Sunday 2nd October, 2011

Q+A panel discussions on the economy, Dan Carter’s injury + more

The panel discussions have been transcribed below. The full length video interviews and panel discussions from this morning’s Q+A can be watched on tvnz.co.nz at, http://tvnz.co.nz/q-and-a-news

Q+A , 9-10am Sundays on TV ONE. Repeats at 9.10pm Sundays, 9:05am and 1:05pm Mondays on TVNZ 7

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PANEL DISCUSSIONS moderated by PAUL HOLMES

In response to the economy, Douglas & Anderton leaving parliament & Dan Carter out of RWC


PAUL Time to welcome the panel this morning – Dr Claire Robinson from Massey University; we have Mike Williams, former Labour Party president, now running the Howard League for Penal Reform; and Michelle Boag, former National president and public relations consultant. Good to have you here, all of you, and thank you very much for joining us. The downgrades – the politics of the downgrades – how serious for the government, Claire, politically?

CLAIRE ROBINSON – Political Analyst
Well, politically it’s not good, but they’ve actually got good timing on their time in a sense because it’s bad news that came in the middle of the Rugby World Cup, and a lot of people who are not really paying much attention to politics at the moment aren’t going to make much of a meal out of it. And for Labour – I think Labour, if they’re going to bring some sort of policy around compulsory savings, they want this sort of news to be connected to that. That news really needs to happen probably in about a month.

PAUL And I suppose the downgrade’s come in the context of a world crisis – massive world crisis – and so, as Claire says in the middle of the Rugby World Cup, the damage is lessened, do you think?

MIKE WILLIAMS – Former Labour Party President
Yeah, I think I’d agree, but I was also thinking from a campaign manager’s point of view, there are three things you wouldn’t want to have happen during your campaign. Number one, you wouldn’t want the All Black captain injured, number two, you wouldn’t want the All Black goal-kicker injured, number three, you wouldn’t want a credit downgrade, and all of those things happened this week. Now, Tracey Watkins makes a point in the Dom Post that National made a big thing about the credit rating, and it’s come back to bite them.

PAUL John Key said, you know, I mean, he made it clear he was dreading any credit downgrades. New Zealand was warned some months back we were on negative watch. So they must be hurting.

MICHELLE BOAG – Former National Party President
Yeah, I think what we are now seeing, and it was very much reinforced by Gareth Morgan, is we’re now in the second leg of this global recession, and it’s quite a different ball game than anybody thought it was going to be two years ago. I really don’t think two or three years ago anybody contemplated these major economies and countries being in default. And I think what we’re seeing is the global economic stress is the new norm, so we’ve actually had a radical change in global economic status.

PAUL Well, as Gareth says, we have overdosed on borrowing for 20, 30 years—

MICHELLE That’s right, and a lot of other—

PAUL And we’ve had a couple of irresponsible governors of the Reserve Bank, he said.

MICHELLE And a lot of other economies have done it, and we’ve benefited from the fact our focus in recent years quite wisely has been Asia, that we are very well placed, that the one thing that the rest of the world will always need is protein, and we are magnificently productive in that area.

PAUL Well, as Gareth— was it Paul Callaghan or Gareth pointed that out that our resources are limited there for growth.

MICHELLE But what isn’t limited, and this is what they were both saying, is that the application of intelligence and technology to the production of those resources is going to be our saviour.

MIKE But hang on a minute, it was National that cut out the research tax credit that Labour brought in. Now, that’s just dumb, in my view. I actually believe what Paul Callaghan said, but there’s no incentive to invest in research at all now, and that’s just silly.

CLAIRE But the other thing is that we don’t have— as a national conversation, we’re not really talking about how we improve the manufacturing industry. You know, wearing my other hat, which is leader of creative arts at Massey University , it’s creativity, it’s design, it’s all that innovation. We really need to be talking about what those things can do for the economy because, as Paul Callaghan also says, it’s manufacturing – manufacturing is the future. We can’t look at the dairy; we can’t look at beef any more. We really have to be beefing up our manufacturing sector.

PAUL I was quite surprised at the size of that manufacturing sector, as Paul Callaghan explained it – high-tech and extra high-tech and extra high-tech stuff which we are doing and people making good money out of.

CLAIRE I think, Paul, the other thing that in terms of what Michelle was saying is that, you know, it did take 25, 30 years to get to here and we’re almost looking for instant solutions, and I think it’s the short-termism again. We think that we should be able to make one policy intervention and we should all be right. It’s not. It’s going to take a long, long time.

PAUL And it’s going to be tough – very tough. I mean, that 30% decline figure of the housing market in Blenheim means it’s very tough for the little people.

