Audrey Young: National's uphill battle on a Budget for a crisis

COMMENT:

Jacinda Ardern and Grant Robertson are more like John Key and Bill English than perhaps they would admit.

Like their National predecessors, English was the brains and Key was the salesman. It was a perfect combination and formidable partnership.

Robertson, like English, has mastered the art of marshalling the public service together to service the rapidly changing needs and demands of the Government in a crisis.

Like Key, no one would doubt Ardern's intelligence, hard work or central role in dealing with the crisis of the day.

Her discussion with a Business New Zealand audience yesterday demonstrates someone who is across every part of the Covid-19 crisis.

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But what she has over Robertson is a wider audience and greater powers of persuasion.

The moment it looks as though the Government is losing ground, Ardern is at the ready.

But she can relax. At this stage in the Budget, with the red ink barely dry, Ardern's powers of persuasion may not be needed.

It does not seem to be a particularly difficult job to sell the Budget. National is not getting cut-through because it does not have a distinct alternative.

National has grizzled about the debt levels but doesn't say how much is too much.

It talks about reducing the role of the state in controlling people's lives but keeps calling for greater state assistance for people and business.

National keeps repeating the impacts of the crisis as though, if it repeats them often enough, the Government will be squarely blamed: 1000 people a day joining the dole queue, 150,000 job losses forecast by the Reserve Bank over the next six months; an extra $140 billion in debt over four years; 54 per cent of net debt to gdp; $80,000 a household: and not least a $50 billion "slush fund".

The "slush fund" as a concept for Covid response is not getting the cut-through National would like because it is utterly defendable.

National is attempting to attribute a purely cynical motive to a contingency fund that is being seen as perfectly sensible in a rapidly changing crisis.

Yes, that flexibility over the fund will help the Government approaching the election in four months.

But the fund is $50 billion over four years. About $20 billion of it is unallocated (again over four years) and it will be easily depleted in any second extension of the wage subsidy scheme or to fund some of the "re-imagining" of the tourism industry, as Robertson puts it, that is being undertaken currently.

If Ardern and Robertson start using it cynically or recklessly, that will be abundantly clear and that will be the time for National to call it a slush fund.

But so far in this crisis, Ardern and Robertson have been sensible, so sensible that they are refusing to commit to a second year of their flagship "fees free" policy for tertiary education and training.

Instead of committing more money to wealthy students doing B Coms, the Government's priority is to target free training in building and construction, agriculture, manufacturing, and care work from July this year.

National did plenty of damage to the fees-free policy in good times; it could well make mincemeat of it as wasteful spending in these hard times. Ardern and Robertson have not been silly enough to give it the chance.

National was an effective Opposition before the Covid-19 crisis and may be again.

But it cannot just pick up all its old themes and expect the same results as before.

The Government is being seen through a different lens at present. It won't be permanent but attacking its benevolence in a time of widespread insecurity risks further alienation.

There are no easy choices at a time like this for an opposition. It will be damned if it opposes and ignored if it doesn't. But it has to pick its battles carefully.

In the regions, which will be crying out for economic stimulus, National may need to refine its attacks on the $3 billion provincial growth fund as another slush fund and simply highlight any useless and wasteful projects.

It could note that Shane Jones managed to get an extra $500 million added to his PGF without having asked for it. But it needs to identify the waste.

There are other areas, however, which National could prosecute effectively.

The Government's poor record of delivery on big-ticket promises such as Kiwibuild, has been compounded with the quiet decision to put on ice light rail to the airport.

Simon Bridges can continue to point out the woeful performance of Phil Twyford, David Clark and Kelvin Davis.

It could be highlighting the disregard that Foreign Minister Winston Peters has to New Zealand's immediate economic interests by indulging in needless slanging matches with China's Foreign Ministry and ambassador to New Zealand over a C-grade issue.

National could make more of the contradiction in Robertson and Ardern's messaging that rightly acknowledges that National's stewardship of the books played a part in the Government now being able to use its balance sheet to take on more debt, yet maintains its mantra of "10 years of neglect".

Bill English's response to the global financial crisis was not slashing government expenditure.

He controlled the increases in expenditure more tightly, getting debt to gdp down, and turning record deficits into surpluses.

Labour criticised the mountain of debt that Bill English and John Key acquired and nobody listened because the debt was deemed necessary by most people.

Grant Robertson and Jacinda Ardern are getting the same type of criticism from the National Party with the same level of disregard.

There is no need for Ardern to ride to the rescue.

She and Robertson can afford to relax this weekend for the first time in a long time.