KEY POINTS:
Been there, done that. Sir Roger Douglas had some sage advice for John Key prior to the Prime Minister unveiling his Government's $480 million small and medium business "relief package" yesterday.
Whatever critics might say about Labour's most radical and most polarising finance minister, there is no dispute Sir Roger was a dab hand at selling his policies to voters during difficult economic times in the 1980s.
He suggested the Government - likely facing deep and prolonged recession - follow his example and take the public into its confidence. It should explain exactly what was happening to the economy, what it was doing about that and be honest about the downsides, as well as the upsides, of policies tackling the crisis.
Otherwise, the public would start thinking there was a vacuum.
Yesterday's speech by the Prime Minister launching the relief package has gone a long way towards plugging any such vacuum and stifling suggestions National has been sitting on its hands.
Key's address remedied what has been something of a communications failure on his Government's part. He gave a clear picture of what the Government intends doing while saying he remained open-minded about future steps that might be taken as economic conditions worsen over the next few months.
Key has adopted a "rolling-maul" approach to recession which has the Government deliberately staggering its response with an ongoing series of announcements.
Yesterday's package - essentially National's first concrete response to the crisis rather than something it was going to do anyway - will be followed by next week's similar-sized announcement listing "fast-tracked" Government building projects to keep people in work. That in turn will be followed by the Prime Minister's jobs summit. And so on.
The strategy enables the Government to retain flexibility. Not firing all its policy bullets at once also leaves spare ammunition for when the recession really bites and National comes under huge and sustained pressure to do more.
But is it doing enough now? Is it spreading itself too thin?
There is argument over whether yesterday's tax breaks and the red-tape cutting goes far enough in easing cash flow problems for small and medium-sized enterprises. Most business lobby groups welcomed the package's contents as long overdue, however.
Labour claimed many of the initiatives had already been on its work programme in Government and the economic crisis was ominously moving faster than the Government's response. Drip-feeding initiatives leaves the Government politically vulnerable to such charges.
Fate was unkind enough to have Finance Minister Bill English crossing the Tasman for annual talks with his Australian counterpart just as Kevin Rudd's Government unveiled a whopping $53 billion package to stimulate the Australian economy on top of the $30 billion already committed to pump-priming.
Australia has more room to move fiscally. It is not on credit-watch by international ratings agencies. New Zealand is. That drastically limits the spending parameters within which Key and English can move.
While Rudd's package looks huge, the Prime Minister's office here says its calculations show the fiscal stimulus to the New Zealand economy through tax cuts and Government spending is still bigger than Australia's once gross domestic product is taken into account.
However, as the saying goes, explaining is losing. Superficial comparisons with Australia are inevitable and difficult to counter. They underline the necessity for National to constantly shout from the rooftops what it is doing and why. Yesterday's speech was a start.