John Key promises welfare for everyone [update 2]

Continuing his policy of being all things to all men (and women) John Key said over the weekend he is going to cover the expenses and mortgage payments of New Zealanders who lose their jobs in the current recession -- and when he says "he" is going to cover them, he means you, the few remaining taxpayers are going to pick up the tab for those few remaining New Zealanders who aren't already sucking off the state tit.

You'd have to start wondering after this if it would leave any remaining New Zealanders who aren't already on state welfare, or whether by then we'll all just be thieving from each other.

It's now clear that New Zealanders and their politicians have fallen heavily prey to the delusion that it's possible to vote oneself rich -- or at least for everyone to vote oneself free from care, at the expense of everybody else.

Perhaps it's time to seriously promote the policy that the privilege of voting should be restricted to those not receiving largesse from the voter.

UPDATE 1: Cactus puts the boot in:

    Why should those with savings bail out those without?
    The working truck driver renting a house in Otahuhu bails out a laid off Bank Manager living beyond his means in Remuera.
    Tell me - will there be any New Zealanders left not qualifying for some sort of Government assistance in a years time?

And answers with a big shagging list, the poster on the right, and this request:

Would the last taxpayer left in New Zealand not qualifying for welfare by November 7th please switch off the lights?

UPDATE 2: And The Hive and the Herald's John Armstrong both show (again) that as political reporters they're better at sport than they are at politics -- the braindead saps simply have no conception that policies have real implications for real people, no interest in understanding the consequences of policy promises.  They're only interested in "the game.":  "National Takes The Initiative," says the Hive. "Insiders say considerable and careful thought has been given to all this," simpers John Boy Junior. "If it is popular, the package could give Key unstoppable momentum."

Oh fuck off, you morons.

Nasty, brutish - and as stupid as a political journalist [update 3]

Whatever qualifications the Herald's John Armstrong has either as a journalist, or as a student of politics, he knows less than zero about economics -- and since he's paid to write about it (or since he's taken on the task unquestioned) -- he should learn a few basics, particularly before he starts peddling advice on the front page of the country's largest daily.

"Never mind inflation," says the numb nut right across this morning's front page, "recession needs big promises." And by "big promises" he really does mean a multi-billion dollar "spending splurge."  "infrastructure spending," says the ignoramus, "is ... the responsible thing  to do right now."

Sheesh, where on earth do you start with something as dumb as that, when all your reason tells you to respond by running screaming into the street yelling "No it fucking isn't, dumbarse!" ?

Do you point to Arnstrong's abject failure (along with most of his colleagues, unfortunately) to understand inflation?

Or do you start with the frankly destructive New York Times article by "Nobel-Prize winning economist" Paul Krugman that Armstrong points to and on which he relies, which maintains (correctly) that "All signs point to an economic slump that will be nasty, brutish — and long," and then demands as a solution that "increased government spending is just what the doctor ordered." 

Now, a prescription like this is sure to get the attention of big-spending interventionist governments and their supporters everywhere -- and of course it has ever since Krugman's hero John Maynard Keynes first opened his mouth with it seventy years ago -- and it has here too:  Helen Clark is now talking it up, and feeling her big-spending interventionist muscles. And John Key, too, is getting set to fill the same neo-Keynesian prescription that will attempt to cure the disease by giving us more of what caused it.

It's a National-Labour coalition, folks, both taking their cure from the same doctor.  Pity that the doctor is a quack whose prescription amounts to blood-letting as a cure for haemophilia.

You want to see nasty, brutish and long?  Then just look at what Krugman's neo-Keynesian prescription did in the thirties, as described by Dominic Lawson in last week's UK Independent:

    John Maynard Keynes, rather than Ludwig von Mises, is the economist whose name is currently being invoked on the airwaves in Britain. in his own day, too, Keynes obliterated Mises: it became fashionable to believe that Roosevelt's New Deal was a kind of successful rudimentary application of Keynesianism.
    Yet Roosevelt's policy of massive intervention by the state to prop up wage rates and inflate credit gets a much better press than it ever deserved. Consider this: in September 1931 the US unemployment rate was 17.4 per cent and the Dow Jones industrial Average stood at 140. By January 1938, unemployment was still at 17.4 per cent, and the Dow Average had dropped to 121...

So, no support there for Krugman's snake oil, unless your eyes can't see past the words "massive intervention" without heading off into excited hallucinations of Michael Cullen or Bill English wielding an open cheque book .

We've been over this before when the doctor quack got his prize.  Getting a Nobel for work on "analysis of trade patterns and location of economic activity," doesn't mean you know jack shit about what to do in times of recession. And he doesn't.

I won't repeat at too great a length what I said the other day, quoting Ludwig von Mises, about this phoney failed prescription for recovery

• -- that interventionists would be right if their antidepression plans were to aim at a radical abandonment of credit expansion policies
• -- that the problem is not to elaborate infrastructure projects, but to provide the material means for their execution
• -- that the fundamental error of these projects consists in the fact that they ignore the shortage of capital goods 
• -- that while the only real problem is to produce more and to consume less in order to increase the stock of capital goods available, the interventionists want to increase (somehow) both consumption and investment
• -- that  the interventionists want the government to embark upon projects which are unprofitable precisely because they are unprofitable
• -- that the factors of production needed for their execution must be withdrawn from other lines of profitable employment that consumers consider more urgent, and the production of which would otherwise provide the means of formenting a genuine recovery
• -- and that the interventionists don't realise that such public works must considerably intensify the real evil, the shortage of capital goods, while destroying the very basis on which this shortage is to be remedied.

Okay, I will repeat myself (and Mises) just a little, but in the face of such destructive crap as is peddled on the front pages of our newspapers this really needs to be pointed out repeatedly: if you take away the capital resources that producers need in order to recover (which is what deficit spending does); and if by extra spending you continue to inflate costs, when it is the very correction of lower costs that is needed in order for producers to recover, then you are destroying the very means by which recovery is going to happen.  Understand, no?

You see, unlike Krugman's hero Keynes, whom history should record as the theorist who managed to extend the Great Depression of the thirties for more than a decade, Mises really did know what he was talking about.  As Lawson outlines,

   In his 1912 work, The Theory of Money and Credit, Mises declared that the corruption and distortion of money by the state and bankers ... was the principal cause both of inflation and – to coin a phrase – boom and bust...
    As the chief economic advisor to the Austrian government in the 1920s, Mises put his theories into practice and slowed down inflation in his native country (which, as a Jew, he later fled). He used his "cycle" theory to forecast that the "New Era" of apparently permanent prosperity in the 1920s was illusory, and that it would end in runs on banks and depression: The Wall Street crash of 1929 was exactly what Mises had predicted.

And today's Misesians predicted the present crash as well -- as you can see by checking the 'Who Predicted This?' section of the Mises Institute's Bailout Reader.

I won't labour the point that Krugman didn't get his Nobel for his grasp of what to do in a recession, but do you notice in the bullet-pointed summary above the repeated references to capital goods, part of an economy's capital structure?  What Krugman is fundamentally ignorant of, as Robert Murphy so carefully explains here, is capital theory -- of the existence and make-up of the economy's capital structure, which in the final analysis is what an economy really is,and which has been all but destroyed by the commodities bubble, the housing bubble and by the whole misallocation of resources brought about by the huge inflation of the money supply in recent years -- and which would be all but destroyed by the capital consumption implicit in Krugman's shiny short-term bottles of snake oil.

