Matt McCarten: Brash's taskforce recommendations pure baloney

Australia did the opposite of what Don Brash is proposing. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Don Brash taskforce was supposed to provide a blueprint showing us how we can catch up with Australia's standard of living. It didn't. Predictably it was a rehashed blueprint of the Act Party's ideology. The report puts up a misleading narrative about how badly we have been doing since the 1980s and how the only way we can rescue our country is more deregulation, more privatisation, more user-pays, lower taxes for the wealthy and everyone fending for themselves.

It's this sort of neo-liberal baloney what got us into the mess they say now needs fixing.

The membership makeup of Brash's taskforce indicates we should not have expected anything else. It was set up by Act in a cynical deal with National, with its members selected because of their reliable right-wing beliefs. At the time they claimed it was non-partisan and pointed to former Labour finance minister David Caygill as proof. But anyone who has read Nicky Hager's The Hollow Men would have cringed over Caygill's fawning emails to Brash, when he was National leader, promising to help him to complete the Rogernomics revolution.

This taskforce was established for no other reason but to dress up nasty right-wing nonsense as serious policy ideas. It's the same strategy adopted by neo-conservative think tanks elsewhere. Push extremist ideas into the mainstream debate as loudly as you can and move the centre of the debate as far rightward as possible.

Act succeeded far better than they could have ever hoped. This Government has contracted paid Act sympathisers to write an annual Act mini-manifesto for the rest of this Parliamentary term.

Nice work if you can get it.

The breathtaking hypocrisy is that the taxpayers have to part with nearly $500,000 to pay these guys writing on the evils of Government waste and the joys of the freemarket.

We shouldn't be too surprised, given Rodney Hide and Roger Douglas recently and belligerently defended their right to taxpayer dosh to pay for their personal jaunts overseas.

The taskforce recommendations are so childish that I'm not surprised National has run a mile. For example, its recipe for closing the wage gap with Australia is to reduce the adult minimum wage to $9 an hour. That will result in a wage cut for half-a-million low-paid workers by $140 a week.

Take away $212 a week from under-18 year olds. Then keep workers in line by letting employers sack them for any reason in their first year. Remove childcare subsidies for working parents. Increase doctors' and prescription fees. When a worker needs to improve their skills, charge them market interest on loans to cover their course fees. So much for investing in growing our economic capacity.

But that's not what this report is really about. New Zealanders are already among the most productive in the world. Worker productivity has increased by 83 per cent since 1982, and we work longer hours than any other OECD country. Over the same period, real wages were 25 per cent less. The World Bank Group ranks us second after Singapore as the world's most business-friendly. The Wall St Journal ranks us fifth in its economic freedom index with a score of 82, with Australia third with 82.6.

The problem we have is that for decades ordinary Kiwis have not shared in this country's wealth. It's gone to profits, most of it offshore. Since the 1980s, workers' share has dropped from 56 to 46 per cent of GDP while shareholders' share had soared nearly 10 points to 48 per cent over the same time. That's a massive transfer of wealth from labour to capital. That's actually our problem.

But according to the report, the only solution to growth is to cut social spending and lower workers' incomes and rights. Brash ignores that Australia did the opposite of what he is proposing. The report is pure ideology - and a failed one too.

I agree with Phil Goff. Sack this taskforce and ask them for our money back.

- HERALD ON SUNDAY