Forum Archive Index - December 1999

["hugh webber" <hugh.webber@clear.net.nz>]

my impression of the action so far is that this gov't is considerably more
left wing than the Tony Blair British government. On the positive side you
have Cullen coming to an arrangement with the Reserve Bank which doesn't
really seem to have disturbed RB functioning and the apparent dropping of
an anti free trade stance but some of the other stuff fills me with
trepidation. Statements that free markets cannot be used to get the results
they (Labour want) want; no more SOE & floats, raising the minimum wage at
the expense of jobs, and a belief that they can invest money better than
anyone else can e.g. new super money (Muldoon would be having them for
breakfast over that but no reaction yet from the Opposition) and in R & D.
Surely the quality of the investment counts a lot more than the size, how
much extra exports do more state houses produce?
But the one who really gives me the willies is Laila Harre who apparently
is seen as the next Alliance leader. She said her first priority was to get
stuck into Telecom. She's the Associate Commerce Minister with a totally
irrelevant degree and obviously doesn't have a clue. Here's Telecom now an
NZ coy again, or close to it, a large part of many NZers retirement savings
whether they know it or not, on the wave of future technology to make NZ
more competitive and she wants to attack it. Can't she see the hypocrisy of
Clear (British Telecom) and Telstra in attacking Telecom for operating in
the same way as they do in their own home markets?

But as someone said, I guess this is getting a bit political, batten down
the hatches for 3 years. The only consolation is that with rapid
globalisation its getting harder and harder for any domestic government to
take us out of the international mainstream.

I was going to go mostly offshore but thought we might get a Tony Blair
type gov't so am only about a quarter diversified overseas. Ouch.


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