That, the economy's capital structure, is what fundamentally needs to be fixed -- but Krugman and Clark and Key and co don't even know it exists!

To be one up on all of them, and I promise you it won't take long, take a look at Murphy's entertainingly simple model of what a capital structure looks like, and how easy it is to screw it up, using a "hypothetical island economy composed of 100 people, where the only consumption good is rolls of sushi."

See how easily a man of Krugman's talents can screw up even a functioning capital structure (which is after all what the central bankers did with all that counterfeit capital they were creating at such volumes), let alone what they'll do to the economy now it's on life  support, and they want to take away the very oxygen it needs to survive.

Remember: nasty, brutish and long will be the result of following Krugman's exhortations to the interventionists to spend more.  But they'll still insist on you taking their medicine.  Why?  The answer's obvious: Have you ever seen a politician turn away an argument that says they can spend more?  Never happened. 

But it's the job of political journalists to know enough to tell them when they're wrong.  Sadly however, most of them -- like Armstrong -- don't appear even to know enough to tie their own shoes.

Like him they're mostly just bone from the neck up.

UPDATE  1:  Fortunately, one party at least understands that politicians spending money we don't have is not the answer, and nor is impeding the very people whom we need to be more productive.  I speak of course of Libertarianz two-part economic plan: their Don't-Spend-So-Goddamned-Much Plan  and their Get-The-Hell-Out-Of-The-Way Plan. 

Looks like on the evidence of his last paragraph here-- if not his earlier pledge to keep growing the state, -- Roger Douglas, at least, has been listening.  There's hope for him yet.

UPDATE 2: Austrian economist and senior lecturer at the Mises University Robert Murphy is interviewed on the boom, the bust -- and Krugman and Tyler Cowen and even "rational expectations" theorists -- and why Mises' Austrian Business Cycle Theory explained and predicted the bust, and the others didn't.  Listen here.  Good topical stuff.

UPDATE 3: Dumbarse.  After all that, I didn't even give you the link to Robert Murphy's superb article on the 'sushi economy.'  It's here.  And it's worth it.

A lot of contra-cyclical nonsense [update 2]

More economic illiteracy to point out today from both commentariat and cabinet, from both NZ and overseas.  I blame their teachers. 
First up is Cactus.  Yep, in getting the right end of the stick here she's got the wrong end of supply and demand when she says:

It took me one day being in Hong Kong to realise that the price in a market is not necessarily a straight and easy supply = demand equilibrium, but whatever the seller knows you are willing and able to pay for it.

Wrong on the first point, but dead right on the last.  It doesn't matter a damn what you or a government valuer think your house (or your car or your hour of pointless labour) is worth: it's only worth what someone wants to pay you for it.  Something for vendors (and minimum-wage advocates) to think about in coming months.
You see, whatever your teachers might have told you, demand is simply desire backed up by the ability to pay.  The value of your goods brought to market depends on how many other people are offering the same or similar to you, put in the same room with those desiring to buy them backed up by their ability to pay.  Bingo.  That's supply and demand, although it's not an "equilibrium" at all: it's a (cough) "double-coincidence of wants." What's that mean?  It means that you want that money more than you want the goods -- and seeing your bills and the maintenance payments on your first wife piling up, you want that money desperately; whereas the buyer wants the goods more than he wants the money -- and seeing you sweat, he knows he doesn't have to pay as much money as you first said.
Like I said, I blame her teachers for not knowing she was disagreeing with herself.
Anyway, as she points out -- and as a perfect illustration of "demand" being "desire backed up by the ability to pay": there's been "immediate moves" by Aussie house sellers to up their prices to match Kevin Rudd's pre-Xmas bonus to first-home buyers.  (Much like owners of NZ rental properties up their rates to match their tenants Accommodation Supplement -- making this a gift to owners of NZ rental properties.  But I digress.)  Another example of how the important lesson pointed out by Henry Hazlitt is, or should be, the very first lesson in economics, i.e., that

the art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.

I blame Kevin Rudd's teachers for not knowing the lesson themselves.
Anyway, onwards to more ignorance at The Hive where they say "We agree fully" (their words) with this economically illiterate crap (my assessment) from the Herald's John Armstrong.  Yes, John Boy Junior again, ever the economic illiterate, who starts by observing (correctly) that "the pretend [election] campaign is having to make way for the real one as the international crisis has worsened," before slipping as usual into blissful know-nothing illiteracy:

    Labour has now grabbed the bull by the horns, using the likelihood of the country's slipping into a deep recession as an opportunity to demonstrate political leadership.

See what I mean?  In what exactly does Labour's "political leadership" consist, one wonders?  Turns out it's in abject economic ignorance, on which the other team is now steaming hard to catch up...

    [Labour] is now proposing a Keynesian-style spend-up as an economic stimulus. A December mini-Budget would bring forward rail, road and other construction projects to keep people in work.
    In what is termed "counter-cyclical economic management", Cullen is saying paying off debt during the good times has provided room to borrow to stave off the bad times.

Now here one can only blame the teachers.  A "Keynesian-style spend-up as an economic stimulus" is not what the doctor should be ordering -- or The Hive or Armstrong applauding.  Quite apart from being a nonsense phrase even on its own terms, "room to borrow" is not the same thing at all as "able to pay."
Remember that point?  Desire is one thing. Being able to pay for your wishes is another thing altogether.  (And governments, and Michael Cullen, use the power of economic ignorance to get you to pay for their desires.  Brilliant, huh.) 
Once you grasp the nature of government economic management and that simple economic point, that every wish has to be paid for if it's ever going to come true, then you'll understand that Government deficit spending doesn't stimulate the economy at all (if it did, a decade of then-record US deficit spending in the thirties wouldn't have prolonged the depression for a decade) because unless you've got the cash flow to match your spending, you're taking real capital away from the pool of real savings.  And who you're taking it away from is producers, real producers, who would have used those real savings to build real things that show real profits, not to build things like electric train sets and large holes in the ground. That's not stimulus, it's rank stupidity -- taking resources out of the mouths of the productive to pour down black holes marked economic ignorance.
And what's this about "counter-cyclical economic management" leaving us ready to face the bad times?  Have any of these people noticed the NZ government is only making us ready to join the bad times?
Even if Cullen hadn't pissed away eight years of unrepeatable economic golden weather and had actually followed the prescription of "counter-cyclical" prudence he claimed to have followed, contrary to the claims of most of the mainstream economists (there's those teachers again) that would have left us no better off.  Why? Because the whole theory is a crock.
Since the theory is so widely held; since it's still -- unfortunately -- so widely taught; and since whichever of the main parties takes up the reins in a month's time so much of New Zealand's real wealth is going to be wasted on it in the coming years, let me quote at some length Ludwig von Mises' explanation of exactly why the theory is a crock.  If you can't afford to watch your money being wasted, then you can't afford not to read on and find out exactly how it's going to be wasted, and why:

