Monday
Most new governments enjoy a media honeymoon: a period of generous coverage and flattering profiles before the scandals and blunders turn everything sour. Jacinda Ardern’s lasted about 18 months. Half-way through 2019, her famous “year of delivery”, it became obvious they weren’t delivering much. John Key’s lasted longer; arguably well into his second term.
Christopher Luxon’s government got a good 10 - 15 minutes. Shortly after being sworn in at Government House Winston Peters - Luxon’s new Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister - launched an attack on the media, accusing them of taking bribes in the form of the $55 million public interest journalism fund. Peters’ war with the media continued throughout the week, through the government’s first Cabinet meeting and on into its announcement of its agenda during the first 100 days which was overshadowed by Peters’ theory that the media prolonged the 2021 Auckland Covid lockdown.
The backstory here is that Peters has a decades-long grudge against “the principles of the treaty” as a legal doctrine. During the early stages of the Covid pandemic many businesses stopped spending on media advertising. Many media outlets were facing bankruptcy, so New Zealand on Air made $55 million available to support them. Instead of setting any criteria around objectivity, balance or any other traditional form of journalistic standards, New Zealand on Air required recipients to “actively promote the principles of partnership, participation and active protection under Te Tiriti o Waitangi.” Which was extremely triggering for Peters (and other conservatives) who feel the sinister mainstream media has been corrupted by taking this money and thus being captured by pro-Treaty principles ideology.
There are two problems with this narrative. The first is that it assumes that the predominantly Pākehā public service has a deeply nuanced understanding of Treaty jurisprudence. Generally speaking this isn’t the case: the principles of the Treaty - or Te Tiriti - are just an abstract Good Thing which they support because they want to be good people on the right side of history. So, commitments to it get cheerfully cut and pasted into everything regardless of context. The second problem is that for the last two years, most media coverage of the Ardern-Hipkins government was overwhelmingly negative. Every news bulletin was a screed of ram raids, cost of living crisis and rolling policy failures. It’s hard to see what the alleged bribe bought.
Peters’ core supporters love to see him stand up to the evil mainstream media. But his core supporters are only a few thousand people: most voters are either indifferent towards him or actively dislike him. So, it’s a problem for Luxon and the rest of his Ministers that Peters’ temper tantrums are dominating news coverage of their new government. It’s also concerning that there doesn’t seem to be any coherent strategy behind it - but it’s not a problem with any obvious solution.
Tuesday
Christopher Luxon and Nicola Willis promised to deliver tax cuts next year. They also promised to get the government’s books back into surplus. Unfortunately, their main source of revenue for the cuts - the infamous foreign buyers’ tax - was vetoed by New Zealand First during the coalition negotiations. Their solution: roll back the smokefree legislation introduced late last year and book the additional revenue from the excise tax on cigarettes. This attracted widespread criticism from health experts, and international media interest because the smokefree plan to prohibit the sale of cigarettes to anyone born after 2008 was a world first, and many other governments have expressed interest in adopting it. National’s justification is that total prohibition creates a black market and enriches the gangs, which is probably true, but also the strongest case for legalising cannabis - which they’re firmly opposed to.
There are a number of other policy changes emerging from the negotiation: they’re freezing the abatement threshold for Working for Families - so that as a household’s income rises with inflation, they’ll lose the WFF transfer sooner. (Both Labour and National rely on this scam as their favourite stealth tax method.) And they’ve brought forward their interest deductions for residential landlords. The optics - as the comms advisors put it - are terrible: pro-smoking, pro-landlord policies offset by cuts to low-income families.
Wednesday
Day three, and the government released its 100-day plan. This is a list of 49 policies, laws, actions and rather vague aspirations that the government will act on between now and early March. They come under three categories: “Rebuilding the economy and easing the cost of living”, “Restoring law and order” and “Deliver better public services”. Some of these - like the pledge to “Stop all work on He Puapua” will be very easy to achieve given that the controversial report was completed in late 2020. Most of it is legislative: repealing the policies of the previous government. Shutting down the Three Waters entities and the Māori Health Authority.
A lot of this will happen under urgency. The way Parliament usually works is that each bill they vote on gets three readings in the House. After the first and second reading it goes to Select Committee, where the parties debate the law and receive submissions from interested parties. New Zealand’s parliament doesn’t have an upper house, so it’s very reliant on the Select Committee process to fix problems in its legislation. But the urgency process means laws don’t undergo this scrutiny: a bill can shoot through all three readings in a single day. They sometimes make terrible mistakes: the last government’s attempt to entrench the Three Waters legislation happened under urgency. And what is now proposed is a lot of legislation that will happen very quickly.
Thursday
The right-wing critique of modern central banking goes like this: Independent central banks focused on price stability are one of the triumphs of the neoliberal model; before them, developed economies were routinely crippled by high inflation. Under neoliberalism inflation became a solved problem. But during the last 20 years central banks have suffered from feature creep. They’ve become bloated, inefficient and distracted from their central function. They printed too much money during Covid and they’ve failed to keep inflation down. New Zealand’s Reserve Bank is seen as a prime culprit here, taking a deep interest in climate change and promoting te ao Māori while overseeing sustained inflation outside its target band.
The new government’s first bill will address this. In their PR they state: “The first bill that we will introduce and move through all stages will be a bill to return the Reserve Bank of New Zealand to a single mandate, a single focus on fighting inflation.”
The Reserve Bank made its last monetary policy statement for the year yesterday, indicating that core inflation was still high, and signalled they might have to raise interest rates again before lowering them. They project inflation will remain above the target band until the second half of next year. It’s a problem for the government’s promise that they’ll address the cost of living - but it’s good news for the Finance Minister, Nicola Willis, who takes in more tax and pays less in Working for Families as high inflation keeps lifting households and taxpayers up into higher brackets and lower welfare payments.
