Photo: VNP / Daniela Maoate-Cox
Parliament’s Wednesday included a two-hour-long special debate on the Treasury’s Long-term Fiscal Position and Investment Statement.
The debate was given two hours, an indication of the topic’s gravity. The actual speeches weren’t always a match.
A very bad, but indicative start
National MP Cameron Brewer opened the debate as Chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee.
“If the National Party had an ‘off week’ last week, isn’t Labour having a terrible week this time? The emperor has no clothes.” At which point the Speaker interrupted to remind him of the topic.
That first sentence semaphored the debate plan-move the negative focus to Labour, and away from National. That tactic has shaped National’s week in the House – everything has been a chance to attack Labour about the past – even a debate about the distant future.
For Brewer it only got worse. He was living an anxiety dream. He had pre-written a speech attacking Labour, but the ammunition was outside the debate’s scope. The Speaker steered him back to the topic repeatedly and Brewer flicked back and forward through his notes, looking for something, anything he was allowed to say. With so many interruptions the 10 minute speech took 17 minutes to stagger through.
No-one even raised the fact that, as Brewer was listed to speak as Committee chair, he would generally speak for the whole committee, or that MPs shouldn’t read out their speeches.
It was uncomfortable watching, yet Brewer’s approach and its aggressive stance was not unique on Wednesday. Every National MP dug into the past to attack Labour’s Covid spending.
Politics versus the future
After Brewer’s misfire, the debate loosened slightly as MPs re-dressed their attacks in the garb of fiscal implication.
Labour’s Deborah Russell had first reply, and began with a rebuttal borrowed from National’s Paul Goldsmith, who, when voting for Labour’s Covid spending plans in 2020 said National was “broadly supportive of a very significant increase in government spending outlined in this Budget and the need to go further into debt.”
In an election year, politics is inescapable. Ammunition is harder to find in the future, so this debate ransacked the past. Most speeches, though, did at least acknowledge difficulties ahead.
ACT leader David Seymour argued “we have a 20th century welfare state set up for 21st century demographics … In a couple of decades, there will only be two people of working age [15 to 64] for every person over 65.”
Vanessa Weenink, the most future-focused National MP, said “we’ve been staring down the barrel of this population timebomb for a long time and not having the courage to stand up and deal with it, because of the political pressure.
“This is something that has been a failure of all sides of this House-it’s not one party or the other.”
Green co-leader Chloe Swarbrick concurred. “The cost of superannuation is going to escalate, and [unless something changes] is ultimately going to become unsustainable.”
She also raised climate change, which “is going to see us confront more frequent and severe extreme weather events but also higher average temperatures and sea level rise, all of which puts our infrastructure at immense risk, not to mention our communities… .”
Interestingly, while climate change was raised by Labour, Green and Te Pāti Māori, it was not mentioned by any National or ACT MP. New Zealand First dismissed it as an “imaginary taniwha”.
Variant solutions
The parties all brought different ideas to address the agreed demographic, fiscal (and for some, climate) threats.
For ACT, David Seymour said $12 billion needed to come off the annual budget. He raised the possibility of slashing benefits, or raising the retirement age to 72; but his fiscal cure-all was “a smaller, more efficient government.”
Seymour suggested reducing both the number of government departments and Cabinet ministers. He didn’t say which parts of government he might jettison, or whether they would simply vanish or be privatised.
Shane Jones (New Zealand First) offered increased mining as the solution. He decried “a distorted philosophical understanding as to how we should interact with our environment. The environment is made up of multiple opportunities and, in most cases, it’s self-healing.”
For the Greens the solution included tackling issues that would make the future worse, like climate change. Julie Anne Genter suggested ignoring the “dinosaurs… in Cabinet… who are completely in denial about the reality of human-caused climate change. It is literally a threat to human life and all other life on the planet in a relatively short period of time.”
Te Pāti Māori Debbie Ngarewa Packer wanted to know why the Treasury report lacked discussion of “wealth and inequality”. Among her solutions was a big move to solar for “climate security, energy sovereignty; solar on homes, solar on marae, solar on community centres, solar on libraries, solar on schools.”
As mentioned, National MPs focused overwhelmingly on the past, especially on Covid spending. The plan offered was current policy: “returning the operating balance to surplus; placing net core Crown debt on a downward track towards 40 percent of GDP, and rebuilding fiscal resilience so that future governments have options for when the next shock inevitably arrives.”
Labour MPs talked about the future but also looked to their own past for inspiration. They too were distracted by the election – openly so. Deborah Russell ended with what might have been a stump speech “Labour has a plan for action on the cost of living. We have a plan for good jobs…”.
Barbara Edmonds pointed directly at the election: “We need a government who is serious about the long-term challenges. When Labour takes over in November this year, that’s exactly the government New Zealand will have.”
Asking MPs to think about the distant future in an election year is possibly a fools errand. Forty years is a long time, but in politics ‘a long time’ is measured in weeks.
*RNZ’s The House, with insights into Parliament, legislation and issues, is made with funding from Parliament’s Office of the Clerk. Enjoy our articles or podcast at RNZ.
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