The Chimera of Contracyclical Policies
    An essential element of the "unorthodox" doctrines, advanced both by all socialists and by all interventionists, is that the recurrence of depressions is a phenomenon inherent in the very operation of the market economy.
    But while the socialists contend that only the substitution of socialism for capitalism can eradicate the evil, the interventionists ascribe to the government the power to correct the operation of the market economy in such a way as to bring about what they call "economic stability."
    These interventionists would be right if their antidepression plans were to aim at a radical abandonment of credit expansion policies. However, they reject this idea in advance. What they want is to expand credit more and more and to prevent depressions by the adoption of special "contracyclical" measures.
    In the contest of these plans the government appears as a deity that stands and works outside the orbit of human affairs, that is independent of the actions of its subjects, and has the power to interfere with these actions from without. It has at its disposal means and funds that are not provided by the people and can be freely used for whatever purposes the rulers are prepared to employ them for. What is needed to make the most beneficent use of this power is merely to follow the advice given by the experts.
    The most advertised among these suggested remedies is contracyclical timing of public works and expenditure on public enterprises. The idea is not so new as its champions would have us believe. When depression came in the past, public opinion always asked the government to embark upon public works in order to create jobs and to stop the drop in prices.
    But the problem is how to finance these public works. If the government taxes the citizens or borrows from them, it does not add anything to what the Keynesians call the aggregate amount of spending. It restricts the private citizen's power to consume or to invest to the same extent that it increases its own. If, however, the government resorts to the cherished inflationary methods of financing, it makes things worse, not better. It may thus delay for a short time the outbreak of the slump. But when the unavoidable payoff does come, the crisis is the heavier the longer the government has postponed it.
    The interventionist experts are at a loss to grasp the real problems involved. As they see it, the main thing is "to plan public capital expenditure well in advance and to accumulate a shelf of fully worked out capital projects which can be put into operation at short notice." This, they say, "is the right policy and one which we recommend all countries should adopt." [7] However, the problem is not to elaborate projects, but to provide the material means for their execution. The interventionists believe that this could be easily achieved by holding back government expenditure in the boom and increasing it when the depression comes.
    Now, restriction of government expenditure may be certainly be a good thing...

And it sure would have been if we'd seen it.

But it does not provide the funds a government needs for a later expansion of its expenditure. An individual may conduct his affairs in this way. He may accumulate savings when his income is high and spend them later when his income drops. But it is different with a nation or all nations together. The treasury may hoard a considerable part of the lavish revenue from taxes which flows into the public exchequer as a result of the boom. As far and as long as it withholds these funds from circulation, its policy is really deflationary and contracyclical and may to this extent weaken the boom created by credit expansion. But when these funds are spent again, they alter the money relation and create a cash-induced tendency toward a drop in the monetary unit's purchasing power. By no means can these funds provide the capital goods required for the execution of the shelved public works.
    The fundamental error of these projects consists in the fact that they ignore the shortage of capital goods. In their eyes the depression is merely caused by a mysterious lack of the people's propensity both to consume and to invest. While the only real problem is to produce more and to consume less in order to increase the stock of capital goods available, the interventionists want to increase both consumption and investment. They want the government to embark upon projects which are unprofitable precisely because the factors of production needed for their execution must be withdrawn from other lines of employment in which they would fulfill wants the satisfaction of which the consumers consider more urgent.
    They do not realize that such public works must considerably intensify the real evil, the shortage of capital goods.
    One could, of course, think of another mode for the employment of the savings the government makes in the boom period. The treasury could invest its surplus in buying large stocks of all those materials which it will later, when the depression comes, need for the execution of the public works planned and of the consumers' goods which those occupied in these public works will ask for. But if the authorities were to act in this way, they would considerably intensify the boom, accelerate the outbreak of the crisis, and make its consequences more serious.[8]
    All this talk about contracyclical government activities aims at one goal only, namely, to divert the public's attention from cognizance of the real cause of the cyclical fluctuations of business [which is their earlier inflationary credit expansion]. All governments are firmly committed to the policy of low interest rates, credit expansion, and inflation. When the unavoidable aftermath of these short-term policies appears, they know only of one remedy--to go on in inflationary ventures.

Mises' prescient comments come from his book Human Action, from the Chapter 'Currency & Credit Manipulation, Section 5: Credit Expansion' -- which is happily online right here.  It's as up to date as next week.
Why not print out Mises' description of what's about to happen and keep it handy over coming months, and just check back occasionally to see how damned accurate Mises' description of the coming capital consumption will be.  It won't be pretty, but at least you'll have the chance to learn something -- as long as you forget what your mainstream economics teachers taught you back in high school.
UPDATE 1: Now here's an Economic Plan to I can agree with -- one that's serious about the scale and the nature of the economic crisis:

    With chill economic winds blowing and all the mainstream political parties either unaware that the global economy has changed while they've been out campaigning, or abjectly clueless what to do about it, Libertarianz finance spokesman Mr Darby released the only credible plan to confront both galloping government deficits and collapsing financial markets.
    "I call it the Don't-Spend-So-Goddamned-Much Plan," he says.

Great stuff (read on here).  And looks like it's a two-parter, with more to come shortly...
UPDATE 2:  And here's the second part and it's a beauty -- and urgently needed:

    "The response of the mainstream political parties to the global economic crisis has been universally appalling," says Libertarianz party leader Bernard Darnton. "First denial, then promises of deficit spending of both the type and degree that helped delay recovery from the Great Depression for more than a decade" ...
    "This morning, Libertarianz finance spokesman Mr Darby released the first part of our plan outlining what government can do to prepare New Zealand to weather the crisis: the Stop-Spending-So-Goddamn-Much Plan. This afternoon," says Darnton, "I'm announcing the crucial second part."
    "I call it the Get-The-Hell-Out-Of-The-Way Plan."

And a damn good plan it is if I say so myself -- the only credible plan I've seen -- the only one which doesn't call for growing the bloody state, which every other moron is promising to do.  Read it here.

National Socialism

John Key's 'Dancing Cossacks' plan for the 'Cullen Fund' to amend the law "so the Finance Minister can direct the allocation of the fund" and allow Bill English to start buying up New Zealand for the government has given everyone the chance to spot the economic illiterates around the traps -- most of them people paid to pretend they know what they're talking about.

The Herald's Paula Oliver, for instance, who blithely reports, "The policy would see a greater amount invested into New Zealand."  Well, as I explain below, not necessarily.  The policy would see a greater amount of the Retirement Fund invested into New Zealand ... but that's not the sme thing at all.

And the Herald's John Armstrong, for instance, for whom politics is just sport -- and economics is just something Finance Ministers do to each other -- who says on the Herald's front page that Key's plan may offend the "economic purists," i.e., those who know what they're talking about, "but his announcement cleverly outflanks Labour...  National's bolder move has given it back some of the initiative on economic policy..." 

What a twit.  National's move has shown that in a time of economic crisis John Key is just as ignorant about what to do as the other team.  If Armstrong was doing his job he could point that out.  Instead, he say, "It will be seen by most voters as the right call in worsening conditions."  If that's true, it's only because when voters read commentators like Armstrong they don't realise he's so bloody ignorant of the subject on which he's paid to comment -- in this case economic policy.

To call this "bold" or "brave" -- let alone to use adverbs like "cleverly" -- is to ignore completely the effects of such a policy, and to demonstrate the paucity of your grip on what your job should be. 

