Well-known political commentator David Farrar's weekly politics review will appear on nzherald.co.nz each Friday.
There's a score of columns about the Budget itself, so I'm not going to write about the Budget per se, but about a new approach from Labour which many on the right should welcome.
On Wednesday John Armstrong wrote:
They [Goff and Cunliffe] are seeking to underline their
own fiscal rectitude by not blindly rejecting every cut to departmental budgets and programmes in tomorrow's Budget.
This would be a welcome move from Labour. I've watched in despair as they have seemingly opposed every spending cut of the last two and a half years. Every policy analyst job in Wellington was sacred. Every advertising campaign to tell us to be more healthy was vital.
Not only has Labour opposed every spending cut of the last 30 months, it has relentlessly called for increased spending. They complained that our fiscal stimulus wasn't as large as President Obama's.
But something has changed. Armstrong wrote:
Normally, Labour would place an overwhelming emphasis on fairness. The party's response to this year's Budget will certainly canvass that matter as it affects groups and individuals detrimentally. However this year, Labour will give a lot more stress on whether the Budget measures are sufficient to lift New Zealand's economic game.
Like National, Labour detects voters' new mood of gritty realism about the country's predicament.
Labour is correct that the voters are realistic about this country's predicament. In fact they have been so for the last couple of years.
Labour have been caught in their legacy of winning the 1999 election on a campaign of the spending cuts of the 1990s went too far. And in the early 2000s the words "spending cuts" were enough to scare away any swinging voter.
But the global recession caused by the credit crisis of 2008 changed things. Governments around the world had their books fall into massive deficits, and voters responded by saying they accepted spending cuts were necessary. In the United Kingdom, polls showed that voters preferred spending cuts to tax increases by at least a 2:1 majority.
Muldoon once quipped that New Zealanders wouldn't know a deficit if they tripped over one. Those days are long past, and I believe New Zealanders are grittily realistic about getting the books back into surplus and reducing debt. I guess it took two earthquakes for Labour to get onto the same page, but I welcome the fact they have finally got there.
Even more pleasing Labour have said that they wish to focus on measures to lift New Zealand's economic game. This is excellent. This is what the debate between the parties should be about - how to increase the size of the cake, rather than how to slice the cake up.
If Labour thinks a capital gains tax will lift New Zealand's economic performance, then they should propose it, and let's have an arguably long overdue debate on the merits of such a tax.
I look forward to Labour sharing with us their ideas for how to grow the economy. They say they wish to focus on the export sector. As the tradeables sector was in recession for their entire last term of Government, they need to develop some credible new policies here.
National has laid out its plans for getting the country back into surplus. The ball is in Labour's court to come up with a more attractive yet credible alternative.
* A disclosure statement on David Farrar's political views.