MIKE Yeah, that really surprised me, Paul, but I suspect that National is actually in trouble in the provinces, because I was looking for a property in Napier a couple of weeks ago, and I was staggered at the cheap property on the market there. And you go around and have a look at the provinces – it’s happening all over the place. Maybe this is an overdue correction, but if you’re owning a house where the mortgage is more than the value, you don’t feel that way.

MICHELLE But the answer to that—

PAUL No, but it gives you an opportunity to enter the housing market in Napier, doesn’t it?

MIKE Absolutely.

MICHELLE Yeah, but—

PAUL For an Aucklander to go to Napier.

MICHELLE But the answer to that is not a capital gains tax, which is going to depress it further. In fact—

MIKE Yeah, but there would be a capital loss, Michelle. What he said is a 30% decline.

MICHELLE Well, it is already, and you’re quite right. I think there has been a correction and it has been overdue, and again that’s the new norm. We have to learn to live with these things. But the other issue I think that this whole area raises is the hoary old question of overseas investment, because if we’re really talking about investing in technology and manufacturing, we don’t have, as a small economy, enough money to do it by ourselves. We can’t be xenophobic—

MIKE If you want to invest in—

MICHELLE No, no, it isn’t—

MIKE in a factory.

MICHELLE Because morally, you know, New Zealanders have this thing about overseas investment

PAUL We do when it comes to farming and we do when it comes to land, don’t we, but I don’t think we bother about the factory.

MIKE No, we don’t care about factories.

MICHELLE Well—

PAUL David Cunliffe phoned us up the other day, of course, naturally, and he says, ‘This is deadly serious. These downgrades are deadly serious. It’ll drive up interest rates. 60% of private debt is mortgages, of course, meaning ordinary people. We need to deflate the housing market,’ he said. So, I mean, I suppose—

MICHELLE Even further. Even further. That’s what he’s talking about. Exactly what—

CLAIRE But we also need to be thinking much more about how we do reduce debt, how we do increase savings. And again, you know, people look to governments to give them incentives or to push them into it, but, actually, it’s all about our own personal behaviour.

MIKE No, I don’t agree with that. I think Guyon made a very good point – National stopped contributing to the Cullen fund and they hobbled KiwiSaver, so we’ve actually been going in the wrong direction. Now, I don’t agree with a credit downgrade for New Zealand . We’ve been borrowing money big time since 1870 and we’ve paid back every red cent of that, so we don’t need a credit downgrade, but I do think this comes at a very bad time for the government and they were caught with their pants down – down around their ankles. I mean, John Key was doing some sort of comedy act on the radio, and Bill English’s response was to call a teleconference of banking industry spin doctors.

CLAIRE Unfortunately, the reason why poor old John Key – and I say ‘poor old’ because he was stuck— he was stuck with his pants down on the radio because we have absolutely useful electorate finance laws which say that you can’t talk on the radio about anything political, otherwise it becomes an electoral finance.

PAUL A quick last word about something—

MIKE That’s utter nonsense.

CLAIRE It was your government that did this.

PAUL A quick last word about something Paul Callaghan said, which is we’ve got to— New Zealand has got to nurture— you know, make it a place to nurture creative talent and to attract the talent. And, of course, it has been debated for years, but we have an opportunity now with the collapse of things in Europe for people to get out and to look for a new life.

CLAIRE Well, that’s right, and I have to say—

PAUL It’s another refugee opportunity, isn’t it?

MIKE We should be putting ads in the—

PAUL In the Times.

CLAIRE We’ve got lots— The thing is creative people attract creative people. We are a nation of creative people, and we need to be singing out about it.

PAUL And again this is something wonderful about the Rugby World Cup – a friend of mine came back from overseas and said, ‘It’s everywhere at the moment.’

MICHELLE Absolutely, and you have to say the government have done a good job of introducing New Zealand innovation. You go down at The Cloud and look what we’ve got down there.

MIKE Absolutely, but let’s remember—

MICHELLE They’ve done a great job of introducing that.

MIKE But let’s remember Helen Clark got us the Rugby World Cup. (laughs)

PAUL (laughs)

In response to SIR ROGER DOUGLAS AND JIM ANDERTON INTERVIEW

PAUL Our panellist Claire Robinson, Mike Williams and Michelle Boag. It’s wonderful, isn’t it, really, how people can sit down and the steam is gone?

MICHELLE It’s fabulous, and, you know, you’ve got to respect the contribution that those two old warhorses have made, and that’s really the only way to describe them. I think also when you look at the generational movement of those sorts of people, I think we’ve got a very different type of politician these days which was actually reflected this week with those attacks on Peter Leitch by members of the Labour Party. Politics has become more tribal, more personal. You know, you’re a working-class hero – how can you possibly support, you know, a Tory prime minister? I think there has been a generational change since those two gentlemen entered Parliament.