To ignore how enormously destructive it is to give politicians the keys to this particular candy box; how irrational it would be to crowd out foreign entrepreneurial investment in NZ, and to forego higher returns elsewhere; how bloody risky it is to put so many of NZ's future retirement eggs in the same bloody basket as where they were hatched; how ridiculous for the NZ taxpayer to be investing in taxpayer-backed bonds... 

Yes, yes, Oliver asks a few "experts" later in her piece, under the fold on page 3, two of whom (Weldon and Skilling) are in a froth about the prospects of getting their hands on the candy jar.  (It's Weldon who calls it "brave" -- and not as an ironic reference to Sir Humphrey's warning: "'controversial' can lose you votes; 'courageous' can lose you the election.")

Thank goodness then for Brian Gaynor (and I don't say that too often), the other expert interviewed by Oliver, who points out his concerns with "the principle" of the move -- and bravo for a man who knows that principles are guides to right action -- "Where does it stop?" asks Gaynor, "It leads to pork barrelling -- go and build an airport in Kaitaia, or something like that."  Drive around Europe and see all the pork barrelling projects scattered around Europe like EU confetti, super-highways to nowhere and bridges made just for bungy-cords, and you get an idea of what sort of "returns" politically-driven "investment" brings.

Thank goodness too for commentators like David Hargreaves who writes in BusinessDay,

    [Key] wants the fund to take money from higher returning assets overseas and pump it into lower performing New Zealand assets as a short run boost to the economy. It is an easy way of the government increasing spending, without increasing its budget deficits.
    What it means is the returns to the fund are likely to be less in future years than they would be if the fund was left alone. Therefore the fund's ultimate ability to service pension requirements in future will be reduced.
    And worse, once the fund has become a play thing and source of easy money for the government to invest in its pet projects, you will lose the very high calibre of people the fund currently has.

Bingo!  And then there's the 'Dancing Cossacks' problem,

    that the New Zealand economy runs the risk of being heavily skewed by the impact of the fund. The fund already at this early stage has to be careful that it does not cause distortions in the markets through its activities. This risk will grow as the fund grows.

Sure will.

    One of Key's long ago predecessors as National Party leader, Rob Muldoon, won an election by lambasting a superannuation scheme set up by Labour. The argument was that as the Labour super fund grew, then so it could be used as a political tool. National scrapped that scheme after it won in 1975 and delivered us on the route to the future pension problem we now have.
    How ironic then that a National leader is now attempting to politicise a fund that has been set up for all of us.
    New Zealanders should have absolutely no truck with this idea. Key wants to mess around with money that is set aside for your retirement. In doing so, large chunks of that money could be lost.

Exactly right.  Now, John Key says he's been thinking about this since 2004! -- Gawd help us! -- but it takes only a moment of thought to realise, as Matt Nolan explains so simply that what he's "thought" about is a way to make "more" local investment mean less:

If capital at home made the highest return, then we wouldn’t need to legislate a 40% investment - as the Cullen Fund would put all its dosh there anyway. As a result, by “forcing” the fund to keep 40% onshore, we are reducing the return on our investment plain and simple.

As Nolan concludes, this is a terrible idea. National=Labour Lite -- "but they seem to be bouncing worse and worse ideas off each other."

It's just utterly pig ignorant, and shows beyond doubt that the single biggest danger with Key is not just his craven need to appease, but the idea apparently so strong within him that his laudable success as a currency trader gives him the credentials as Prime Minister to tinker with the levers of a very fragile economy.

We had one hot shot already who thought he could do that job, and we all know where that left us in 1984, don't we.

When Cullen announced earlier in the week his own plans to dig into the Super Fund chocolate box, Adolf from the No Minister blog called it "a defining election issue." It still is. In a time of terrible financial crisis, we now know absolutely that Key has no more clue what to do than Cullen.

UPDATE 1: Elijah is right, "Those people who have gone down the "vote National to get rid of Labour" track should be ashamed of themselves... A vote for National is now, without doubt, a vote for left wing socialism and State ownership..."

UPDATE 2: Yes, I've changed the title of the post. The more I think about this, the angrier I get.

Housing minister economically illiterate

It is now clear that Housing minister Chris Carter is economically illiterate.

At the end of last week he suggested that the solution to houses being seriously unaffordable -- with the average price being roughly six or more times the average income, as opposed to three times the average income as it has been in earlier times and still is in other markets -- the solution he said is new regulation to force developers to build affordable homes on land made unaffordable by earlier regulations. Somehow he thinks developers will be queuing up to lose money on new projects.

This economic illiteracy was lapped up by an equally illiterate commentariat, including Sainsbury, Campbell, Uncle Tom Cobley and all.

Then last night Carter dreamed a new dream. As the Housing NZ report issued ten days ago concluded, the problem with unaffordable housing is not lack of demand, it is serious restrictions on land supply that have pushed land prices up over 300% across a decade, and the construction of new houses some four- to twelve-thousand units fewer per year than required to meet demand. That serious demand-supply imbalance is what is driving the serious unaffordability of local housing. Carter's dream ignored that altogether. Carter's new dream is not to free up supply -- not to increase capacity, not to remove restrictions so that four- to twelve-thousand more houses can be built every year to house New Zealanders and clear the market -- but to inflate housing demand even more!

Housing Minister Chris Carter said last night [his "shared equity" scheme] would be a way to provide direct financial assistance to buyers faced with prices which would otherwise stop them getting into the housing market. "You would have partial ownership and share the results of any increase in value," he said on TV3 News. TV3 said a pilot scheme was likely to start in Auckland next year which could involve the Government paying for a 25 per cent or 30 per cent stake in a house.

Despite even a high school economics student being able to tell him what happens when you inflate demand while continuing to restrict supply, no one in the MSM has yet to call him the fucking moron that he is. Perhaps that's because they're mostly as economically illiterate as he is.

The answer is not to further inflate demand; it is to free up supply: to shred the RMA; to get the town planners' the hell out of the way and their hands off people's property; to allow the market in land to function just as every other working market does. If the housing unaffordability crisis could show us anything, it should surely be the imbecility and destructiveness of thinking that meddling mends markets. It doesn't: It makes them worse.

Economic illiteracy is not a winning strategy.

UPDATE 1: Right on cue, the economically braindead Herald columnist John Armstrong weighs in with an encomium to statist stupidity that begins by invoking the "spirit" of Michael Joseph Savage, which, says John Junior, "has been passed down through successive Labour ministers holding the housing portfolio," before sinking into a bottomless pit of nauseating stupidity when it calls the illiterate Carter both "smart" and "savvy" in succeeding sentences.

"Labour," says John, "can hardly be blamed for soaring house prices." Well, yes they can, since the Clark Government has done nothing to avert the outrageous restrictions on land supply brought about under the RMA, and everything to encourage an expanding exchange rate and soaring credit.

Armstrong just gets worse every time I have the misfortune to read him.

UPDATE 2: The economically literate Mike E is also a prospective first-home buyer, but he's no more impressed with Carter's dreams than I am.

