Mike Hosking: This government is specialising in window-dressing, not reform

Opinion

Could I suggest, without enraging too many Labour-NZ First-Coalition type supporters, that there is a growing amount of evidence this new government is showing signs of being specialists in window-dressing as opposed to actual reform?

The Reserve Bank yesterday confirmed what I had suspected all week: the coalition's decision to have employment included in their decision-making process won't actually make any difference.

When the clause finally saw the light of day, it literally said "include housing".

Nothing about how, or by how much.

It reminded me of when Labour last got to government. I was working for TVNZ, we waited with bated breath for their new broadcasting charter. We were going to do a 90-minute special on it. When it was finally spat out, it was an A4 page of vague generality that said everything or nothing.

The Reserve Bank instruction is the same.

The Hobbit law around the movie industry - they were repealing it. Whoops, no they're not. Those in the industry have told them they're nuts, and so to their credit, they've put the brakes on.

Then there's the foreign ban on house buying. No it's not: it's at best a partial ban on existing houses. And that's before you get to the fact that it's not needed anyway. Nor the capital gains tax, given the market has now well and truly settled, and prices are going no place fast.

And that's before you get to their grandiose promise of 10,000 new houses a year, which Phil Twyford was very quick to acknowledge was not actually going to happen in the first year at all. Because as we all pointed out, we can't build enough houses as it is, far less adding another 10,000 to it.

The TPP? Some decorative changes to some clauses to allow them to look like they've tipped it on its head. Reality is, they'll still sign it.

This, in its own ironic way, isn't actually a criticism, just in case you were frothing at the mouth.

In at least some areas, the Hobbit law would be your best example, this is a government that is one of three things.

One, it's naive and beating the band, and promised a whole lot of stuff it had no idea it couldn't deliver on.

Or two, it's Machiavellian and rolled out a whole lot of ideological policy it knew it couldn't deliver on, but sold it hard in the campaign in order to grow its vote.

Or three, it's partially naive and when shown the truth or the facts is pragmatic enough to realise they might have been barking up the wrong tree.

Let's give them the benefit of the doubt and say it's three.

And if it is, that's no bad thing.

Because no government is the repository for all things correct right and proper, so having acknowledged that all we have to do now is convince James Shaw his idea of climate change visas is nuts.