PAUL At the same time as— was it Jim or Sir Roger was saying? Jim – you don’t get this ‘first past the post’ bulldozing of stuff any more. You can’t. Parliament’s too representative – too many different kinds of people, too many parties.

MIKE That’s one of the big changes, but—

PAUL A good change?

MIKE I think it is a step in the right direction, and I think MMP will be re-endorsed in the referendum, and I certainly hope it is, because I do think we’ve got a better parliament. But that was really interesting because, Paul, those two guys split the Labour Party asunder. At one stage, there were four parties in Parliament led by members of Parliament first elected as Labour MPs. It was a mess. And what that is there really is a tribute to people like Helen Clark and Michael Cullen who put the whole thing back together and got into a long-term government. It was quite extraordinary.

CLAIRE I think the interesting thing about those two guys, and we’ll remember them for it, was that they just completely defined the political landscape for the next 20, almost 30 years. And at the time I don’t think we realised how significant it was going to be in terms of a long-term effect. But that question about principle and ideology – I don’t get the feeling that we have people in Parliament today that are as principled as those guys were. Ideology doesn’t feature to the same extent it did in the 1980s.

MIKE And that may be a function of MMP.

PAUL And it may be a good thing.

MIKE It’s a compromise. It may be a good thing.

PAUL Who cares about dogma? Let’s just do the business. Whatever colour the cat is doesn’t matter just as long as it catches the mice.

MIKE Exactly.

PAUL I don’t want to embarrass you, but you said to me back in ’85, round about 1985 when things were cooking with gas for Lange and they were the best political team in the world – Lange and Douglas – it was fabulous – and you said to me – there might have been little concerns being raised – but you said to me, and this was long before you were president of the Labour Party, you said to me, ‘Well, at least we’re trying something.’

MIKE That’s right, and that was the feeling—

PAUL And that’s a tribute to Douglas .

MIKE Yeah, it is a tribute to Douglas , and that was the feeling in the Labour Party. But I was telling Michelle I actually went and worked for the Australian Labor Party, and I left after Labour had been elected for the second time. And when I came back 18 months, two years later, a happy governing party was shattered into shards. It was all over the place and then lost the election. It was an amazing change wrought by those—

PAUL How bitter was that falling-out?

MIKE Oh, it was very bitter. They could sit beside each other now, and that’s good to see. It is good to see, and I really liked Roger Douglas resenting Jim Anderton catching him out for 99 at Auckland Grammar – that was good. But it was very very bitter, and it was very personal. And I suggest you read Margaret Pope’s book if you really want to know what happened at this time.

PAUL I’ve always wondered if Douglas was the kind of person who could not be turned.

MIKE He couldn’t be turned, and, you know, we used to refer to him as Tina – it—

CLAIRE There is no alternative, you know?

PAUL (laughs)

MIKE You know, and he would go in front of caucus, and you’d talk to caucus members who there at the time, and he’d say, ‘Oh, we’re going to sell this,’ and, ‘We’re out of money. We have have to do it. There’s no argument about it.’ And there were alternatives at the time. The Australians achieved very much the same reform—

PAUL Incrementally.

MIKE A much slower pace. He could’ve done that.

PAUL Michelle, Clark and Key – I mean, the difference, say, between, you know, let me think, Ruth Richardson, Bolger – Clark and Key are deal-makers.

MICHELLE Yes, they are. Clark instinctively—

PAUL The world is a lot easier for it, isn’t it? Hang on a sec, Michelle. We’ll come back to that. We’ve got to cross to Jack Tame at Graham Henry’s news conference.

PAUL How sad. It’s terribly sad.

MIKE Well, it’s what I said before – it’s the last thing you want to hear in the middle of an election campaign if you’re National Party campaign manager.

PAUL But it’s sad for New Zealand and so sad for Dan Carter, isn’t it?

MIKE It’s bad news.

MICHELLE Yes, it is, but I think, you know, what we’ve seen in the World Cup so far is that New Zealand does have options, and I think Graham Henry has managed those options well.

MIKE There’s a depth of talent there.

MICHELLE There is a depth and we haven’t seen any of the boilovers that the— for the All Blacks that the Australians, the French have suffered, you know, the South Africans were really tested. I still think there’s cause for optimism in our camp.

PAUL Yes, but nevertheless, it’s a hell of shock – Dan Carter, who would’ve thought it? Murphy’s Law, out of the blue.

MIKE Any word about the captain?

PAUL Well, that’s a cautionary withdrawal, I think. Anyway, we must wrap it, and I’ll discuss whether the world’s a better place for Clark and Key another time with you.

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