SIMPLY IRRESPONSIBLE

Jacinda Ardern says that National's plan for tax cuts is 'irresponsible', but politicians who live in glass houses shouldn't really throw stones.

ATTEMPTING to elevate herself ethically above National Party leader Judith Collins, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern last week attacked National's plan for tax cuts as 'irresponsible'.

'I'm just going to call this what it is: I don't think it's responsible and I don't think it's the right time for an initiative like this. We just can't afford it," she declared on Friday. 

And, as usual, she got away with making self-serving statements like this without any questioning from the media.

In an orchestrated attack on Collins and the National Party, Grant Robertson also weighed in with his opinion on National's proposed tax cuts:

'It feels to me a bit like it's been done on the fly. This is not the actions of a responsible party. I just think it's clearly been done in a desperate way and I think New Zealanders know that what we need at the moment is stability and consistency'

Interestingly, he also went on to say that National Party had 'left behind the considered and moderate approach that former leaders Sir John Key and Sir Bill English took to the economy.' 

Its worth reflecting on Robertson's favourable comments directed toward Key and English and contrasting those with the far less complimentary comments he had for the left wing economic polices of Jeremy Corbyn's  UK Labour Party, policies he claimed would 'never work' in New Zealand. Maybe they just weren't 'considered and moderate' enough for Robertson.

But politicians who live in glass houses shouldn't really throw stones. While quick to bag the National Party for its economic irresponsibility, how exactly responsible has Jacinda Ardern been?

Its a matter of perspective.

If you are rich and comfortable you probably think the Prime Minister has been a safe pair of hands who has done nothing to upset the status quo. I imagine she compares well with 'the considered and moderate approach that former leaders Sir John Key and Sir Bill English took to the economy'

But if you expected her to live up to her election campaign promises and actually put the interests of ordinary folk first, then you might just say she's not only been irresponsible, but also deceitful.

This is, after all, the same Jacinda Arden who declared that tackling poverty would be a priority of any government she led. Instead the level of inequality increased under the first term Labour-led government. During the Covid-19 pandemic Ardern has funnelled money to the already wealthy at a rapid rate of knots. As Bernard Hickey of Newsroom has observed:

'Almost by accident, and without debate, the Labour-led Government has delivered the biggest shot of cash and monetary support to the wealthy in the history of New Zealand, while giving nothing to the renters, the jobless, students, migrants and the working poor who mostly voted it in.'

The wealthy, like Scrooge McDuck, have been rolling in an ever greater pile of cash these past three years. As Hickey has also noted: ''Reserve Bank figures show households that own property and have money in stocks and term deposits made over $250 billion of tax-free capital gains in Labour's first term'.

While attacking Judith Collins for proposing 'irresponsible' tax cuts, Jacinda Ardern has also gone right ahead and entrenched the country's chronic and growing level of inequality. Not only has she failed to introduce a capital gains tax but she has taken it permanently off Labour's agenda. As well Grant Robertson has proven to be a finance minister that the one percent can count down. His failure to do anything but tinker with the tax rates means the wealthy can continue to grow richer undisturbed.

Meanwhile the jobless figures continue to climb as does the level of homelessness. And the queues continue to lengthen outside the food banks. Yet Ardern, despite her Orwellian proclamations of 'kindness', won't countenance an increase in benefit levels that would allow beneficiaries and the poor to live lives that are something more than just subsistence.

In June 2017, some months before the general election, Winston Peters said that New Zealand First was 'the party of difference' and its policies would steer away from the 'irresponsible capitalism' that every other political party was selling.

Peters said that neo-liberal policies adopted by New Zealand politicians in the 1980s were 'a failed economic experiment' and that New Zealand First wanted to ' confront what's going on and set it right," He went on to say:

'I look at Parliament today and the National Party, the Labour Party and now the Greens are all accepting of that with a little bit of tweaking. That is astonishing, particularly in the case of the Greens - they've done it to try and look respectable - it's totally disrespectable economic policy.'

But instead of steering New Zealand away from 'irresponsible capitalism' New Zealand First has been an integral part of a government that has actively encouraged it.

We should not forget how, at a time of a pandemic-induced economic crisis, capitalism and neoliberalism have failed us. While the wealthy are only growing richer, it is the rest of us who will be expected to continue to pay the heavy price for this crisis. The elephant in the room in so many polite discussions among the chattering class is that capitalism itself is inherently irresponsible because the needs of society are  subjugated to the profit motive. It would be a step forward if we had a political party that was  actually advocating policies for the many, not the few.