Fran O'Sullivan: English will have to find our mojo

It might have been political satirist P. J. O'Rourke, but it was probably Ruth Richardson.

The one arresting slogan that stood out late Thursday night when I perused the scribbles that adorned my menu for O'Rourke's lecture dinner on the Invisible Hand versus Visible Fist were the six words: "We need to discover our policy mojo."

Amen to that.

It's why I dug out my Capitalist tool tie in the first place as I joined a bunch of "right-thinking ladies": columnists, bloggers and media women for a dose of free market cheerleading after weeks of prudence.

It has been a strange week for former finance ministers. Michael Cullen's personal wit, style, big brain and compassionate nature (it's okay, I am not putting in for a directorship at his new perch - NZ Post) was on show.

It was at the special function he held in Parliament's old legislative chamber to mark his retirement from national politics.

There was plenty of humour of course. Some of it deeply personal relating to how he at least got to interact with fellow MP Anne Collins (now Cullen's wife) at the unsuccessful group grope Labour organised, in Ashburton of all places, to try and get its caucus together again after it had torn itself apart during the tumultuous stoush between David Lange and Sir Roger Douglas in the late 1980s.

Humour can take you so far. Cullen's concern that New Zealanders do not appreciate the full weight of what lies ahead for the economy as the international recession makes its presence felt, sparked him to put old party loyalties aside and wish the National Government well.

Cullen had plenty of policy mojo himself.

He constructed vast edifices like the NZ Superannuation Fund and KiwiSaver - both of which were long overdue and finally put Kiwis on the long-term savings path, afeat which had defied his predecessors.

The huge pity of the Cullen years is that he did not kick in personal tax cuts till the eve of the 2008 election. He was so busy saving for the rainy day that he forgot to get out and enjoy the sunshine while it lasted.

He allowed too many of his colleagues to talk him into squandering too much of our precious booty on some barking mad policies, and, he allowed government departments to grow like topsy as they concentrated on outputs to the detriment of outcomes. A situation his successor is having to put into reverse to curb exploding government debt.

Richardson is of a different mettle to Cullen.

Characteristically she did not waste her own opportunity - while giving a vote of thanks to O'Rourke - to say that current Finance Minister Bill English was "manfully resisting" the urge to stimulus (a surprising turn of phrase) but looked like he might "give in to fiscal child abuse".

There was no stopping the author of the "mother of all budgets" as she told of her discomfort at seeing "a politician who talks Adam Smith abroad and John Maynard Keynes at home" . Aka Prime Minister John Key.

Former finance ministers can get away with this. English couldn't.

He has to somehow convince himself that Key is like a coin. He has two opposing sides - but you know what you are dealing with.

The person who has the mojo - in spades - was O'Rourke. The self-styled Republican party reptile was brought to Auckland by the Centre for Independent Studies to deliver the annual John Bonython lecture.

Name one good thing to come out of George Bush's Iraq War? "Saddam Hussein was hung."

And so it went on. But where O'Rourke scores is with arithmetic.

Take Barack Obama's US$700 billion ($1.238 trillion) economic stimulus. Hey - wasn't that the last thing Bush did? Add Bush's $700 billion financial bailout to Obama's $700 billion package plus the $3 trillion to $6 trillion federal Budget and you get America shelling out more government funds than a year's worth of personal and corporate tax payments. Why not simply stop taxes for a year? The logic was not lost on his audience.

But alas, government is never so simple, which is why English has brought in a bunch of top-level "purchase advisers" to help him and his ministers address the Government's spending line.

What I think English will do in his upcoming Budget is to marry Cullen's caution with Richardson's certitude and O'Rourke's fiscal contortions.

Expect plenty of painstaking rhetoric setting out New Zealand's fiscal position (Cullen).

Expect confidence that the Government's micro-reforms will aid economic recovery (Richardson). And a shuffling of the Government's books to move some pesky liabilities "off balance sheet" (O'Rourke).

Will it work? We'll know on May 28.