Congratulations, then
Scott Dixon
Winner of the Indy 500 and
hugely talented New
Zealander.
This makes your name
the most
illustrious
in a list that was
already awesome:
Denny
Hulme,
Bruce McLaren,
Burt Munro,
Helen
Clark.
Churlish types might
quibble
about the fossil
fuels you had to burn to
win this
trophy
but for sheer
folly you really
can’t go past those
millions of acres of American
land
growing petrol.
Three and half billion dollars is the limit of my comfort zone, declares Michael Cullen. A hundred million here, 200 million there. Before you know it, you’re talking about unreal money. Sometimes it helps to take the Geoff Robinson approach to complex matters. So, Dr Cullen, if I’m drawing up the nation’s budget in my garage, how much money do I need?
This little nugget from the briefing material is helpful. John Smith’s payslip tells us where his taxes go. John earns $45,000, so he probably wouldn't get a date with Cathy Odgers.
JOHN SMITH
PAY PERIOD
16/5/2008 TO 22/5/2008
Annual Salary $45,000
Weekly Salary $865.00
ACC levy $12.00
Tax goes to: $186.00
- Health $36.90
- Benefits and Working for Families $33.70
- Education $29.70
- NZ Superannuation $22.70
- Capital (excl. Transport) $12.10
- Law and Order $9.10
- Industrial Services $5.50
- Transport and Communication $8.30
This is Tax Cut day. The islanders are standing on the deserted airstrip, waiting for the cargo. If Dr Cullen’s barbed observation in an earlier press prizefight was accurate, Guyon Espiner’s first order of business will be to find out how much he’s getting. I have been too busy taking tea with a friend to arrive in time for a good seat, so from the back row, I can’t see which page the One News political editor turns to first. Down here in the cheap seats, however, the naked self interest is frankly acknowledged as people punch in the numbers and call over the treasury officials to help them calculate their particular entitlements.
The rainy day Dr Cullen was waiting for, and/or an election, has come. John Smith, income $45,000 per annum, will be holding on to an extra $16 of his pay each week, and by 2011, he’ll get to keep $32.
Over the course of the lockup, I ask various people in the room how much they expect to be paying for petrol in 2011. Few are willing to hazard a guess, although Bernard Hickey wonders if three dollars a litre might be about right.
The purchasing comparisons will be quick to come today, as the microphones head out to the malls and Victoria Street. The people who have been lately lamenting that they can no longer afford a block of cheese are now lamenting that their tax cut will only buy them a block of cheese. Oh the sting of it. That's a block of cheese each and every week, you ingrates. But we need to fill the tank, they say, that takes a hundred.
There’s something about the spurned lover or the disgruntled customer in the vox pop tone. Nice try, buddy but you should have been here three years ago and frankly: is that the biggest bunch of flowers you could manage? I’ll bet John gets me some lovely ones.
Every bit helps, every bit is welcome, but if you think there’s a number at which a tax cut will delight the voters, it may well amount to more than they handed over in the first place. Who’d want to be a finance minister? You’re in the same thankless position as any mum who has ever had to try and stretch the family budget further than it will reach. Everyone gets a filling - but dull - meal, the kids all have sensible shoes and trousers they’ll grow into, and a little bit more pocket money, and yet the grumbling does not abate. So it is for Dr Cullen. He has delivered the Budget of all mothers.
He was always going to be luckless. He is, though, demonstrably taking solace in the fact that the Tories will have to go deep into debt or cut spending if they want to do better. Several times he uses expressions which suggests the perspective of a Captain who has already abandoned ship: he talks about Anybody who may be in government and future governments may want to think about that.
This is my first experience of being detained by her majesty’s government, if you don’t count when I worked for them, or a meeting I once had with the IRD. From 11.00 am until 2.45, I must remain within the confines of this small banquet hall, jammed in alongside all manner of journalists, analysts, treasury officials and ministers. Our simple nourishment takes the form of the filled rolls, quiches and sausage rolls my friend had just been warning of. She is a veteran of many of these events. Why on earth would you want to go voluntarily?, she asked. Well, I guess, because a budget lockup is the sort of thing a follower of politics has on their list of 100 things to do before they die or turn 50.
Before you hand that tax money back, you have to get it in. I’m especially interested to know how much money Treasury believes the next few turbulent years might yield. I track the revenue table along from 61 billion to 71 billion and recall that when Bill Birch gave one of his budgets, the big news was that for the first time the nation’s GDP was more than $100 billion. The Government's revenue is now nearly three quarters of the way to that figure now. Growth; we love it.
