out to be a poisoned chalice. Yesterday’s Australian likewise notices that the years ahead are a minefield of challenges that Ardern is clearly not up to. Ardern might have a dash of rat-cunning as a politician, but as an administrator she gives new meaning to the word “incompetent”.
She’s a brilliant politician, but has been a grossly incompetent administrator. And with her seismic re-election on Saturday, New Zealand is in for a dangerous three years.
“There is a distinct chance that if we don’t sort out our economic challenges quickly, New Zealand could end up a failed state,” says Oliver Hartwich, executive director of leading think tank the New Zealand Initiative.
Aoteozuela, here we come. Best start rationing your pets, Kiwis, or we might see New Zealanders eating each other again for the first time in a century or so.
The most galling part of the looming wave of economic devastation is that it’s entirely the result of government policy.
New Zealand has been hit particularly hard by the Ardern government’s heavy-handed coronavirus response. Before COVID-19, tourism was New Zealand’s largest export industry, employing 8.4 per cent of its workforce and bringing in over one fifth of the country’s foreign exchange earnings. With corona, this key plank of the NZ economy has been shut down for the foreseeable future.
Fundamental economic indicators are even more concerning. According to the OECD, New Zealand’s GDP could fall by 10 per cent in 2020. Likewise, unemployment is tipped to rise to just under 9 per cent in 2021 as New Zealand’s $14bn corona wage subsidy program ends. Public debt will soar from 19 per cent of GDP in 2019 to 56 per cent in 2026.
What New Zealand is going to desperately need in the next three years is a competent leader prepared to make hard decisions. What they’ve got instead is Jacinda Ardern.
Jacinda Ardern is perhaps the worst person to lead New Zealand through this economic turbulence. Her first term has been marked by political triumphs but public policy disasters[…]
As for what Ardern has planned for a second term, the details are patchy. Labour ran something of a “small target” strategy during the election, relying on the Prime Minister’s star power and perceived success in warding off the coronavirus.
But from what we do know about their “policy-lite” platform, Labour will likely exacerbate New Zealand’s economic woes. Hiking income tax, re-regulating the industrial relations system and a bloodcurdling plan for 100 per cent renewable energy by 2030 could turn the corona-induced economic shock into a permanent state of impoverishment for thousands of Kiwis. Worse-still is the possibility — still not ruled out at time of writing — that Ardern will go into coalition with the Green Party, with their plans for a new “wealth tax” and climate change evangelism on par with the Greens’ Australian counterparts.
National under the hapless leadership of Simon Bridges failed to offer a clear alternative for three years. Judith Collins is the best hope the party has of repairing the damage, but she simply wasn’t given the time to pull the party back from its disastrous Labour-lite policies.
But the surge in support for the libertarian ACT party — which went from 0.5 per cent of the vote to 8 per cent — shows that there is still a constituency for lower taxes and smaller government. In other words, many were looking for an alternative to Labour’s agenda, but the Nationals just didn’t offer it[…]The only hope for New Zealand now is that, whatever horrifying plans that Labour has in store, Jacinda Ardern is just as hopeless at actually implementing them in her second term as she was in her first.
It’s a sad time when you actually want your leader to be incompetent, but that’s 2020 for you.
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