Panel response to John Key interview
PAUL We saw John Key at the very top of the programme saying we voted for change. Did they do you think?
MIKE WILLIAMS - Former Labour Party
President
No they didn't and I think this is part of John Key's talent
that he understood that the electorate wanted to change the faces
but not necessarily change the policy settings, and I'm just
thinking, as successful year, in many ways Labour lost the election
but won the argument, if you look at some of the keystone policies
that are still in place Working for Families, income related rents
in state houses, 20 hours free early childhood education,
Kiwisaver, they're all still there.
PAUL What about John Key himself as Prime Minister, as a person who's stepped up to become the Prime Minister, does the word unflappable come into the mind?
FRAN O'SULLIVAN - Business Columnist
Oh yes, absolutely, and we just saw it on the programme today
when confronted with particularly bad behaviour by Hone Harawira
and also Rodney Hide, he cut them some slack and more importantly
he shifted it also as an issue to the minor parties to deal with,
but I think he does need to be a bit careful, and Guyon actually
touched on it in that last question or two, there will come a point
where the public will say hey too many examples of this, you had
Bill English the Finance Minister, whole raft of people, Peter
Dunne and others basically with their noses in the trough at a time
when everybody else is having to tighten their belts, and at some
stage they will want some public chastisement or basically a
blanket ruling saying no we can't do this, and I think in some ways
if he's smart he'll take a story to the parliament and get cross
party agreement that these perks have to go.
PAUL How has he done as Prime Minister do you think in this first year, how has he learnt the job Therese?
THERESE ARSENEAU - Political Analyst
Well I think he's natural, I think we all pretty much agree
on that, I think he was underestimated by Labour and I think
probably underestimated even by people within his own party.
I think what he's done is bring a new style of leadership to the
role, he's fundamentally a CEO of New Zealand, and he's not an
ideologue, he's not a professional politician, now Labour
campaigned, hammered him on that, because they thought it would
hurt him, in fact most of the public are not strictly ideological
and what we see now in the perks business is that people are
actually fairly distrustful of politicians, so having a non
professional politician actually helped him, so in the end the very
campaign that Labour ran actually helped.
PAUL He does a very good line in pretending to be the non professional politician of course, I mean his analysis with Guyon before of the kind of A type personality that goes into parliament is very astute in terms of managing them.
THERESE And the other thing is that we have to remember in New Zealand there are certain traits that we like in our leaders, and it's different from what say the Americans like in their leaders, we like that ordinary Kiwi sort of story, we like feet on the ground, we don't mind that he slurs his words, you know that's not important to us, but what is important is action, and I think this is where ultimately John Key will be judged and where he'll be judged is providing on the three main areas that he promised, delivering on education standards, on safer communities, and a growth in the economy, and he has not delivered yet on any of those.
PAUL Well yes we've got a good clip on the economy I think of what he was saying about the economy.
John Key: 'He said yes it's a big challenge, and everyone would agree with that, we're not trying to lasso a horse that's in a stationery position, we're trying to lasso a horse that's running at sort of full gallop and is likely to so so.'
PAUL Yes we have to advance much more quickly than Australia to catch up to Australia is what he's saying there. Do you worry there's not a big plan?
FRAN Yes I do.
PAUL I know that you do, but could I debate that with you straight away because this is simply a first year of bedding in, dealing with this hideous recession, finding out things, floating kites, there's a hell of a lot of kites floating around at the moment about reform and perhaps next year we might see something.
FRAN Yes and we will expect to see something, because that horse is racing a heck of a lot faster than the old nag we've got over here. He's going to I think need to start to talk a bit more about that narrative about the step change, building out why we might need to do stuff, I mean today he floated on this programme perhaps a bit of a trade off around you know GST, personal taxes, trudging up - and whacking up a bit of land and property and all the rest, but it's more than that, that's not going to do it in itself, because at the same time you know Crown revenues are shrinking, companies aren't paying a heck of a lot of stuff, and it's taking - we have not come out of this recession aggressively. I would really take issue with him there.
PAUL Interesting that they're letting other groups, officials, senior officials float the kites, fly the kites this year rather than leading themselves.
FRAN But that's exactly what you would expect out of senior officials, I think under the last government they were too paralysed and they never sort of felt they were going to second guess the government. If you go to Australia the Treasury there does push forward programmes in the national interests, and were finally seeing a reversion to normal form.
PAUL Michael you were President of the party John Key's party defeated of course, how do you rate his performance over this year, what do you make of him?
MIKE Oh it's been good, it's been good, but in many ways as David Lange once said to me the first year's the easiest, and I actually put that to John Key and he said well we'll find that out, and I think there are some elephants in the ring that'll have to be dealt with next year. Interesting to hear all this debate about tax cuts, we're borrowing a billion dollars a month.
THERESE And can I just say that in the upcoming year the crucial question is not how they're going to grow the economy but what choices they're willing to make to do that, and look there are a number of potentially really politically thorny issues, like mining, are we going to do more irrigation, what tax changes, all difficult issues for them to face.
PAUL Very difficult, big issues next
year.
