David Parker has been smacked down by Associate Finance Minister Steven Joyce. In a presser headed Parker wrong nine times in one interview Joyce notes:
The Labour Party's attempts to talk down New Zealand's economic performance have hit a new low this weekend with David Parker making at least nine factually incorrect statements in one short interview, Associate Finance Minister Steven Joyce says.
In the interview, with TV3's The Nation programme, Parker made assertions about low export prices, a poor balance of trade, job losses in the export sector, New Zealand’s current account deficit, high interest rates, a lack of business investment, 40 per cent house price increases, no tax on housing speculators, and low levels of house building.
Mr Joyce says all of Mr Parker’s assertions in relation to these nine things are incorrect.
“This is an appalling number of errors for someone who would seek to run New Zealand's economy. This number of errors surely can't have been made by accident,” Mr Joyce says.
“Mr Parker's attempts to describe the New Zealand economy sound much more like the situation this government inherited from Labour in 2008 than anything we are seeing in 2014.
“He must have been thinking of 2008 when he talked of ridiculously high interest rates, a poor balance of trade, and the poor performance of the export sector. All were pretty sick back then and all are in much better shape today as a result of this government's careful stewardship of the economy.”
Mr Joyce says there are two possible conclusions. “Either Labour is deliberately fudging the facts to fabricate the need for their radical economic policy prescription, or they have truly woken up in 2014 for the election without observing anything that has happened in the last five years. The latter would at least fit their regular denials of the impacts of the GFC and the Canterbury earthquakes.
“New Zealanders know that this country today is doing better than most other developed countries, and in 2008 we were doing worse than most, in fact entering our own recession before the Global Financial Crisis,” Mr Joyce says.
“It might be an idea for Labour to look at the steady improvements that are occurring in the New Zealand economy before they start trying to write up their policy ideas.”
We're not quite sure which is worse; that the man who wants to be New Zealand's next Finance Minister is so ill-informed, or that Labour is prepared to tell such extravagant falsehoods in order to get some media coverage.
And equally galling is the fact that no one from the media seems to have picked up on Parker's mis-speaking, and that his comments have been generally reported as fact. That does not reflect well on a supposed informed, non-partisan news media.
You can read Steven Joyce's detailed error-by-error critique of the David Parker interview at the link above. We can only speculate that the reason David Parker wants "one big new tool" to tinker with the Reserve Bank Act is because Labour hasn't got a clue how to use the tools already at its disposal.
The ineptitude of Mr Parker and his party does little to give anyone confidence that they could successfully manage a piss-up in a brewery, let alone an entire economy.
