Gordon Campbell Reviews The PM's Presser 4 Aug 08
Gordon Campbell Reviews The PM's Presser 4 August 2008
Images Kevin List
Normally the Prime Minister’s press conference virtually sets the political agenda for the early part of the week but not this time. Bill English’s own goal at the National Party annual conference swept everything else aside. You can read the full transcript here:
English’s litany of embarrassing comments calls for a brief recap, given the subsequent course of the PM’s press conference. One: English intimated that he knew more the economy than Don Brash or John Key. Two, he conceded that National itself would have introduced something like the Working for Families package, - which would be news to the public, given National had spent the last few years slagging the programme, both in and outside Parliament.
Third and
most damaging, English conceded that National would sell
Kiwibank even though “ the punters” (I think he means
us) liked it, and the Bank had been a success. In other
words, reasons of ideological purity would be driving the
sale, rather than business logic. Oh, plus tactical cunning
as well - in that the next National government would be
delaying the sale of the bank until such time as it could
get away with it, politically. “ Not now,” was the money
quote.
In one short soundbite, English had managed to
confirm almost every conspiracy theory about National’s
agenda, if elected. Initially therefore, it seemed
surprising that Helen Clark chose not to hold her press
conference until 5: 40 pm, perilously close to the six
o’clock news bulletin. Clearly, the feeling on the ninth
floor must have been that was a news story best left to sell
itself, with only minimal input from Labour.
Not that
this stopped the press gallery from trying to turn the story
into the usual adversarial, two handed tale of conflict.
Listen to the Scoop’s audio of the first ten minutes of
the conference, and you can successively hear Clark being
asked if she was surprised by the taping, whether she
thought its existence “sinister” and whether its
existence should be taken as a sign that the election
campaign this year might become “underhand.”
Essentially, the gallery was treating the taping of
English and the its use for political purposes as being THE
ethical issue – and not what English actually said on the
tape, which was ignored. Initially at least, Clark struggled
with the media’s line of questioning.
Well, was she surprised by the tape?
Not at all. “Privatization is in the National Party’s
DNA,” she maintained. “So it is simply not believable
for them to say that they would not privatise key assets
like Kiwibank. And you can probably add to that KiwiRail,
the share in Air New Zealand, the electricity SOEs and
[another] long list of important state assets….”
As for the “sinister” suggestion, Clark treated
the taping more as bad karma on National’s part. Did she
for instance, think that the English tape had come from a
Labour Party plant? “ I haven’t the slightest idea,
anymore than I’d know if tapes at [closed sessions of ]
the Labour Party conference in April, were from National
Party plants.”
Almost immediately thereafter, the
question line hived off to the Electoral Finance Act.
Several attempts were made to get Clark to pass judgement on
examples currently awaiting rulings by the Electoral
Commission Repeatedly, Clark declined to invade the turf of
the independent Electoral Commission, in a context where any
comment by her would be construed as the Prime Moinister
telling the Commission how to do its job.
OK then, what about an other perennial – did she agree with Foreign Minister Winston Peters that there was a conspiracy out to get him? Patiently, Clark explained that she was not Peters’ spokesperson, and nor were those comments being made by Peters in his role as Foreign Minister.
Finally and to her obvious relief, a question about
Kiwisaver enabled Clark to re-direct the entire press
conference back to considering the rather large elephant
that the gallery had all but ignored during these initial
exchanges. Kiwisaver in its current form would be safe only
under Labour – and, she claimed, National would be keen
to axe the employers’ 4% level of contribution in
particular.
It has been “a pretty incredible
weekend” of statements from National, Clark continued,
warming to the theme : “Where after nine years in
opposition, the National Party’s big idea is to go and
borrow some more money. And then there’s the same old
agenda : of hacking into core public service spending, and
privatising key state functions, like the management of
prisons. And the threat to put more of the healthcare out to
the private sector. We already know about their plans for
putting more money in the way of private education. We now
hear of the secret plans around the sale of assets like
Kiwibank.” Clark would relish an election campaign waged
around such issues.
All of which however was merely a
windup for the punchline : “ For a political party to go
out on a programme of simply borrowing more money in the
middle of an international financial market crisis would
have to be about the silliest idea ever invented.”
To its credit, the gallery did not [quite] take this
fusillade lying down. Won’t the debt to GDP ratio
envisaged by National still be a conservative one, by
international standards ? “ And there’s a very good
reason,” Clark replied, “ for keeping that debt to GDP
ratio conservative. [Because] New Zealand has other factors
like a persistent current account deficit, which don’t
impress financial markets.” As a consequence, the country
had to continue to exhibit strong fiscal management, she
says. Pushing up the debt level ratio would not impress the
markets.
Doesn’t the country also need to invest in its infrastructure? Of course, Clark replied, listing Labour’s own “massive“ infrastructure programme over the past nine years, starting in areas such as as roading and public transport. Over nine successive Budgets, she says, Labour has also invested three times as much in public health infrastructure as National had in its prior nine Budgets...and so on, and so on.
Still, there was a
difference between the two major parties on the score of
infrastructure investment, she maintained. In Labour’s
case, major infrastructure projects ( and huge PPP proposals
such as Auckland’s Waterview Connection roading project )
have consistently been funded by the government, but always
within the boundaries of prudent financial management.
Not so in future it would seem, under Key’s
stewardship. “I find it extraordinary,” Clark
continued, “ that the National Party will announce it is
going to chuck more money at [infrastructure] and yet cannot
answer any direct question about what that money would go
on. One thing we can guarantee it will go on is
building more prisons - because the Corrections policy
announced by their spokesperson on the weekend, is a recipe
for investing a lot more in that rather futile area of
public spending.”
Having already ruled out cuts in
superannuation, Kiwisaver and Working for Families, National
now has, she claims, only two big areas of public spending
left to target. “ One is education, and one is health. I
would expect National to be planning in their policy, to be
shifting a lot more of the burden of the cost of education
to the ordinary Kiwi family and student…” That, she
concluded, would be reprehensible, and once again, she’d
like to fight an election campaign around it.
Does she see any difference between Labour and National in what PPPs should be used for, and how they should be managed ? In reply, she cites how National was signaling last year its interest in getting the private sector to build schools. “ And that’s always been a core state responsibility.”
Defining issues of were at stake.
” I suspect they’ll be looking at private prisons in the
same way…Not with the state building them, and asking
others to operate them – but actual private prison
building. It comes back to what is the role of government.
And I think that people generally are of a view that
government should be the prime funder and provider of
education [and ] should be the prime funder of health
services, and should be the prime funder and sole provider
of our prisons, which involve coercive powers. ….So
you’re really into quite a fundamental debate about the
role of the government and the state here. ”
English has in effect, thrown Labour a lifeline. To a lesser extent, so did Key with his less than convincing performances yesterday on radio. Notably, he seemed either reluctant or unable to tell RNZ’s Katherine Ryan what National was planning to actually spend its infrastructure bonanza upon. In the weeks ahead, it will be interesting to see how all this plays out in the polls. If the latest episode don’t begin to close the gap between the centre right and centre left coalitions, Labour might as well hang out its surrender flag.
Footnote: Clark also announced a visit to NZ by Kevin Rudd this month for a climate conference – thus creating an opportunity to better synchronise the Emissions Trading Schemes in both countries, as well as co-ordinate their stance on Fiji.
Finally, for the
large and influential fashionista segment among regular
Scoop readers: Clark was going for the Johnny Cash look
today, with the only relief from the Woman in Black image
being the white lining picked out on her large, batwing
lapels.
ENDS