Let’s now turn to their risk analysis; how realistic is the forecast? First the context is recited; various perturbing items of economic disorder: an 80% surge in world food prices, surging oil prices, sub prime meltdown. Careful discussion of these many risks follows, with the conclusion that growth will slow. But at least we’ll still have some. As enormous economic convulsions go, that sounds pretty tolerable. I rather hope they’re right, and not underestimating the coming volatility.
But what if their numbers are off? What if the price of oil goes higher. If the markets contract, well what then? What if retail really shrinks here? How’s that GST revenue going to look then? I am guided by the nation’s canniest retailer. As runes go, consider this. Michael Hill Jeweller has people lined up outside his store on budget day for the chance to buy a 1000 dollar ring for a dollar. He’s got Breakfast TV to cover it and on Lambton Quay, there are people in feather boas and colourful skirts and an MC with a microphone chivvying the shoppers. This says to me that retailers are feeling the need to pedal mighty fast. I see a big freeze at the sales counter and a sagging GST take ahead. This, Dr Cullen says, is what we have buffers for, and boy have people bristled at them for the past few years. Now we’re working along towards the buffer in the red - up to the 3.5 billion Dr Cullen says he’s happy to live with. Bill English may choose to go further.
The National Party argument prefers to ennoble the tax cut as a means of generating growth. We put it back in your own pockets and you’ll do something productive with it. Maybe; although when Bill Birch did it, much of the effect was simply to lift consumption. You may have seen the couple on the TV news who have no kids and earn a decent income. We pay all this tax and we get zero return, they complained. Individualism can become quite unlovely when it mates with modern consumerism. People seem to have a similar difficulty grasping the concept of insurance.
We will almost surely get to find out whether tax cuts can generate growth over the term of the next Government. Wellington, everyone tells me, is abuzz. The smell of change, giddy excitement, and doom, is all in the air. It’s Berlin in April.
This is half the fun of Wellington; all the talk. I mooch around the room, renewing old acquaintances, making new ones. I swap notes with John Tamihere on the state of our coronary arteries, tease Barry Soper about his continuing enthusiasm for May/December romances. I introduce myself to Gordon Campbell, whose writing I have been enjoying since he reviewed Blood on The Tracks, which we calculate would be 33 years ago. Talk turns to music and I end up burning a CD of Animal Collective for Michael Wilson.
Time rolls on. Harried hacks tap out their interpretations. On the big screen, Michael Cullen begins a reprise of the speech he gave us at midday, and makes his way through the substantial piece of work it represents. We hear about many aspects of this plucky little nation’s economy, but in hindsight, I have to say: considering how much of a fuss they were making just a month or two ago about the Free Trade agreement, and considering how much of a bearing it stands to have on the price of cheese, and oil, and the size of our future income, and, by implication, tax cuts, might it not have been to our advantage to have heard rather less about tax relief and rather more about China?
The front page of my Herald presents me this morning with a very special pig. They have deployed a ‘Porkometer’ to tally up the spending pledges of the two big political parties. Fair enough. Information is the fertiliser of democracy.
But are we to take it that any spending of any stripe is to qualify as ‘pork’? You might call extra funding for elective services or more money for cervical cancer screening 'overdue' but come on: pork? The story expressly recognises the American provenance of the expression, where it is used to describe the pledging of public funds for purposes that may not be in the greater good, but will nevertheless win favour with certain voters. The Herald appears to take the view that it is the act of ingratiation alone that counts, which somewhat misses the point.
The story duly lists every piece of new spending that has been announced by the government and the National party. Result: four odd billion by Labour and one and a half by National. The story doesn't ask which, if any, of the items proposed by Labour have been expressly ruled out by National. David Farrar, in retelling the story, seems in no hurry to shed light on this either, and certainly Bill English made it clear on Agenda that everyone will have to wait and see what the National party will and won’t be spending. We know that the bureaucrats will be getting theirs, but what aside from that will be different? English and co are perfectly entitled to take as much time as they like to work out what they’ll be offering, but in the absence of any actual detail from them, it seems a little heroic to assume - as the Porkometer seems to imply - that they will be making none of the same commitments.
Even Blind Freddy can see that John Key will probably be in government by Christmas, but if you make out that his spending will look dramatically different from the present lot once he has his feet under the desk (leaving aside the borrowing for tax cuts), you might be telling a porky.
Trevor Mallard opens the door of his van and gestures with a cheery wave for me to hop in on the passenger side.
Flying out the gates of Parliament grounds, we all but skittle a stout little fellow clasping a laptop to his chest. Blogger roadkill, barks Trevor, fixing his wild eyes on the cars ahead on Molesworth Street.
Got a few jobs, he says. Few people to sort out.
