I woke up today and had a cup of tea, switched on the television to see what the latest news – we’ve got an election in November down in New Zealand so I like to keep up to date on the latest announcements. At this stage I’ve already decided who are I am going to vote for because the current government is appallingly bad in so many ways so they’re not even comparable.
I did watch a shorts recently on YouTube regarding how the public turn on progressive policies and I would argue that people aren’t opposed to progressive policies but they are opposed to seeing large amounts of money being spent on something and then seeing it being delivered over budget and late or not even delivered at all. For example, ‘Let’s Get Wellington Moving’ had a grand total of NZ$159.1 million and yet there isn’t a single thing to show for it with over half of the budget spent on consultants. Another example is in Auckland regarding the pedestrian bridge where $51 million was spent and once again there is nothing to show for the money that was spent.
Let’s be honest, large numbers of people don’t likes paying taxes because most would sooner see more money left in their pocket but it adds insult to injury when you’re being taxed and then seeing copious amounts of money being spent on projects that don’t lead anywhere. If you’re paying your taxes but for the taxes paid you saw great infrastructure and top notch services then you’d feel that you’re getting value for money – your quality of life is improving and you’d feel that what you pay in taxes is delivering benefits for you, your family and wide community.
If centre left and left wing parties want to win the case for a more active government then that involves making sure that execution is as important as the speeches given during the election campaign. This is the reason I keep coming back to the need to setup a Ministry of Works with a dedicated team of engineers and other specialists working on long term projects rather than having very expensive consultants that fail to deliver. The funny part is that contracting out these functions have actually cost us more than if we retained the Ministry of Works which is the opposite of what ‘disciples of neoliberalism’ promised.
This is what happens when you have ideology calling the shots resulting in something that works being replaced with a model that only benefits what I call the ‘consultancy industrial complex’ (or some other special interest group) with ‘disciples of neoliberalism’ twisting themselves into a pretzel in explaining how the square is actually just a circle but with corners. I think it is time that New Zealand revisits many of the decisions that were made in the name of ideology by justified in the name of ‘market efficiency’ and ask whether the promises that were made and the reforms that followed actually delivered on what was promised.
