KEY POINTS:
Okay, I know sometimes I don't open all my emails, such as ones headed "PM Unveils New Electorate Office for Steve Maharey", "Arbitration Amendment Bill Passed By Parliament" and "Free Viagra". But, then, I'm not running the country.
It's been fun watching Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters, like
the Roadrunner, try to dodge the cunning trap laid by Wylie Coyote Murray McCully. The National MP wanted to know whether Peters' office was told that Air New Zealand was providing flights to sunny Kuwait for Iraq-bound Aussie troops. Peters said no but then it came out that two of his officials had been told, except they weren't listening at the time.
The fact that two top Foreign Affairs advisers in his office apparently couldn't be buggered reading an email report from the Combined Threat Assessment Group (CTAG) telling them New Zealand had just become a bigger target for al Qaeda is a bit of a worry. CTAG consists of the cops, the military and the country's various spy agencies and its job is to monitor terrorist threats. A kind of important job, really, yet these characters in Winston's office probably yawned "Ho hum", clicked on "Received" and went back onto Trade Me instead.
What other vital warnings have they overlooked? I can imagine the pair now frantically going through their inbox. "Hmmm, what else have we got? Oh, this one from the SIS last month. Bin Laden's holidaying in Queenstown. I'll ring Millbrook and see if he's still there. Hang on, here's another dated September 10, 2001, from the Waihopi spy base, saying "Warn the Americans something about airplane hijacks and the Twin Towers. Might delete that one."
Weirdly, Winston Peters didn't seem to care too much that his office doesn't bother to read all of its email traffic, explaining that the CTAG report was buried in a mountain of paperwork and they couldn't get through it all. When asked by a reporter why his people failed to read this important warning he blithely acknowledged the intellectual superiority of journalists over bureaucrats, saying "Not everyone is as brilliant as you are."
That's true. It may not have mattered if they had opened the email because another official in the Prime Minister's Department and Cabinet not only opened but actually read the threat assessment. Sadly she failed to pass it on to her boss. Presumably she believed John Key when he said the war in Iraq was over and decided the report was now irrelevant.
Foreign Affairs and the PM's Office aren't the only public servants who blundered. Treasury this week proved it's about as good at predicting the economic future as I am at predicting next week's Lotto numbers. By the way, my failure to do so successfully is important. Forget KiwiSaver, in my house Lotto provides the cornerstone of our entire financial strategy.
For the last four years Treasury have been gloomily forecasting a downturn in the economy but no one, except Dr Michael Cullen, has listened to it and the economy has stubbornly kept growing. This means the Finance Minister has amassed huge surpluses and this year is no exception as he raked in an extra $8.7 billion. That means you and I paid around $1.1 million too much in tax. Actually it must be you because my tax bill was a little less than that.
Dr Cullen doesn't seem to mind that Treasury got it wrong again and has no intention of handing the cash back right now. Instead he's hinting he might spend the extra loot next year. Helpfully for Labour, next year is election year.
This is a little like me keeping my family on a strict budget for five years and then telling them I had just noticed a spare $1 billion in the cheque account. "Now, darling, I don't think we should spend it, I'll pop it in the Christmas Club account for next year because Treasury are saying that times might get a little tough."
I would be hospitalised but when it comes to Treasury and Cullen's mistake, the over-taxed New Zealand public apparently just sigh, "Whatever you say, dear," and roll over.
How can Treasury get its predictions so wrong year after year and we quietly pay the price? What do they use as a forecasting tool? Tea leaves? The entrails of goats and oxen? The Met Office? Actually, if they're using the Met Office for economic forecasts I can understand why they are so consistently wrong.
Now I also discover the Government's energy watchdog is thinking about banning my widescreen TV and my old beer fridge because they use too much power.
I'd email them suggesting I'd like to put a carbon footprint up their backside but the chances are no one would read it.