A generation of children knows the arc of any Postman Pat story. The friendly country postman and his cat set off each morning to deliver the mail. Invariably he is diverted by the problems of the villagers and is prevailed upon to help them out.
There is usually a song to accompany the adventure. ‘Football Crazy’ is one. ‘Now it's time to put on a show’ is another. Also: ‘Fruity Feeling.’
The resemblance is uncanny. You can see it in the stiff movements, the jaunty red van, the fixed eyes, the way people inevitably turn to Trevor or Pat to sort things out.
All around the world, it’s the same. From Wales to India, Scotland to Iceland, the children have Pat, the grownups have some kind of Trevor. In Japan, the show only got to air three years ago. People say the television bosses there were hesitant because, like the notorious Yakuza gangsters, Pat has but three fingers and a thumb on each hand.
It was for similar reasons that the Fat Mexicans never came to New Zealand. Mike Moore warned us of them, but it was Trevor Mallard’s uncanny resemblance to a South American cartel boss that kept the world’s scariest gang at home, leaving the way clear for the Killer Bees to give themselves the most ridiculous gang name eva.
I have to ask him. We’re at Tinakori Road, idling at the lights. He’s so good at sorting out a mess; how in God’s name did he not see what would happen with the Electoral Finance Act? In a mere moment the lightness has gone from his face, and I am left with menace. He leans across, swings the door open and as the van begins to pull away he says in a slow, quiet voice. Get out. Now.
My daughter calls me Dad. Her friends call me David. Likewise my accountant, my doctor, my neighbours. Mr Slack, to quote the surfer-dude turtle in Finding Nemo, is my father. About the only people who address me in that fashion are telemarketers and the IRD. Arguably, using such a title connotes respect. Do I really think some poor backpacker wearing a headset and sitting in a cramped cubicle farm has any respect for me as he reads me his dismal script?
One of our nearby primary schools recently proposed that the children might address their teachers by their first name. The principal explained his proposal in the local paper. It seemed inconsistent that the children were addressing the office staff as Fiona, Damian and Keith, but their teachers as Miss Haywood, Ms Edgeler, Mrs Brown and Mr Gracewood.
So from now on, he said, it would be first names for everyone. Call me Graham, children. The following issue of the Flagstaff brought interesting news. Some of the parents had been perturbed to hear of this change. They preferred things as they were; let the children learn to be respectful. So it will be, said the principal.
As a child, every adult I knew was Mr and Mrs. I had an Uncle John, an Aunt Rosemary, an Auntie Adrienne, an Uncle Brian. My godparents, though, were Geoff and Judy, and those were the names their own children used for them. You wouldn’t find kinder-natured, warm, respectful people anywhere.The children turned out just fine.
The rot set in, I suppose, when we got all immoral and started living together without marrying and the women stopped taking the name of the head of the household. What do you tell your child to call the lady next door? Ms Jolie? Mrs Pitt? You settle for Angelina, and the night Miss Aniston arrives on their doorstep, you explain to your child that sometimes grownups forget to be good and they get noisy and say bad things.
Once you’ve made the change, its easy enough; I suspect. it’s the transition that graunches your gears.
I got a nice letter from an old teacher of mine a year ago. I spent fully a month trying decide whether to address her as ‘Mrs’ or ‘Barbara’ as she had signed herself. In the end I addressed the letter to Barbara and began by telling her how perplexed I had felt at the choice I was faced with.
I tried this out on Mary-Margaret this morning. How would she feel if they changed the rules so that she would address Miss Watson as Jo? She thought it would feel funny, disrespectful. I reminded her that they address Rosie and Judith at the office by their first name, not to mention Russell, the caretaker, who received his Ph.D. last year.
She saw the contradiction, but said that all the same, it was what she was used to. Some kids don’t, though, she said. At Rosa’s school they call them by their first name.
Then, because her mind darts all day, she remembered her resolution of the night before when I had explained to her that every school has a scary legend. She said: I’m going to tell Russell about the rat at the back of the PE shed.
Other business
1. Jeremy Elwood's 12 Steps show is on until Saturday at the Transmission Room. He has some excellent material on terrorists, deer shooting accidents, and the visceral and psychological ramifications of carnal union. Get a ticket, you will laugh your AO.
2. So farewell then, Senator Clinton Maybe next week.
3. This morning’s Herald describes the effect of ‘soaring prices’ on a profligate Gen X and Y. What adjective does that leave them to describe what’s happening to prices in Zimabawe?
4. Did you notice that the omnipresent Olympic logo in the right hand corner of the screen disappeared from the One News bulletin during the ‘news’ report revealing the new Olympic uniforms?