There are politicians who are more than a comms team.
Prime Minister Geoffrey Palmer was not doing well in 1990, so he announced his government would halve unemployment. That would have been an impressive achievement – then the unemployment rate was about 5 percent – so much so, it gave the government a temporary boost in the polls. Economists, curious as to how the government intended to do this, requested the background papers. There were none. As best as we could judge, the PM’s comms team, desperate to improve the government’s image, invented the promise but had no idea how to implement it. That was a task to be handed over to someone else.
Politicians’ promises which sizzle without sausages have continued ever since. (And, no doubt before; the 1990 one was so spectacular it wipes the memory of before.) Today, there is, however, a paradox. Discussing the issue with my Labour-aligned friends, they ask me whether I meant Labour’s leader, Chris Hipkins; among my National-aligned friends they assume I am referring to Christopher Luxon. Oh ye of little faith. I am referring to the entire political scene.
Yes, some of the parties have made promises which could be effectively implemented. (I was discussing a capital gains tax, which Labour is now promising, in the 1970s; in 1990 I suggested to a National Party conference they should pay more attention to household saving, and at last they are thinking about it. One is not overwhelmed by the rate of genuine policy innovation.)
But politicians’ comms teams – which manage their images – are dominating the political space. Think of the cabinet ministers in the Key-English and Ardern-Hipkins Government who seemed important at the time but left little achievement behind them. Can’t remember them? Exactly.
Currently the New Zealand political theatre is a contest of one side which makes promises which never seem to be implemented (or if so, extremely ineffectively and very slowly) and which are criticised by the other side which does not offer an effective alternative. Even the supporters of each side seem to be getting impatient.
To be more positive, just sometimes a politician offers a bit of sausage which is a pleasure to report, even if one’s sausage taste is different.
Thus it is with Craig Renney’s booklet The Good Economy. Grant Robertson describes Renney as a ‘gifted economist’ an assessment with which his profession would agree. (He went on, ‘and a rare breed, a left-wing one’, which tells you how out of touch Robertson was; I could give him a list – I could also give a list of competent right-wing economists were he that way inclined.) As well as working for Robertson, Renney has worked for Treasury, MBIE and the RBNZ. He is currently director of policy at the NZCTU. (His background includes his father losing his job following a Northumbrian mine closure, a redundancy tough on his family. Renney has been here since 2012.)
I described Renney also as a politician. He is vice-chair of Labour’s Policy Council and is a Labour candidate in this year’s election with a good prospect of winning either an electorate seat or list one. His booklet deserves to be taken seriously. It may be very influential on the next Labour Government even if it is not (yet?) current Labour policy.
The booklet includes chapters on ‘political polarisation, inequality and instability’, the ‘role of the state’ and ‘the rise of the dual-income and the working mother’, so it presents an analytic foundation. Renney brings his themes together in the final chapter with four key recommendations:
an Inflation and Incomes Act;
a Decent Work Act;
a Ministry of Green Works;
a new fiscal approach: a national investment bank, a state-owned default KiwiSaver scheme and a capital gains tax.
Each is elaborated. They included an extended version of the Social Unemployment Insurance scheme which Hipkins dumped in his policy bonfire of early 2023.
It is a coherent program which deserves consideration. One’s natural inclination is to write a Treasury critique of the proposals, for they will not all be as practical or as effective as hoped. Even Renney writes, ‘these policies might seem aspirational and perhaps radical – particularly in their terms of a more active state’. He goes on, ‘none of them would be considered unusual in many countries we compare ourselves with’. Perhaps, but many compare us with only a very narrow group of countries, excluding the European social democracies which Renney has in mind. (To interpolate; what is intriguing is that those economies, typically members or associates of the European Union, have been able to maintain extensive welfare states despite being very open economies. I do not deny that they are under strain, but there is no economy in today’s world which is not under strain; if there was it would not have to employ economists and would soon do things which put it under economic strain.)
As I have indicated, you may not personally like the taste of this sausage. (I favour a more active state but, frankly, I am not sure we have the capacity in the public service to deliver it, given the way we have been damaging its ability to function effectively.) But at least it is nutritious enough to chew upon. Better that than the expectation that we will be invited to a 2026 election barbecue and you turn up to it sizzling away but nothing on the grill. Perhaps they want you to bring your own sausages.
I wanted to illustrate the column with a picture of Renney at a barbecue, but he has no comms team to supply one.