Spare Room Be our guest…

By Kirk MacGibbon

OK, so this could be interesting. For the first time since, perhaps, Muldoon, we could be witnessing the early stages of the emergence of a finance minister with the essential combination of political nous, financial smarts (not an oxymoron) and rampant self-belief to provide the strong economic stewardship needed to steer us all through the worsening financial storm.

To do that he will first have to reduce the institution of Treasury from what it has been allowed to become — the arbiter of what ‘the State’ is and will be — to what it was before the collapse of Muldoonism and advent of the Rogernomics jihad, which enabled Treasury to become all pervasive and effectively to establish the boundaries within which most debate around State and society have been conducted ever since.

English does have an early advantage: he was one of ‘them’. It’s the classic poacher turned gamekeeper story — or should that be the other way around? He worked as a Treasury analyst in 1987, when, as I’ve just noted, the institution — through the complete capture of its Minister — exerted an unprecedented degree of power and influence. Treasury managed this feat and stole a march on the rest of the public service through a very simple and devastatingly effective tactic: the development of the ‘executive summary’. All ministries provide policy advice to ministers — that’s one of their core functions. And anyone who has read through one of these turgid and mind-numbing reports will understand just what hard work that can be. So imagine your average MP coming to grips with a constant stream of them — all requiring some sort of attention.

Now your average MP, who rises to become a Cabinet minister either through time served (achieved by securing a safe seat or a high place on the list) or sheer brown-nosing, is often not a particularly bright cookie — that’s why they’ve generally felt bound to become an MP in the first place. It’s the greatest paying job they will ever have. So Treasury, noting that ministers often failed to read the reports they were supplied with, hit upon the idea of taking the key points from the report and putting them on a couple of separate pages right at the beginning and double spaced to make it even easier to read. By the time the rest of the departments and ministries woke up to this tactic they found Treasury had a foot on their throats and was telling them exactly how much they could spend on morning tea — and everything else.

Early indications are that English (and Key for that matter) will not simply be the deliverers of Treasury’s economic prescriptions. That is essential if English is to build a reputation as a truly great Finance Minister. And this will only be possible if he is able to successfully tackle some of the structural impediments that continue to hamstring the evolution of the New Zealand economy.

Roger Douglas would refer to this part of Bill English’s challenge as ‘Unfinished Business’ — how to deliver an efficient, equitable and affordable health system, upgrading infrastructure, addressing commoditisation in the primary sector, affordable superannuation. Fortunately, only Roger Douglas agrees with Treasury’s tired, predictable economic mantras.

Most commentators have already attached the label ‘pragmatist’ to English. This is meant as a compliment and serves as a contrast to his doctrinaire predecessor who couched all economic pronouncements in terms of the eternal and righteous struggle of the proletariat against, well, “rich pricks”.

Certainly in these times the last thing we need is someone overly wedded to any particular ideology or economic prescription and unable to view things in any other colour than red, green or blue. English is certainly no Friedmanite zealot. I once attended a National party shindig where then Leader Bill English completely flipped his lid after enduring a tirade from Business Roundtable chief executive Roger Kerr about the need to ‘hold the line’. In extremely ‘plain English’, Mr English informed Mr Kerr that he should ‘take thee away from me, forsooth, and trouble me no more with your seducing words of rational choice and tax is theft.’ (Well they weren’t his exact words but I find the southern dialect can be difficult to follow at particular times of the night)

Before the exchange could develop into something even more entertaining the ‘debate’ was quickly shut down by the National party’s equivalent of the Berlin Wall, Gerry Brownlee. So English will be no pawn of the Right and he is no ideologue.

But the disadvantage that pragmatists must overcome is that they can be very difficult to follow, simply because one man’s pragmatism is often another’s gross invasion of private property rights. So English needs a clear and inclusive vision or set of principles that he can hang his policies on, to give them cohesion and a sense of purpose. In developing a vision for his economic prescriptions he has been handed a wild card advantage: his leader has failed to articulate a clear vision that all New Zealanders can feel part of, leaving him with an opportunity to set the legislative agenda. And let’s not forget that there was once a time not so long ago when the natural path to the leaders office was via the Finance portfolio, particularly within the National party.

I like Bill English. He is comfortable in most places from the smoko table to the board room. He’s genuine, likes his footie and enjoys a beer or two. Unlike Muldoon he is not a complete raving pisshead and has managed to keep any latent megalomania well hidden. We do live in interesting times.