This is the government proposing to *subsidise* 25% of a properties value. So for most places this would be about $100,000. To put this in perspective, what have I done, to make me deserve $100,000 of your money - why do I deserver it more than you do? why am I so special? The correct answer is, nothing, I am no more deserving of the money you earnt than you are. I can't support the use of force to have my assets subsidised by your work.

Frankly, who could justify that?

Smarm doesn't sell, it seems

Political pundits (and John Armstrong) argue that Don Brash frightened the horses far too much, and that in order to attract more support "from the centre," John Boy Key needs to outflank Helen on the left in order to attract more support from those outflanked -- to which I've pointed out that at 49% under Don Brash in the last TVNZ poll before he was ousted, National already had plenty of support, and for policies that weren't just warm and squishy and insubstantial. (Samples from John Boy: "I believe in the welfare state and I will never turn my back on it" ... )

How's John Boy's team doing in the latest TVNZ poll then? After a serious media honeymoon, a summer full of smarm ("An empty stomach, and an empty lunchbox, sets kids up [pause and voice waver] for an empty life"), lots more people who say they "like" John Boy, and a Government who stole an election and now have a a programme for the year that doesn't go much beyond buying Skodas to replace government limos ... the National Socialists are now at 46%.

46% under John Boy, compared to 49% under Don. That would be a downward trend, then.

So how about them pundits, eh?

[PS: Thanks to Teenage Pundit for the Key quote].

LINKS: Labour gains support but trailing Nats - Stuff

RELATED: Politics-NZ, Politics-National

Work. Dole. Alms. Key. Platitudes.

It's as impossible for to summon up any enthusiasm for John Boy Key's impending 'State of the Nation' speech as it is for John Boy to speak a whole sentence that means something.

Today is apparently the day he talks about New Zealand's "underclass." About work-for-the-dole. Lindsay Mitchell asks the relevant questions:

Why work-for-the-dole when employers are crying out for labour?

Why not work-and-no-dole?

Why indeed? Why give alms to the idle -- alms taken from the energetic and productive against their will. Liberty Scott has a more radical and -- let's face it -- a more honest solution:

Personally I'd start reform of the dole by putting a one-year limit on it, and you wouldn't be able to claim more than three years in your life. I'd also stop inflation-indexing it, so that as people's backstop it gradually becomes less and less attractive, encouraging people to save or to take out income insurance... That reform would be in the context of a coalition government, and it would just be start; serious reform would put a one-year time limit on the dole, after which it would be abolished.

Naturally, this could only take place in an economy in which the labour market is freed up by removing restrictions on hiring and firing -- encouraging labour mobility -- and by removing restrictive minimum wage laws, which help keep the low paid out of a job.

And wouldn't it just be nice if beneficiaries were grateful for those giving them money for nothing -- money extracted from the rest of us by force?

UPDATE 1: Here, for what it's worth, is John Boy's speech. If you had to take a drink every time you spotted a platitude, it'd be a very messy afternoon indeed.

• "We have, over generations, evolved a set of essential New Zealand values, attitudes and shared experiences. These represent what I call 'The Kiwi Way'."
  
  
• "I want to get alongside the amazing groups that make a difference to our communities."

• "I know we can do better. We have to do better. Because, left unchecked, the problems of a growing underclass affect us all."

• "National will use the welfare system, on behalf of all New Zealanders, to motivate long-term beneficiaries to change their lives for the better. Where we give opportunity we will expect responsibility."

• "These are tough problems. But I have no intention of being a Prime Minister who tackles only the easy and convenient issues."
  
  
• "Today, I say to all Kiwis that I want you to dare to think what New Zealand can be like and what all our lives can be like."
  
  
• "I believe the best years for New Zealand are ahead of us. As a nation, we have everything to look forward to."
  
  
• "We can be a country that is coming together; not a country that is coming apart."

• Blah, blah, blah. Today is the first day of the rest of your life. I believe that children are our future. Going forward together. A hand up, not a hand out. Apple pie and motherhood.
  

Nothing that either Jenny Shipley or Helen Clark or even the Women's Weekly wouldn't be heard saying, but in John Boy's case he actually believes this waffle. The man's a walking platitude.

But so much for the platitudes, what about the solutions? What about the policies? He has got some policies, hasn't he? Hasn't he? You know, something to show that there's a reason he wanted the leader's job, beyond just really, really wanting the leader's job?

Policies? Any at all?

Ah, no. Not yet. Not just at this precise minute. But they are going to work really hard on that real soon. Really hard. You see, "these are tough problems," says John Boy -- really, really tough problems -- so "in all areas of social policy," he says, "I am tasking [tasking?] National's spokespeople to come up with policies to address the deep-seated problems in some of our families and communities." Oh good. I look forward to hearing back from the 'tasked spokespeople' when they have 'completion on their spokes-tasks.' That should be really exciting. Just think, if they stay up all night, they might even come up with some really good solutions!

Well, at least the Herald's John Armstrong will be excited. I look forward to his panegyric to John Boy's wisdom in tomorrow's rag. As for me, this is just another smug, platitudinous, policy-free nail in a very empty coffin.

Don Brash when he left Parliament listed as one of his achievements that he had changed Orewa from a location into a date, so that people began talking of pre-Orewa and post-Orewa. I don't think anyone will be talking about pre-Burnside or post-Burnside any time soon, but if the hollow platitudes continue, how long before they start talking about pre-Key and post-Key?

UPDATE 2: Plenty of bloggers already running their rules over all the platitudes. In a first for me, I did enjoy this comment from Labour hack Jordan Carter.

This is Key's fifth year in parliament. The only policy suggestions he's come up with is school breakfasts, and accessible sports opportunities.

Perhaps the most damning is this, again from Jordan:

The fact that I would struggle to disagree with much that is in the speech... seems to me to be a slight misjudgement on Key's part.

LINKS: Working for other people's money unfair - Liberty Scott
Questions for the Maori Party - Lindsay Mitchell

RELATED: Politics-NZ, Politics-National, Welfare

The donkey gets the nod

John Armstrong picks the smirking knob in the middle of the donkey as his Politician of the Year with this simpering selection of apostrophes to mediocrity:

"...the killer contribution came from English, who with Key, are the only real contenders for the title of Politician of the Year."

Anyone who can remember English being punched around by singer Ted Clarke in a boxing bout on national television will realise that the use of the words "killer" and "English" in the same sentence is surely an unfortunate combination.

"Key, of course, made the big leap into leadership. But he did the groundwork last year, which made him leader-in-waiting and Politician of the Year for 2005. And judging on his form so far as leader, he will be on the shortlist next year."

The "groundwork" for John Boy Key's "leap into leadership" consisted of destabilising his leader by talking up a coup for a year -- and in this he had the active support of Armstrong and his colleagues. And as is now clear, the "groundwork" for Key's "great leap forward" in no way included any policy development, any reason for him wanting the big brass ring any more than -- similar to what Walter Lippman once wrote about Franklin Roosevelt -- that he is simply an affable man without conspicuous convictions who very much wanted to be Prime Minister. Little enough, perhaps, but more than enough to make Armstrong's short-list.

"This year the title [of Politician of the Year] goes to English, partly for the sheer political machismo and guile he displayed in securing both National's deputy leadership and the shadow finance portfolio..."

