KEY POINTS:
Freezing the pay of MPs, putting the breaks on big increases for the likes of judges and top public servants, and cancelling taxpayer funded conferences may not haul the country out of recession but it is a welcome gesture.
Yes, no doubt it is largely political spin coming
out of the Beehive, designed to give us a warm and comfy feeling that the Government is tackling the enormous financial problems that face us.
Sure, the money saved will only be a drop in the bucket of the billions spent by the Government every year.
Yet it does send a signal to both public servants and the country as a whole that every tax dollar is precious while we face such tough times. It's a symbol of a newer, tougher, attitude to spending that is designed to make every dollar count.
John Key made his announcement at the same time President Obama signalled his top administration officials won't be getting pay increases.
I presume National's plan was already in the works before the White House made its announcement but if Key is stealing ideas from the new president then he could do worse than study Obama's inauguration speech. So should Phil Goff.
There is a passage in it where Obama dismisses the old style knee-jerk partisan politics.
"What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them - that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works - whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified".
Unencumbered by the worn out ideologies of the old Left and the New Right, Obama and Key are both pragmatists who are basically saying they will do whatever is necessary, whatever works, to put things right or at least minimise the pain we are likely to soon feel.
So far all we have heard from either is rhetoric, it will be many months before we start seeing if their big ideas are workable.
That makes it hard to criticise the National Government's progress and it is certainly contributing to the long political honeymoon that must be driving Phil Goff and the Labour opposition absolutely nuts.
Labour keep chipping away, attacking Government moves such as the cancellation of the health conference. But frankly, there is no mileage in that one. The public are unlikely to fret that health bureaucrats are going to miss out on a talkfest.
Goff may have a good point that the Government needs to change the law to instruct the Remuneration Authority to take into account the state of the nation when it doles out public sector wage increases but Key ignores him, hoping words alone will be enough to sway the authority.
I worry Key is being too dismissive of Labour, shutting Goff out of the employment summit and ignoring his advice on how to achieve the MPs wage freeze.
Of course, Goff and Labour aren't doing themselves any favours by constantly whingeing about virtually everything the Government does. To quote Obama again, they need to realise, "The ground has shifted".
In the current climate the public don't want to hear the same old stale political arguments.
Both parties would earn far more brownie points if they worked more co-operatively together and only chose to maul each other when there was a really vital issue at stake.
When you are worried about losing your job, watching your savings shrink and the value of your house plummet, you are unlikely to be impressed by a bunch of politicians bitching at each other about what to do.
When you are feeling insecure and exposed you need to know that those who control your destiny are doing their best to help, not just grandstanding and mudslinging.
Till now, apart from an alarming inability to safely negotiate stairs, John Key has not put a foot wrong. Like Obama, he has coasted through on a combination of brave words, great PR and the blind hope of the people. Now we need to see the rhetoric rapidly become reality.
We have heard a lot about the first 100 days but, really, it is the next six months that count.
By the middle of the year the Government will have to have created the desperately needed mechanisms to pump many millions of dollars into our increasingly arid economy if we are to avoid high unemployment and further economic collapse.
National and Labour need to understand that extracting ourselves from recession confidence is as important as commodity prices and productivity.
To gain that confidence we need to see the people to whom we have delegated the management of the country are working sensibly together in our common interest.
Why did I hear the words "Yeah, Right" when I wrote that?
