Fire the "All Talk" NZ Treasury Secretary. Throw Out his Rubbish All Talk "Te Ara Mokopuna 2025 Consultation"

Readers of this Blog have long known about our frustration with Wellington's lack of action by career bureaucrats over practically every important issue facing NZ. The pointless party has continued under National. Take the latest Treasury Report for example. Its called, "Te Ara Mokopuna 2025 Consultation on the Draft Content of the Treasury’s Long-term Insights Briefing: Sustainable & resilient fiscal policy through economic shocks and cycles". With a long-winded title like that, the report is bound to be nonsense, and so it is. What's the point of this 111 page exercise in stupidity? The new Secretary Treasury sums it up when he says, "We hope this Briefing will encourage New Zealanders to talk about whether we are leaving enough in the public purse for future New Zealanders". All talk, no action. The nation is fed up with talking and debating. Its fed up with Finance Minister Willis saying she is "taking advice" on every single issue because she has no plan and no clue about economics and finance. Why is the Treasury Secretary being paid to talk all day? Why was he even hired?

I recommend filing this yet-another-rubbish Treasury Report in your bin. Its a waste of one million $ of taxpayer money. It reads like a First Year Macroeconomics Textbook. Why didn't Finance Minister Willis buy Principles of Economics by Greg Mankiw for $90 rather than ask Treasury to write an imbecilically patronizing version of it? It provides not one solution to the primary underlying question posed by the report, namely how to avoid NZ's long-term fiscal challenges stemming from population ageing. That demographic change is putting rising pressure on our health-care and pensions systems. Are we also, like Treasury, do-nothing hypocrites on this Blog? Are we also just all talk? We long ago provided a costed plan, with a set of Budgets completed by a former Finance Minister out to 2060, which fully balanced the budget, paid down debt, and solved the questions posed by this latest Treasury Report. Our plan provides all Kiwis with a million dollars in their Kiwi Saver accounts by the time they retire, just like Australians are on track to do, whilst lifting our health system to French and Singaporean standards. The latest updated version is forthcoming in NZ Economic Papers.

I remember visiting the Treasury to present the plan, together with Sir Roger Douglas. We were scheduled to meet the then-Treasury Secretary at around 9am. An hour earlier one of his minions called & said the Big Boss Man couldn't make the meeting. So I said we couldn't make it either. Then they called back and said he could make the meeting. The Treasury never cited our article and never gave a damn about coming up with a concrete plan to solve New Zealand's rising debt and deficits. All it does is talk. All it wants us to do is talk. All the new Secretary wants to do is talk. All Willis wants to do is talk and "seek advice".