This is either satire, or Armstrong is in serious need of either a holiday or a new job. "Machismo." "Guile." And Mr Twenty-One Percent! Whatever repertorial judgement Armstrong may once have had -- and I must confess I've never seen any sign of it myself -- it's clear it has now left him.

My nomination for the year's most sycophantic so-called journalist? John Armstrong.

LINKS: Opinion - John Boy Junior, NZ Herald

RELATED: Politics-NZ, Politics-National, Hollow Men

Direct and to the point

There's more in one sentence from Don Brash than there's been in all the fluff from over two weeks of blathering by his successor. From The Don's valedictory speech yesterday:

We need to re-establish the principle of personal responsibility, re-affirm the importance of family and community, and turn our back on the politics of envy, where the party that wins is the one that can take $25,000 off a hard-working Kiwi and spread it around to win the maximum number of votes among those who aren't so hard-working.

As a libertarian I don't agree with every word (what's wrong with re-affirming the importance of individual freedom?), but there's more meat there than in a whole folder-full of John Boy's mutterings - and doesn't that explain the advance auctions of stolen goods that are our western elections?

PS: I've noticed the commentariat (and John Armstrong) continuing with their false assertion that Brash's direct, to-the-point leadership turned off voters, and with their baseless predictions that John Boy's me-too mush will therefore sweep them in like flies to manure. Let's talk about that when John Boy hits over 49% in a TVNZ poll, which is where Brash's National were just before his ousting -- clearly those voters were never listening to the pundits who told them Brash's directness was turning them off; they were listening to Brash.

RELATED: Politics-NZ, Politics-National, Hollow Men

John Boy, and John Boy junior.

I'm afraid the Herald's John Armstrong is getting worse, not better. His year-long application for the job of John Key's catamite continues in glowing prose in this morning's Herald (thankfully kept from the front page only by the dramas in Fiji -- perhaps the best thing there is to be said about the all-too-confusing events there).

Here's how I ever-so-briefly summed up yesterday's question period in Parliament, John Boy Key's first as opposition leader, after listening in to find some hint of spine in the new National leader: "...the chamber was buried in fog, and the drip (ie., Key] was buried by the Prime Minister." Now here's Armstrong, with his tongue firmly placed where Trevor Mallard thinks about inserting Heineken bottles.

It may not yet be a battle of equals. But one thing is clear from yesterday's first head-to-head clash in Parliament between John Key and Helen Clark. There is now going to be a real battle.

Clearly we heard a different question period. The one I heard was a blancmange of powderpuff questions, with Key huffing and puffing over his recent conversion to the religion of global warming, and the Government benches hooting with derision at what they must surely see as an easy run ahead. "They're like the third form," hooted Clark, which pretty much sums up how John Boy sounded.

Armstrong's praise for Key, however, knows no bounds: "You could almost see National MPs' hearts swelling with pride." (Those are Armstrong's own words. My own stomach swelled with nausea when I read them, I can tell you.) John Boy "cut loose," says John Boy junior, and with "ferocity" -- ferocity! -- "eyeballing Helen Clark directly as he spoke." Just imagine! Eyeballing Helen Clark, the crazy fool!! "Mr Key had cleverly [emphasis mine] chosen to quiz the Prime Minister on her stated aim of making New Zealand "carbon neutral..." Sickening, isn't it. The cleverness apparently comes because the line of questioning was one in which Key signalled he is out to out-Clark Clark -- that is, "out to 'own' climate change."

"Key holds his own," says Armstrong. Well, he got that much right. What a drip. Anyway, you don't have to take my word for John Boy's wet performance, or the word of John Boy junior. You can listen in yourself. Key's own appearance doesn't take long. Mercifully.

UPDATE: Liberty Scott has two reports on the blancmange opposition. First, Maurice Wimpianson demonstrating why "Telecom has stopped funding political parties, almost all of them are full of thieves." And then the policy free zone that is National's conversion to the politics of "climate change," for which Scott helpfully suggests the best policies would be 1) abolishing the RMA, 2) privatising the roads, and 3) deregulating and privatising the power generators. (Well, you don't visit here for mainstream thinking, now do you?)

LINKS: Key hold his own in honourable draw - John Armstrong, NZ Herald
Question Time for Tuesday 5th December - Radio NZ
Nats give Telecom zero - Liberty Scott
National's new policy free zone - Liberty Scott

RELATED: Politics-NZ, Politics-National

Bullshit Bingo with Key, later today

Watching John Key talk last night on both Close Up and Campbell (with the same lines wheeled out on Larry Williams radio show last night and on Breakfast TV this morning), a friend observed, "He talks a lot, but he says very little."

It's true, isn't it.

How much actual substance do you expect from his "Values Speech" today? Liberty Scott has a list of nine points of substance that he and I would both like to see in that speech, all of which actually mean something, and which taken together would actually "move the country forward" -- one of which, one law for all, Key has already said he's abandoning.

And Scott has another set of nine points ... well, nine nice-sounding empty phrases really ... phraes that, if used, will lose his interest altogether. These, I fear, have much more chance of being wheeled out. Feel-good nothings like, "Government needs to listen (and I'm a good listener)" "Government needs to be smarter" (and just look at me), "social responsibility" (who would want to be thought irresponsible?), and of course something about "families" appearing in the same sentence as "I believe in ..."

Expect more of the froth, and far less (about nine fewer appearances) from the list of substance. In fact, why not try a game of Bullshit Bingo. Score a 'Line' when you hear all of "reaching out," "inclusive," "multicultural," "tolerance," "moving forward," "forward-thinking," "unity," and "I believe..." -- and if you hear all that and "State house" then it's time to yell out "Bingo!" or perhaps "Bullshit!" since that's what you'll have been listening to.

And when he says once again (as he undoubtedly will) that he believes in "inclusiveness" and "tolerance," then bear in mind where he voted on the "litmus test" votes on Civil Unions, legalising prostitution and keeping the drinking age at eighteen.

He voted against.

UPDATE 1: Oh yes, the Herald's John Armstrong has his own ten points. I scored 'Line' by the second time he'd advised Key to "reach out." And once again Armstrong is getting advice from his own typewriter, this time when he advises Key to sack Brash now. "He is too scary to middle New Zealand to be let loose in health, education, social development, housing, accident compensation or state-owned enterprises," says Dumb John. "Too scary" is a pretty odd thing to say about someone for whom "middle New Zealand" voted in droves just one year ago, and supported in even greater proportions in recent polls.

However, given that for all Key's talk of "unity" and his joy in a"united caucus" he hasn't yet and doesn't expect to talk to Brash any time soon ("sometime in the next forty-eight hours"), it would seem Brash is already getting the "You're not welcome" signs.

UPDATE 2: Here's "a further embellishment" to the bingo game, courtesy of David Slack:

Take a drink every time you hear John say anything Helen wouldn't. So much of this is motherhood and apple pie, I think you'll have plenty left in the fridge at the end of the game.

And I think he's likely right.

