Mike Williams: What makes anyone think they can run the national economy better than labor?

Although I try to understand many difficult things, there are three things that I do not understand.

I can’t figure out how Air New Zealand flight attendants (not blokes) keep their often complicated hairstyles flight after flight, I can’t wrap my head around quantum mechanics, and I don’t know why anyone. National is thought to be running the New Zealand economy better than Labor.

Statistics NZ on Thursday showed the country’s economy grew in the most recent quarter under Grant Robertson’s leadership and despite the previous quarter’s upward revision, the pandemic and the run-on effects of the international downturn. There is not and never has been a recession.

Defying all predictions, our economy is now nearly 80 percent larger than at the start of the pandemic.

In the interests of fairness, expect National to remove attack ads claiming the country is in recession.

After surviving the Covid-19 pandemic with fewer deaths than any other country, our national debt is still lower than Australia, Britain and Germany, and despite being angry with Grant Roberson, our unemployment rate is among the lowest in the OECD and businesses. (those who bailed them out during the epidemic), the profitable ones.

Contrast this economic performance with the three national governments I have lived under.

The National government from 1975 to 1984 plunged the country into an economic crisis so bad that Sir Robert Muldoon was unable to prepare a budget and had to hold a snap election, known as the „snaps election” due to Muldoon’s apparent position when he called the July election. Date.

From 1990 to 1999 the national government opened the „mother of all budgets” with a wage highly vulnerable to its exaggerated promises. Sick benefits were cut to $27 a week, and user-pay requirements were introduced for services such as hospitals and schools, previously government-funded facilities and free to the public.

The „cure” was far worse than the problem and a significant portion of the population had to endure years of hardship. In the 1993 general election, this National government’s large majority evaporated and Finance Minister Ruth Richardson lost her job.

Between 2008 and 2017 another national government enacted tax cuts for the well-off, when that government raised the GST from 12.5 percent to 15 percent, which we all had to pay.

It stopped paying into our monsoon savings account, the highly successful „cullen fund”.

Assuming political opinion polls are a reliable predictor of election results, New Zealand could find itself with the most right-wing government in 32 years following an October election.

However, the most recent TVNZ poll suggests the result is not set in stone as it predicts a National/ACT coalition with a one-seat majority.

All it would take is an upward pull in voter participation, particularly in Māori constituencies, to now return to the left side of politics, rather than centrist, government.

A surge in poll support for the ACT party has caused National to pull to the right.

From the Howard League perspective, a National/ACT government would be a depressing setback.

Under the leadership of Sir Bill English, National has replaced sensible and proven policies – such as reducing sentences for prisoners who undertake self-improvement – with populist nonsense.

The party will revive „bootcamps” for young offenders, with all research showing they act as universities of crime and make young people worse off.

The nation’s most idiotic policy to date is banning the wearing of gang patches in public.

This policy, if ever implemented, would be counterproductive and, for Christopher Luxon, a constant embarrassment.

Before this happens it is necessary to establish a „library” of gang affiliations so the police know who to arrest.

Because gangs are by definition organized and members are not universally idiots, they avoid any new law through subtle changes in the design or color of their insignia. This would create a nightmare for the courts and an embarrassment for Mr Lacson.

Worse yet, the policy could encourage even more gang members to get their gang members tattooed on their faces, as minorities already do.

It makes a mob leave, and many people do it when they get a job, with tattoo removal costing between $1000 and $2000 and prohibitively expensive.

National Police spokesman Mark Mitchell is right when he says the focus should be on „getting kids out of gangs”.

Unfortunately his party’s policies may backfire.

Mike Williams grew up in Hawke’s Bay and is a former leader of the Labor Party