Covid 19 coronavirus: Hamish Rutherford: Nation building should be the start of a move to unity

By Hamish Rutherford

Wellington Business Editor·NZ Herald·

31 Mar, 2020 04:45 AM6 mins to read

Subscribe to listen

Access to Herald Premium articles require a Premium subscription. Subscribe now to listen.

Already a subscriber? Sign in here

Listening to articles is free for open-access content—explore other articles or learn more about text-to-speech.

‌

Subscriber benefit

The ability to gift paywall-free articles is a subscriber only benefit. See more offers by clicking the button below.

Already a subscriber? Sign in here

Save

Share this article

Reminder, this is a Premium article and requires a subscription to read.

NOW PLAYING • Focus: Government to provide up to $900 million loan for Air NZ

Finance Minister Grant Robertson has announced a loan of up to $900 million to bail out Air New Zealand. Video / Derek Cheng ...

OPINION:
Grant Robertson's handling of the Covid-19 crisis has been good so far.

The fullness of time will judge whether the warnings it heard were sufficiently strong to warrant faster action by the Government, but no administration in our history has faced such a decision: whether to shut down the country.

Robertson not only has to help make it, but deal with the consequences. Former Finance Ministers Sir Michael Cullen and Sir Bill English never faced such a crisis of confidence.

So far Robertson has managed to fire several billion into the economy within a few days; tens, if not hundreds of thousands of jobs have been saved for the moment at least.

All Access. All in one subscription. From $2 per week

Subscribe now

All Access Weekly

From $2 per week

Pay just

$15.75

per week ongoing

Subscribe now

BEST VALUE

All Access Annual

Pay just

$449

$49

per year ongoing

Subscribe now

Learn more

Advertise with NZME.

Finance minister Grant Robertson speaks during COVID-19 financial response package announcement at Parliament on March 17. Photo / Getty Images.

More help to prop up the economy is looming. Loans, investment promises. "Whatever it takes," Robertson has said.

Make it your business to know

Start your day with the latest business headlines straight to your inbox.

Please email me competitions, offers and other updates. You can stop these at any time.

Email address

By signing up for this newsletter, you agree to NZME’s Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

His idea of a forward looking project to hopefully fast track infrastructure investment and make plans for what a future New Zealand economy might look like, are excellent.

It is also right to delegate the task, given his day to day challenges are so vast.

Advertise with NZME.

But the idea of giving the job of leading this endeavour to Phil Twyford and Shane Jones is simply laughable. It must be cut off at the knees at once.

The age of Covid-19 already feels like it has been going on for months, but Robertson cannot believe New Zealand has such a short memory.

Twyford has a future in politics if he wants it, but is regarded as being dangerously unable to grasp detail.

Let him do some blue sky thinking for long-term projects if he wants to, reforming energy, imagining we had better housing stock or something else. Labour can use whatever he comes up with in the future if they choose.

His handling of Kiwibuild and Auckland's rail something-or-other means his time handling actual projects must be over. Certainly in a time of national crisis.

Shane Jones, Phil Twyford, Grant Robertson and Winston Peters standing on a KiwiRail train at Wellington Railways Station in 2019. Photo / Mark Mitchell.

For Jones the issue is different. It is not that no good at all will come from the Provincial Growth Fund. Some money is being spent and Jones finds people to point at and say he has created jobs.

But whatever finally emerges from the endeavour, it will be a dark chapter in New Zealand's vigilance of probity.

Officials are said to have had to chase him desperately trying to stop him from promising things on the fly. Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade officials have had to warn him more than once about the rules which could flout international standards.

Advertise with NZME.

Jones himself said two years ago that he wanted to be able to personally select "****kickers" to run Government departments at his behest. The neutrality of the public service is something we should guard jealously, especially when the name of today's game is to spend as much as we can.

Now is the time for Parliament to move towards unity.

We are surely not having an election this year. Even if we get on top of the response swiftly, it will inevitably have a long tail which makes some sort of unity structure inevitable.

The Coalition cannot govern without a mandate so why doesn't Robertson put the process on the front foot?

Give control of the drafting of any nation-building projects to National, knowing well that Robertson has final call on anything and everything they suggest. The Finance Minister writes the cheques, it is that simple.

Such an arrangement would cede significant influence to the Opposition, possibly without needing to allow them into Cabinet.

Both sides would have an interest in finding agreement and both would then be tied to the projects, whatever they were.

Even before the crisis began to unfold, Labour and National, ideally, would have already formed some agreement on rail in Auckland.

TO READ THE HERALD'S FULL CORONAVIRUS COVERAGE CLICK HERE

There will no doubt be countless other projects around the country where agreement could be found and then enabling legislation would happen, from Tiwai to a second Mt Victoria tunnel to a motorway from Auckland to Whangārei.

The case for funding clean energy projects and subsidies for electrification of transport could be made at the same as the Government decides whether it really doesn't want any more natural gas to be discovered.

The Opposition could form a Cabinet in waiting and try to look constructive, while its MPs wish and hope (and in many cases, pray) that Jacinda Ardern's popularity will eventually be affected by gravity. In some ways for National not having an election this year could be a blessing.

However you feel about the Christchurch rebuild, no one know the balance between getting things right and just getting on with it like Gerry Brownlee. His experience should be called upon.

Paul Goldsmith could be tested at another level, as could former Fonterra executive Todd Muller.

For Simon Bridges it could mean his final, highest role would not be Opposition leader with low personal approval rating, but some sort of temporary recovery tsar.

Surely Bridges, who appeared to relish the role of Transport Minister, knows that his speech in reply to Robertson's stimulus package on March 16 put his leadership on thin ice, again.

It may not survive a period when his MPs are, apart from everything else, bored.

Labour has no right to govern for much longer without putting the issue of how New Zealand is governed to the people, or forming an agreement with National.

New Zealand could also do with some unity and given that the National Party continues to enjoy significant support, surely bringing them into the tent cannot start too soon.

• Covid19.govt.nz: The Government's official Covid-19 advisory website