Is this man Clark Kent?

John Key
John Key
It's going to be a long year - deciphering policy from the promises and the public relations. And, on Monday, John Key demonstrated just why.

In a speech in Auckland, he told his undoubtedly delighted listeners that he and National were going to slash yet another wasteful Labour bureaucratic conspiracy, the one that contrives to rob the taxpayer in the name of sport and force-feed a group of elite Wellington fat cats until their engorged, goosey, big city, fois gras livers are fit to burst.

Call me jaundiced, but he has obviously taken note of that incisive Reader's Digest Most Trusted survey alluded to last week and hit upon the brilliant idea of associating himself - a politician and almost by definition among the least trusted - with sport, from whose ranks overwhelmingly emerge our most upright citizens.

He is going to bank some goodwill by helping out the poor, underfunded grassroots sports organisations and schools.

And, like a latter-day Robin Hood, he is going to do that by ambushing that ne'er-do-well, self-important and hopelessly wasteful government-funded outfit called Sparc.

According to Mr Key, $35 million of its budget "never makes it outside the Wellington head office".

That is to say, 35 million taxpayer dollars destined for sports organisations countrywide is eaten up by the organisation on its own programmes, including the employment of those aforementioned bureaucrats.

For its part, Sparc says that, for the 2007-08 year, its total internal costs amount to about $12.5 million, which is about 12% of its total budget.

Although a little bashful on exactly how he is going to turn this tide of obscene waste, Mr Key - the man who promises to spend $1.5 billion on fibre optic broadband connectivity so that we can become a truly wired nation - is going to begin by stripping out the largesse spent on things like the Sparc website.

This, he tells us, is costing the organisation $11.5 million between 2006 and 2010 and, if redistributed, would amount to $6000 worth of sports equipment for every primary school in the country. Is this man Clark Kent in disguise, or what?We all hate bureaucracy and waste.

It's just the sort of thing that would top the list of any focus group's pet hates if its members were quizzed a little.

"And what do you most dislike about central government . . . The bureaucracy?" You don't say!

"So, John-Boy, here's what we here at Fibbs, Lye and Associates suggest.

"Hammer the word 'bureaucracy'; thread the concept into your major speeches.

"Paint it on the Government's faces like a target. Never let a chance go by.

"But hit and run, baby. Don't hang around to discuss the finer points.

"People might click that this is just a hearts-and-minds number.

"Bail out. That's the beauty of it.

"And if you do it often enough so that it begins to echo in the periphery of people's brains, at the next mention it will be right there.

"Ready and willing at the merest prompt - like a darned jack-in-the-box."

It's been a bit like that with bigger tax cuts.

Repeat it like a mantra but don't allow yourself to get trapped into a meaningful conversation about what disappears to fund them: what portion of education, health, or sport in schools?Because government spending is the equal other side of the taxation equation.

To increase tax cuts, you have to cut spending, and unless you are predicting a sudden and rapid growth in the size of the economy - which everybody is decidedly not doing - it can't happen without that.

I recently read an article by an economist who produced some interesting figures to contradict one of the political truths we are taught to live by - that the Labour-led Government has been one of reckless and wasteful big spending.

(Although when convenient that has been known to alternate with the opposite position: that Dr Michael Cullen is an incorrigible Scrooge who hoards the taxpayer's money for his own devious ends.)

In a recent Listener column, the economist Brian Easton pointed out that "relative to the size of the economy, Michael Cullen is spending about $250 million a year less than National did in the 1990s".

And, at the same time, he and his Government have been able to give tax cuts, the Working for Families package, superannuation improvements, "concessions on student loans" and, incidentally, to increase non Lotteries Commission funding to sports bodies from about $2.5 million annually in 1999 to about $70 million in 2007-08.

Strange, but apparently true.

It's going to be a long year.

Simon Cunliffe is assistant editor at the Otago Daily Times.

 

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