UPDATE 3: Key's "Values" Speech online now at Scoop. [Click the link to read]

** So how did I do at Bingo? I lost:

• "unity" - zero occurences
• "tolerance"/"tolerant" - zero
• "reaching out" - zero
• "inclusive" - zero
• "multicultural" - zero [of course there is this: "we should celebrate the cultural, religious and ethnic differences we all bring to New Zealand."]
• "moving forward" - zero
• "forward-thinking" - zero
• "I believe" - three
• "State house" - one

** Scott did better. He hoped for:

• "National’s principles" - one appearance, but perhaps a major one:
  

  "What you can be assured of is that our policies will always be measured against our core principles. Let me be also clear that I make no excuses for saying those polices will be harvested from wherever we see the best results being achieved.

  I am interested in what works, and not what should, or could, or might work in theory."

• "Private property rights" - no sign
  
• "Personal freedom"- one appearance
• "One law for all" - "one standard of citizenship"?
• "Less government is better" - "the appropriate role for the government is in the background, not in the foreground"
• "More choice in education" - Nothing. But he did mention some problems with zoning last night, and fixing the "underclass" today.
• "There should be less tax" - Nothing
• "Dependency on the state is not a virtue" - Not exactly
• "Law and order is a vital role of government" - Half a mark
  

** How about Scott's 'Bullshit Bingo' score, the things he hoped would not make an appearance:

• "Government needs to be smarter" - "I am interested in what works, and not what should, or could, or might work in theory..."
• "Government needs to listen" - zero references
  
• "environment" - four references
  
• "families" appeared three times, once in the same sentence as "Personal freedom, individual responsibility, [and] a competitive economy..."
• "Government needs to help the innovators, creators and employment producers by providing funding…" - nothing
  
• "More money for health and education" - nope
• "Corporate social responsibility" - nope
• "Inclusiveness" - no sign today
  
• "Climate change is the biggest challenge in our time" -

  "...no one with any awareness of the world can be ignorant of [global warming]... all of us, across the political spectrum, with the exception perhaps of the Greens, have taken too long to put the protection of our environment at the forefront of our thinking. That needs to change. In the National Party we have taken steps to do this, and we will be taking more steps."

  And those steps do not feature property-rights based solutions.
  

So, about even, wouldn't you say?

** And David Slack's Bingo entry, ie. "Take a drink every time you hear John say anything Helen wouldn't. So much of this is motherhood and apple pie, I think you'll have plenty left in the fridge at the end of the game."

-->NUMBER OF DRINKS TAKEN: One small sip. That quiet sip might just be the clincher.

"There is much, much more to come," says Key. You can say that again. Do we now "know what John Key really stands for" as he promised? No, we don't. Unless that is what he stands for, in which case the answer is "whatever works."

But he did write the whole speech himself.

UPDATE 4: Three useful summaries of the Key Speech:

1. Ross Elliot at SOLO, Meet the New Boss: "Today, John Key gave his first speech as National Party leader, and it was as bad as I thought it would be. Filled with nothing but bland, soporific pragmatism and third-way, warm 'n' fuzzy, political code-speak, Key's speech says nothing and adds up to nothing. It does, however, reveal everything... Al Gore could have given Key's speech during his 2004 presidential campaign. In fact, I think he did."
2. David Slack at Public Address, I Have Aspirations Going Forward: "For the most part, though, specifics are not to be found, and this is unfortunate for an aspiring Prime Minister, because it tends to dull the lustre of his vision. In the absence of something to latch on to, you have the appearance of floundering, or, possibly, courting the job for its own sake." Hacking through the Key flannel, David has a quiz to see if you can tell Key's speech from Helen Clark's most recent conference speech.
3. And even Michael Cullen: Key All Style, No Substance: "The speech tells us what he is not. He is not Don Brash. It doesn't tell us what he is... "Mr Key has yet to demonstrate any substance despite having spent much of the last four years thinking about being the leader of the National Party."

Can you disagree?

LINKS: John Key - excite me - Liberty Scott
Bullshit Bingo - Not PC

RELATED: Politics-NZ, Politics-National

Dream Team? Or Blancmange.

I castigated the Herald last week for a front page full of crap. John Armstrong is back there today with more of the same.

"The logic" for Key choosing English is "inescapable," says Armstrong, whose opinion on this is presumably on the front page because it's thought to be wisdom. It's not. English as deputy is neither logical nor inescapable, despite what Armstrong might appear to think.

"[Key] needs English working for him rather than operating in isolation," advises Armstrong. Why? What skills or talents does English have that haven't already been examined and rejected overwhelmingly by both the electorate and his colleagues. Armstrong overstates both English's supporters, of which he has few, and his talents, of which he has even fewer -- and none of any quality.

Key needed English's support as deputy to avoid "the impression [on whom?] the caucus is highly factionalised." This is the sort of nonsense that Armstrong used to write about Brash, suggesting that Brash's strong views "factionalised" the caucus, and was thus A Bad Thing. But what's wrong with strong views and honest opposition? It's what happens when you actually have ideas. No problems now, since neither new leader Key nor new leader English have or can articulate a strong view or any ideas of any sort. Just mush.

But I digress.

"Had Brownlee won the vote for deputy] by a narrow margin," continues the Herald's front-page pundit, "[Key] would only have been weakened." How? If Brownlee's supporters are more numerous than English's (which by all accounts they are), then why wouldn't the factionalism created by these Nats be something to consider? And, frankly, how could Key possibly be weakened by side-lining or making opponents of the likes Nick Smith, Tony Ryall and the other dripping wet electoral liabilities known to be English supporters. The earlier those losers are side-lined, the better.

"An English victory," suggests Armstrong, would "[make] it appear he now had a deputy he did not want." But he doesn't want him. We know that. Key is only taking English for the same reasons of faux-solidarity that Armstrong espouses here -- but no one is fooled for a moment.

There are concerns about Key, notes Armstrong, who ignores the most important concern that he stand for nothing.

There are concerns about him "getting the front bench to weigh in behind his leadership," says Armstrong, and "his relative inexperience but abundant cockiness." "Getting English on board in an oversight capacity goes a long way to dispelling those concerns," says the sage of the front page. This is just nonsense, isn't it. That's a front bench that needs sacking not sucking up to, and English's "experience" is no more than a long history of failure and mush-peddling. Seeking "oversight" from such a man would be like seeking it from the current England rugby coach.

And here's the kicker for Armstrong as a pundit: "Another driver is English becoming deputy is Key's need to harness [English's] policy grunt in the crucial shadow finance portfolio... " Policy grunt"? From English? You can lay all English's "discussion papers" from end-to-end (and you could almost wallpaper a waterfront stadium with the pages full of bilge you will find there) but of either grunt or a conclusion in any of them there is none. Grunt? Oh, please! And to place English in that role is to exclude from it a man described by Professor James Allan this morning (correctly) as "probably the most economically literate political leader in the world."

This is not "logical," it is dumb.

The media are talking up English now in this fashion in the same way they talked him up before his own disastrous reign as leader, and it's quite simply because he's one of them in a way that Brash never was. Unlike both Key and English, Brash actually stood for something, and that he did and was prepared to stand up for it frightened his advisers, his caucus and his political opposition -- but it was something the public embraced in a way they never embraced the mush of English, or the muddled-speech of Shipley.

In the end, for me this is the chief concern I have about both English and Key and the leadership coup they've helped effect. They stand for nothing except "management," which is to leave open the question, "Management, to what end?"

