REALISM AND COMMONSENSE OR FOOLHARDINESS?
AUTHOR: Peter Dunne
The media often describes me as the “self-appointed” Mr Commonsense of New Zealand politics. (Actually, I have never made that claim for myself. It has always a title commentators have foist upon me.)
Anyway, a couple of events have occurred recently to remind me of this, and the fact that commonsense is never allowed to win, because bravado and foolhardiness are that much more exciting.
First, for over 20 years now we have had expert commentators (dare I call them self-appointed?) calling for the introduction of a capital gains tax in New Zealand. For the same period of time we have had government of all political hues steadfastly rejecting the idea, and clear signs from the public that any government that did bring in such a tax would pay an awful price at the next election.
When the slow summer period and even slower residential property sales gave the argument one of its periodic outings recently, I was minded to draw attention to these facts, and to observe that in the light of that a capital gains tax was most unlikely to ever be introduced and that therefore the notion may as well be forgotten once and for all. That seemed to me to be a realistic and commonsense view, based on our experience of the last 20 years or so.
Yet to the (again self-appointed?) commentators, it was nothing of the sort. It was instead an abdication to political expediency on my part, when what I should have been doing was showing leadership by making the case strongly for such a tax, even though I do not believe in it. It seems like a modern version of the “full steam ahead and damn the torpedoes” approach New Zealanders came to despise during the 1980s and early 1990s, and I would have thought any responsible political leader would be heeding, not ignoring, those lessons.
And then last week there was the argument over whether payments into the so-called Cullen Fund should be suspended because of the economic crisis. Let me be clear: there is provision for the government to do this in times of stress, provided the suspended payments are made good in the future, and a strong economic argument can be made to do so at this time.
Against that is the fact that superannuation remains a volatile issue. By establishing the fund in 2001, Labour recovered some of the ground it lost through the introduction of the surtax in the 1980s. National has yet to make up ground for its cuts to superannuation in the 1990s. Many superannuitants (who would not be affected either way) and their families (who are far more likely to be affected) remain remarkably twitchy and unconvinced that whoever the government is in the future there will not be a reduction in the rate of superannuation payments, and a rise in the age of entitlement. Tinkering with the Cullen Fund now could well be seen as the thin end of the wedge and thus reignite the currently dormant superannuation fires.
The point I made in this debate was given that background, and the bitterness of superannuation politics over the last three decades, no government, particularly a National one, would be silly enough to open up this can of worms all over again. A reasonable comment, I would have thought. But, no. These same commentators decry this as further wimping out on my part.
What they all fail to realise is that leadership is not about telling people in a “like it, or lump it” manner what is going to happen. Big-bang, foolhardy politics may well sell more newspapers and excite the television commentators (surely the most superficial breed of humanity ever) but they rarely succeed. And, most tellingly, the commentariat never have to present themselves for public approbation and assessment the way politicians do every three years.
Rather, real leadership is about working with people, guided by the lessons of history, and the overall constraints of society to make sustainable progress. In a democracy, political leadership, by definition, must always operate within the boundaries of public tolerance. The ultimate reality for any political leader is that every three years they have to face an electorate and be judged on their stewardship. That is as it should and, as a democrat, it is a reality test Mr Commonsense does not forget.