Matisyahu's Blog

Below are two videos talking about the fiscal direction of New Zealand and changes – watch both of them then compare what they have said, now that they’re in government, when compared to what was said on the campaign trail because I think what you’re going to find is that the sort of rhetoric about cutting large number of public servants and spending has quickly found what happens when rhetoric slams head first with reality – it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realise that reality ends up winning in the end no matter how much you’d like that not to be the case.

There was big talk about reducing the core public service head count by fifteen thousand but now we’re seeing a realisation that a slash ‘n burn approach will have a damaging impact on the government to be able to govern – yes, even if you’re a ‘classical liberal’ party you need public servants to implement your policy, they don’t just magically happen at the wave of a magic wand then ta-da it happens. What you’ll probably see is a hiring freeze, move people around to different positions within the public service where there is the need for more staff, offering voluntary redundancy and allow a head count reduction through a combination of natural attrition and maybe investments into more technology to encourage the use of more self service options.

The incoming finance minister is also going to have to look at the books and it appears that the sort of talk similar to that of David Seymour is going to confront reality when the reports start rolling in regarding each of the ministries in terms of budgets and head counts. If you want to improve productivity then you’ll need to make investments which means front loading costs for long term savings, are the government willing to do that? if so, that will potentially mean a larger budget deficit in the short term, are they happy to explain to the public that the deficit maybe large over the next few years but savings may not appear until 2-3 years later?

As for the ‘repeal amendments to the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products Act 1990 and regulations before March 2024’ (link), It would be so much easier if Luxon just took the libertarian position in regards to smoking laws by saying “Should we ban alcohol too? Yes smoking kills, but that’s the choice of the individual.” As someone who is economically centre left but socially libertarian, it really rubs me the wrong way when I see politicians going on moral crusades (along side politicians who pass laws that make themselves feel good but do little in the way of addressing a problem or it ends up exacerbating the problem) in the belief that they have some sort of mandate to ‘protect the little people from making decisions I disagree with’. Smokers already pay taxes on tobacco that more than offset the cost of smoking and even if one were to imagine a scenario where everyone who smokes stops smoking tomorrow then there is the additional cost of living longer in the form of pensions and the loss of revenue from the loss of tobacco exercise tax. Yes, some people make choices that you and I may consider bad choices but part of living in a free society is respecting that an individual has a right to make choices that we disagree with. On a side note, the government does subsidise products that help people to give up smoking (link).