Both English and Key have spent much time and energy undermining Brash, trying to roll Brash, or to have him rolled, all in order that one or other of them can be leader -- but now we must ask what did they actually want to be leader for?

It's clear enough that it wasn't to put in place their vision (they have none). It wasn't to have their party stand for something (they stand for nothing). It wasn't even that they had particular objections to Brash's policy prescriptions (only objections as to how "the public" might "perceive" those prescriptions).

No, they both wanted to be leader and did what they could to make it happen (including undermining their previous leader) for fairly simple reasons -- reasons enough to get Key out of his not-so-humble career in business, and to keep English in parliament after the electoral flogging he received in 2002 : They both want power. They both want their egos stroked. This is the next-to-top job and they want it, not for what they can do in the job, but for what the job can do for them.

Which leaves the question of where exactly this leadership duo will "lead" National, and the answer is that neither yet knows. Key will sense the way the wind is blowing -- along the lines, probably, of how he reacted to Al Gore's nonsense, of which Key said airily after Gore's Auckland lecture, "it pushed all my buttons" -- and English will write more vapid "discussion papers," and both will effect a stance when they need to, but both will grant their opponents the ability to set their political principles for them since neither have any of their own to repair to.

Consider: What is a leader for? Answer: to lead, not to follow. Did either English or Key want to become leader in order to advance particular policies and principles that they believe in; that would advance the specific goals they seek for the country; policies, principles and goals that they passionately believe would lead to an improvement for the country and the people in it? No, not at all. Instead, they seek the reverse. They will seek policies to advance goals (about which they will care little) in order only that they can espouse what they think will cement them in place as leaders. That's the extent of their commitment to policy (to say nothing, quite literally, of principle). They will not seek to lead policy debate, and so by default they will end up following it -- they will not be advocates, but straws in the wind.

It is not leadership they really want, it is just the leader's job. Just the power, but without a purpose. And we are back to the criticism made abundantly with National under English and Shipley before: that here is a party that will believe everything and stand for nothing; a party still in search of a political philosophy; a the same Blancmange party appearing again before us now, even as the man who took them to their highest place in the polls for years is being shown the door by the men who have coveted his job for so long.

The irony is that the public (by their polling) showed they were more than happy to accept the vision for the country put forward by Brash, and it was his caucus colleagues and press gallery cockroaches like Armstrong who sought to undermine the vision with the claims the public couldn't accept that vision when offered straight. Brash proved the pundits wrong, and to do that is simply unforgiveable.

No wonder Brash could never fit the National Party caucus, or meet the expectations of a press gallery full of Armstrongs. In the end he was simply never spineless enough to fit in.

UPDATE: Key has responded to claims today and over the weekend that no one knows what he stands for by promising to deliver a speech tomorrow that will do so, a "kind of 'Values' speech," he calls it. If his chat with Larry Williams this afternoon is any indication, expect words like the following to feature strongly -- "tolerant," "inclusive," "multicultural," "State house," "aspirational" -- and for us to be none the wiser afterwards.

But I'm happy to be proved wrong.

LINKS: Hager, Brash and Herald humbug - Not PC
Without Brash, New Zealand will suffer - James Allan, Australian
Key puts 'dream team' together - John Armstrong, NZ Herald

RELATED: Politics-NZ, Politics-National

Hager, Brash and 'Herald' humbug

Unable as I am to post or read substantially from my regular web sources (thanks iHug) I do want to comment on some of what appeared on the front page of this morning's Herald since it does help explain why I started blogging: In short, because there's so much nonsense that passes for educated commentary.

I refer of course to Nicky Hager Vs Don Brash. If you want my opinion, here it is.

Says the Herald, "Hager said he had planned to launch the book yesterday, but was prohibited from doing so." Leaving aside for the moment the reputation of Dicky Faker for honesty and integrity -- a reputation which, based on past history, must be somewhere close to the freezing point of glycol -- as I understand it what is injuncted are emails stolen from Brash's computer. If FaFer has written his book based on emails that weren't stolen -- "Hager said the emails weren't stolen," says the Herald -- then he's free to publish his book. It would seem however that he doesn't.

The man, once again, is lying -- as too it seems is John Armstrong, who writes blandly of the "High Court injunction blocking publication of Hager's book." This is pure humbug, if not outright lying to his readers. I'll say it again: the injunction is against stolen emails, not against Hager's book. If Hippy Daker has data honestly come by (if he would even know what "honest" looks like), then he is free to make if it what he will.

But it seems he doesn't.

The Herald continues with further humbug. "Blanket injunctions of the kind of the kind that Dr Brash has obtained are not healthy for our democracy," pontificates the Herald. "Those who ask to be entrusted with power have to accept that their dealings should be an open book."

Now, this is nonsense. Are they really suggesting that all "those who ask to be entrusted with power" should make their private emails avaliable to whoever asks for them? Apparently so.

They boast they are "in possession of hard-copied emails which are, or may be, the subject of [Brash's injunction" -- in other words, emails stolen from Brash's computer -- and they are presently arguing in court for these to be publicly released. Not to do so, their lawyer is arguing, is "inconsistent with the rights of freedom of expression affirmed and protected by Section 14 of the Bill of Rights Act."

Frankly, this is bullshit, just as much as TV3's argument that injuncting these private emails is an "unreasonable restriction on freedom of expression."

If they really and truly believe this, then I look forward to the Herald senior staff and the producers and presenter of Campbell Live making the contents of their own emails available to us all online, and seeing their applications to the courts for the release of private emails of H1, H2, Alan Bollard, Mark Prebble, and the entire front bench of the Clark Cabinet.

As I say, this is bullshit, nd not just from Hager who is professionally enmired in the stuff.

Hager claims he is doing work "in the public interest," work that "shines a light on many deceptive and unethical activities" etc. etc. etc., and he outlines some of his claims in the press pack up there at Scoop.

Now it's hard to answer this after watching a year of demonisation by the Clark Government, but is there really something wrong with talking to the Brethren? Or constituents? Or business groups? Or donors? When did association with either business or Brethren or making a donation to a political party or releasing an anti-Labour or anti-Greens pamphlet become so demonised, so evil inand of itself, that we need -- as a matter of intense public interest --to see and hear all the private communications about these activities?

What's wrong with criticising all the lies and spin and just complete nonsense that appears right out there in the open and is made and lapped up everyday, like for example the very demonisation of those groups Hater says Brash has been talking to, or much of what appeared on the front page of the Herald today, or on the front page of the Sunday Star Times most weekends?

Or is Nicky Hager just used to shadows himself?

By the way, and to conclude: Having mentioned the Sunday Star Times and Hicky Nager in the same opinion piece, I can't now fail to mention the opinion of Justice Neazor of the worth of their collaboration over the "revelation" of of the SIS bugging Tariana Turia -- "a work of fiction" Justice Neazor called it after a thorough investigation. As I said back then:

Good advice might be to remember this finding next time you read a story written
by either Nicky Hager or Anthony Hubbard and as Justice Neazor suggests, just file it under fiction.

UPDATE: Just to remind of previous 'Hagerings' NBR has a roll call of those previously 'Hagered,' from the SIS to the SAS to Timberlands West Coast to Helen Clark herself.

RELATED: Politics-NZ, Politics-National, Nonsense