0 Joyce fisks Labour's sums

David Cunliffe's desire for a positive run-up to the General Election hasn't begun very well. Associate Finance Minister Steven Joyce has been checking the numbers on Labour's education policies from the weekend, and he's positive; positive that Labour has got its sums wrong. He's put out this presser on the Beehive website:

Steven Joyce

7 July, 2014

Many questions unanswered about cost of Labour’s promises


Two and a half months out from this year’s election and already Labour cannot answer basic questions about the details and fiscal costs of its expensive early promises, Associate Finance Minister Steven Joyce says.
“David Cunliffe, David Parker and Chris Hipkins had a ‘hey Clint’ moment on TV last night, when all three of them failed to answer a simple question about the total cost of their grab-bag of education announcements,” Mr Joyce says.
“Labour has rejected having a Treasury analyst in its office, and it really is showing.”
Talking to media yesterday after announcing it would spend $403 million over four years to employ more teachers, neither David Cunliffe, nor David Parker nor Chris Hipkins could do the simple maths on how much their other promises would cost.
“That’s because their numbers don’t add up and their claims are misleading,” Mr Joyce says.
“For a start, the Government currently funds secondary schools for an average 20 students per classroom, well below Labour’s ‘new’ target of 23 students per classroom.
“When it comes to their costings, Labour’s figures include only the cost of the extra teachers’ salaries. They need to come clean on what the total costs would be including ACC, training, support  superannuation, and all the other overheads involved in supporting more teachers.”

Oh dear; Labour releases a flagship policy at its flagship election year congress, but fails on numeracy. Is it any wonder they want to do away with National Standards?

Steven Joyce continues:

Mr Joyce says this is not the first time in recent days that Labour has undercooked its costings and exaggerated its promises to New Zealanders.
“Last week their press release clearly said they were going to end voluntary school donations – yet they put up only half the money needed to cover existing donations and none of the school activity fees parents pay.
“And on Saturday they claimed they would provide every student between years five and 13 with a digital device worth $600 by providing a $100 subsidy and having parents pay $3.50 a week for 18 months. This will be news to Labour, but this adds up to only $373 per device.
“And just to top it all off, David Cunliffe yesterday confirmed he would look at buying back shares in mixed ownership model companies – even though he’s committed to spend all the money raised by the share offer programme and then some.
“After nearly six years in opposition, Labour has learned nothing about responsible economic and fiscal management. They really do need to start showing New Zealanders the money,” Mr Joyce says. “Labour 2014 is already starting to look a lot like the 2011 version, only trickier.”

It's pretty obvious now why Labour let its secondee from Treasury go. There's no way that dodgy numbers like these would have seen the light of day had they been subjected to proper, independent scrutiny. 

There are 2539 schools in New Zealand as at July 2013, according to the Education Counts website. So 2000 new teachers equates to an average of just 0.78 teachers per school across the country. Mr Cunliffe has already conceded they won't all be "new" teachers. He told Newstalk ZB this morning that immigrants and retired teachers would be used to fill the gaps until the flood of new graduates hit the market by 2018.

Labour's numbers in 2011 were exposed as highly dodgy, and they were punished at the polls. It doesn't look as though the party has learned anything in its second three year term in the wilderness of opposition.

Rather than apologising for being a man, David Cunliffe should be apologising to the New Zealand public for once again trying to dupe them with dodgy numbers. He may want to fight an election campaign on policy, and free from personal attacks, but he has a responsibility to front up with credible numbers, not Helen Clark's infamous back of a table napkin calculations.

0 Finlayson on "financial illiteracy"

Jacinda Ardern is widely regarded as a future leader of the Labour Party. But she's been sent back to school by Arts, Culture and Heritage Minister Christopher Finlayson.

Ms Ardern has been critical of apparent reductions in arts funding in the Budget, and has repeated her criticisms despite them having been proved to be false. So Finlayson sent out a very terse presser yesterday; here 'tis:

Christopher Finlayson

23 May, 2014

Labour once again shows its financial illiteracy

Jacinda Ardern has yet again shown why New Zealanders do not trust the Labour Party even to read a Budget correctly, let alone write one, Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage Christopher Finlayson said today.
Ms Ardern has made numerous incorrect statements about arts funding in Budget 2014, despite these errors being repeatedly pointed out in Parliament and online.
“The supposed ‘cut’ to public broadcasting claimed by Ms Ardern reflects the fact that last year $4.5 million was spent on the Going Digital project, helping the switch over to digital television,” Mr Finlayson said. “That spending is not in the budget this year, because, well, we have Gone Digital.”
“We have in fact allocated extra funding within public broadcasting on new projects, including the maintenance of the TVNZ archives.”
“There is no reduction in heritage spending, as she has claimed. What may have confused Ms Ardern is that heritage now appears in two appropriations, one of which is earmarked for World War One centenary commemorations, a key heritage project. The total is slightly higher than last year.”
“In future, perhaps she should read further down the page before firing off indignant press releases.”

Mr Finlayson is regarded as one of Parliament's best debaters. He also writes a pretty good presser. And he goes on to remind those receiving his media release that Labour is vulnerable over another arts issue; the film industry:

“Funding for regional museums has been maintained throughout the two terms of this government, and remains at its baseline funding of $6.67 million per year," Mr Finlayson said. "However, last year the appropriation was higher because unspent funds from the previous year had been carried over. This is spelled out in the Supplementary Estimates of Appropriations.”
"This government has revitalised the screen industry, a point she obscures. We saved the production of the Hobbit trilogy in New Zealand from the unions, and have ensured that not only will three Avatar sequels be filmed here but that the production will employ New Zealanders in key roles."
"This is quite aside from the important recent structural reform of the Arts Council and Heritage New Zealand (formerly the Historic Places Trust), which were ignored by the previous government."

