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The Soap Box: National hits out at government working groups

Author
Barry Soper,
Publish Date
Wed, 29 Aug 2018, 6:19AM
They will now have to add the Business Advisory Council to their list. It's Jacinda Ardern's answer to what she says has been the elephant in the room, a lack of business confidence in her Government. Photo \ NZ Herald
They will now have to add the Business Advisory Council to their list. It's Jacinda Ardern's answer to what she says has been the elephant in the room, a lack of business confidence in her Government. Photo \ NZ Herald

The Soap Box: National hits out at government working groups

Author
Barry Soper,
Publish Date
Wed, 29 Aug 2018, 6:19AM

The National Party's running a slick twitter feed at the moment, speeding through 152 titles in 25 seconds ending with a bill of $170 million and telling the viewer it's money that should have been spent on health and education.

The titles belong to the working groups, reviews, inquiries and councils the Government's appointed since coming to office, and even though some of them are questionable and the cost of them is debatable, there have been a lot of them.

National tells us they've been set up because the Beehive drones are all at sea, they don't know where they're going and they're presided over by the Queen bee who lacks a sting.

They will now have to add the Business Advisory Council to their list. It's Jacinda Ardern's answer to what she says has been the elephant in the room, a lack of business confidence in her Government.

Well, when she turned up to breakfast with business boffins in Auckland the elephant was spectacularly shown the door, with her declaring the lack of confidence was "a flashing great neon sign with giant lights and fireworks going off behind it." She wants to talk about it and to that end, she did what this Government's become expert at, setting up a group to address it and tell her where things are going wrong.

And running true to form she's appointed the chairman but no-one else at this stage.

At least one business leader wasn't impressed, saying the chair, Air New Zealand boss Chris Luxon's effectively running a Government monopoly and has a conflict of interest. Yeah well, Luxon's no slug, a few weeks ago announcing his company's second-biggest profit ever and it's not as though he's crawled out from the garden patch. He came back to the country after running Unilever in Canada and has held other business roles around the world. So he's well suited to the job.

It seems that some businesses will never give this Government the benefit of the doubt but that's not to say the Beehive's innocent of creating the doubt in the first place. To lessen that Ardern offered an olive branch, saying their controversial collective bargaining for industry-wide Fair Pay Agreements will be limited to just two low paid industries during this term of Government.

That was always likely to be the case anyway, considering by the time born again Jim Bolger's working group reports back to the Beehive and legislation's in place, the election will be looming.

But with all the advice this Government is now waiting on with its plethora of experts in place, by this time next year it will be so well informed that surely we can all expect to finally have confidence in where it's heading.

If we don't then at the next election the flashing great neon sign with giant lights and fireworks will likely read: National.

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