If National wins ...

[POSSUM THE CAT]

Fungus Pudding the free trade deal with China was promoted as gods gift. I have to agree they were correct. But to China not to NZ.

[Major von Tempsky]

Try reading the Business section of today's Sunday Star Times, Poss old chap.

It points out that in the last 5 years NZ exports to China have tripled and the Chinese Ambassador to NZ acknowledges that next year NZ exports to China will exceed NZ imports from China.
Poss, I think you have the anti-Midas touch....

[elZorro]

MVT, those figures sound good, and I know that some of it is due to higher dairy farming exports like complete dairy platforms, live heifer cows etc. It should not be expected that this will keep going forever, because cows breed, and most parts of dairy platforms can be replicated. The Chinese are also buying more of our cheap raw pine logs, as exports from the USA dwindle, due to their housing resurgence. It could be the figures include income from Chinese tourists as well. But certainly the figures are heading in the right direction at the moment. If this were the only story for 2008-2013, it would be expected that local manufacturers and primary industry would be paying higher taxes than in 2008, and employing more staff. We know that's not happening - perhaps because the new margins are lower. Chinese-type lean margins are often the new rules for exporting. FP thinks I'm not objective? let's say I'm keeping my one good eye fixed on what John Key and Steven Joyce are up to.

[Major von Tempsky]

"All I can tell you is the IMF is very supportive of what is being done by the Government in that respect.

"If you look at the numbers, if you look whether it is growth, whether it is employment, whether it is inflation, whether it is debt, overall it is very stable and it is also very promising.

"If you compare the potential growth rate of New Zealand and these forecasts we have which I will not disclose because they will be disclosed in a couple of weeks time, it's certainly a lot better than what we see in other parts of the world.

"An economy grew on the basis of its components - resources, manpower, capital, financial markets and policies and the policies we believe are sound and solid."
IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde speaking today at Bo'ao in China about the NZ economy.

[elZorro]

Why is it that no-one on the 'right' has been able to either spot, or fix, the typo in the press release? You can't even trust reporters to get it sorted these days. Try some proof-reading.. and yes, I'd already read the item. It's spin, worth a quick look only.

[iceman]

Why is it that no-one on the 'right' has been able to either spot, or fix, the typo in the press release? You can't even trust reporters to get it sorted these days. Try some proof-reading.. and yes, I'd already read the item. It's spin, worth a quick look only.

Probably because we do not edit direct quotes EZ. I will leave that to you Lefties to do, edit quotes until they meet your approval eh !

[elZorro]

Too late, MVT fixed it Iceman..

The NBR reports on the tax haven story, they're happy to report that it's embarrassing, but so far no claims of illegality have been made. That's all right then. It's likely that 1/3 of the world's wealth is held in tax havens.

http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/peters-winebox-features-accounts-25-million-offshore-banking-files-leaked-ck-138281

I like John Key's response to the idea of NZ being able to pay for purchases in China with NZ$, skipping the normal bank spread on US$ conversion. Unless we're converting to Renminbi instead.

[Major von Tempsky]

"and yes, I'd already read the item. It's spin, worth a quick look only."

You're getting desperate EZ, really desperate :-)

Why would a neutral, professional International civil servant resort to "spin" in favour of the NZ National Party?
Doesn't add up.

[westerly]

Interesting following the debate between EZ on the left and his right wing opponents. Back in the dark ages of the 1960s and 70s the National party under Holyoake and Muldoon was more centre than right and the average person was better off with a National Govt. Labour tended to come into power when austerity measures were required took unpopular actions and was promptly tossed out
With the advent of Roger Douglas followed by Ruth Richardson with their neo-right policies of less tax, less govt less unionism and sell off of Govt. assets a new National party has emerged well right of centre. Labour under Helen Clarke was constantly attacked by the new right with the nanny state tag.
John Key is carrying on with the neo-right policies which have brought extreme wealth to a few, more doing ok thanks, and large numbers struggling to maintain a reasonable living standard.
Whether the centre left has the ability to counter the less tax less Govt mantra of the right time will tell. In the meantime I am well and truly on EZ 's side

Westerly

[elZorro]

Thanks for those comments Westerly, it's a great oversight on NZ politics you provided. There are a few other lefties here on the thread, like Possum the Cat and Belgarion. With your backup, I'm going to 'wheel out' Colin James once again :

Colin James's Otago Daily Times column for 9 April 2013

Cruiser Key and an inconvenient question

John Key cruised into his job. He didn't do the apprenticeship a Helen Clark or a Jim Bolger did before becoming leader of his party, then Prime Minister. That is one reason he misses some points of proper process.