Readers will remember Labour being labelled Hobbit-haters; a reference they fully deserve. In siding with the trade unions representing actors, Labour was complicit in the making of the movies almost not happening in New Zealand.

Readers may also remember the hypocrisy that followed, best illustrated in this photograph of Grant Robertson and Ms Ardern basking in the glory of a walk along the red carpet at the Hobbit premiere in Wellington.

Hobbit-hating is bad enough. Repeatedly making accusations that arts funding has been cut when it hasn't, and when the accuser has repeatedly been told she is wrong is even worse. Mr Finlayson has a final word for Jacinda Ardern:

"National politics is not high school,” Mr Finlayson said. “Jacinda Ardern shouldn't think professing to care about the arts means she can opt out of  maths."

Quite so Mr Finlayson. Maybe the Labour Party needs to admit another mistake, and get back the Treasury assignee to scrutinise their media statements and policies, and to help Labour MP's to understand the Budget. There have been so many gaffes from Labour this year alone that any numbers or dollar figures that the party presents must be taken with a truckload of salt.

Jacinda Ardern is clearly an advocate for the old adage to never let the facts get in the way of a good story. She will have to do better than this is her early promise is to be realised.

0 Show us the money Mr Cunliffe

Phil Goff's credibility as Labour leader was blown apart in the "Show me the money" debate in Christchurch in 2011. Here's a reminder in case you've forgotten:

Now, three years later, David Cunliffe is leaving himself and Labour wide open to similar "Show me the money" taunts from John Key and his MP's; 3News reports:

Labour says New Zealanders can have confidence it's getting its numbers right despite dumping a Treasury staff member from their position in the leader's office.

Radio Live revealed a long-standing Treasury secondment has been terminated after a dispute over who should pay their salary.

This now leaves Labour with no independent number-cruncher, but leader David Cunliffe says his office has a strong policy team.

"We have very high grade, quantitative analysis and economic modelling skills in our office," says Mr Cunliffe. "The team is led by the Honourable David Parker, who has my absolute confidence."

Economic Development Minister Steven Joyce says many of Labour's policies don not add up and he is not surprised to hear there has been no input from Treasury.

What has happened here is that Labour has effectively sacked the seconded staff from Treasury, in favour of compiling its own numbers and costing its own policies. In some places that would be called creative accounting.

Pardon our naivety, but we would have thought that having policies independently costed would have been a strong selling point. Instead Labour is going to rely on its own numbers straight from the War Room, and free from any skerrick of independent scrutiny. We can see that working; not!

We reckon that the Two Davids are setting themselves up to fail. But hey; who are we to stop them?

FOOTNOTE: For those readers who aren't familiar with the origins of the "Show me the money" line, check out this video clip which is probably NSFW (not suitable for work); unless you work in Labour's War Room!

0 Parker's cock-up, or What a difference a sentence makes

David Parker is Labour's Finance spokesman. In a future Labour-led coalition government, he would certainly have a key finance role.

So it's no surprise that he's commented on the improving Treasury figures released this morning. Here's his presser (and pay attention to the time it was sent)

Lower tax take leaves Govt revenue $829m down

Friday, 9 May 2014, 12:06 pm
Press Release: New Zealand Labour Party

Lower tax take leaves Govt revenue $829m down

Falling tax revenue has left the Government‘s revenue $829 million lower than forecast, Labour’s Finance spokesperson David Parker says.
“For the fifth month in a row, the Government’s accounts have undershot expectations with tax revenue $829 million below forecast.
“Bill English claims the benefits of the economic growth are being shared fairly. If that were the case, tax revenue would not be short of his projections.
“The books have now been worse than predicted in November, December, January, February and now March.
“It will be interesting to see what effect this has on the Finance Minister’s wafer-thin micro surplus for 2014/15 that he will announce in next Thursday’s Budget.
“The Household Labour Force Survey released this week shows wages are stagnating and unemployment remains stubbornly high.
“Bill English is busy claiming workers can expect significant wage increases but if their pay was growing, the Government’s tax take would not be so short of its target.
“National’s lack of vision for the economy has been shown up by these continuing shortfalls.
“Labour’s economic upgrade will support better jobs and higher incomes,” David Parker says.

There's just one problem for Mr Parker; it's an edited version of a presser which he'd sent out just before we went out for lunch, which fortunately for us (and unfortunately for Mr Parker) was still sitting on our browser.

So let's play Spot the Difference:

OK; we've made it easy for you with the highlighting. But whereas Mr Parker was bemoaning Government spending being $423 million above forecast, he must have missed the minus sign in the Treasury documents.

Yes Dear Readers. As Bill English has noted, Government expenditure for the nine months to 31 March 2014 was $423 million LESS THAN forecast, not more than. That's an $846 million miscalculation from Labour's Finance spokesman and deputy leader.

Mr Parker may have hoped to correct his error without anyone noticing as the week drew to a close, but he has been sprung. We dread to think what might happen if he and Dr Norman got their hands on the Reserve Bank Act. Do we really want the country's finances being overseen by someone who fails at basic arithmetic?