The apprenticeship he did do was doing deals. Doing deals is how politics and government are done in Washington where money talks and talks big and Key has a soft spot for the United States (viz his Korea mistake on Sunday). A deal-making mentality is another reason he misses some points of proper process.

A deal is a deal. How you get it matters a lot less than that you get it. Key got in a family connection, Ian Fletcher, to run the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB), which broke the law by spying on Kim Dotcom and thereby mucked up Dotcom's extradition.

He got Sky City to talk turkey about a convention centre for Auckland, which was great news for tourism. That earned himself, his ministers and officials a polite ticking off from the Deputy Auditor-General but he professes not to see -- or doesn't see because he didn't do the apprenticeship -- that beneath the politeness the report was critical of the deal-making process. Deal makers don't rate politeness.

And that is the nub of the Ian Fletcher affair. In this country doing policy deals has since 1912 been tightly circumscribed by written and unwritten rules.

Whether Key gets the real import of Iain Rennie's carefully polite "surprise" and "issues of perception" language about the GCSB appointment is not clear -- though the embarrassed "body language" reporters noticed last Thursday suggest it probably did get through.

If not, Key could get some interpretative help from Rebecca Kitteridge, whose report on the GCSB he will release when back from China. As cabinet secretary, Kitteridge has -- has to have -- a deep knowledge of the constitution and all its protocols and conventions on proper process, including on appointing senior public servants.

The point is that New Zealand's rules about high-level core public service appointments are the world's purest. (Crown entity and state-owned enterprise boards are a different matter and governments may, and do, freely appoint toadies and hacks.) That purity is one reason this country persistently ranks No 1 or 2 in clean-government surveys.

A single transgression isn't a hanging offence. Key did not bring the democratic house down by phoning breakfast-companion Fletcher and inviting him to apply to be GCSB boss. Every cabinet transgresses once or twice.

But the price of purity is eternal vigilance. That is why, to Key's progressive irritation and eventual irascibility, the media followed up Grant Robertson's initial revelation by way of a question in Parliament and then probed Key's evolving explanations and bit-by-bit ownings-up. The "knuckleheads", as he called journalists on Friday (echoing his over-the-top "slippery slope" allegations over the John Banks "tea party" recording in the 2011 campaign), were doing their democratic job.

Key can arguably be forgiven his initial incomplete (and thereby misleading) response to Robertson because it was a trap question, tacked on to another about the GCSB and an example of the game-playing that has degraded question time. But he tacked on to his initial offhand response a gratuitous insult about Robertson's intelligence, which diverted Parliament into points of order that ended in Labour MPs Trevor Mallard and Chris Hipkins being thrown out.

And, come the following Tuesday when he knew he would be questioned at the post-cabinet press conference, he could have been expected to have got the story straight. Not so. It went downhill from there as the knuckleheads sensed and documented another "brain fade".

Again, a memory lapse is not a hanging offence. Even the famously retentive Clark had one from time to time. The issue is not a faultless memory but whether (a) memory lapses happen more often than one would expect of a Prime Minister on top of the job or (b) a memory lapse is convenient, that is, amounts to obfuscation.

After his first brain fade on the GCSB last year Key got himself better briefed for press conferences and other questioning. He began to look more the executive Prime Minister most expect than the guy who got the job without apprenticeship. That has been undone somewhat by the Fletcher affair.

Does it matter? At the cabinet apex is triangle of Key and two superministers, Bill English, who sees to strategy and reform, and Steven Joyce, who sees to GDP growth. Though, as Business New Zealand's and other organisations' scathing assessments of the Resource Management Act reforms suggest, sometimes policy workability and political saleability are sacrificed for speed and single-mindedness, it is on the whole a very effective trio.

And Key cruises on, his popularity high. The political risk is that too many rule breaches and brain fades will cause him to lose altitude. Who then would cruise National into a third term?

-- Colin James, Synapsis Ltd, P O Box 9494, Wellington 6141
Ph (64)-4-384 7030, Mobile (64)-21-438 434, Fax (64)-4-384 9175
Webpage http://www.ColinJames.co.nz