It’s not about left or right - it’s about business

It’s not about left or right. It’s about business, says PEC

“John Key has characterized Labour as having a “road-to-Stalin experience,” over its plan to restrict foreign ownership of assets. It’s another disappointing response from the Prime Minister, in what is becoming a track record of failure to enter debate on the economy. In cynically applying the ultimate in far-left labels to Labour’s shift in policy, Key is doing the country a disservice. This isn’t about ideologies of “left” and “right”, and it’s of greater significance than mere labels can convey. This is about finding policies that will allow our economy and thus our country to get back on track, and about accepting that the past two decades of policy have failed us dismally. Both Labour and National were compliant in creating the problem. It is important that both of them now become part of the solution,” says Productive Economy Council spokesman Selwyn Pellett.

“As someone who presented at the recent Labour Party conference, what I heard was a call for a return to the real economics of designing, manufacturing and selling things, not a desire to embrace outmoded ideologies. The reality here is that Labour’s new policy shift has a significant overlap in objectives with policies promoted by the New Zealand Manufacturers and Exporters Association, BERL, the Productive Economy Council, and the New Zealand Institute. These are organisations whose memberships run businesses which account for well over $3 billion in high value exports. To label this as a jump to the left thus both trivializes a complex issue, and is fundamentally flawed thinking,” says Pellett.

Labour - as any party that aspires to govern should - wants an economy that generates better jobs, with higher salaries. Implicit in that statement is stronger businesses, designing higher value products and exporting them with a supportive rather than destructive policy environment. This, presumably, is what National wants too. If they don’t, you’d have to ask what they are doing in government.

Labour is embracing policies that will support the real economy and reject the excesses of the financial economy that plunged the world into the global financial crisis. John Key is ready to dismiss this as “Stalinism”.

“The Prime Minister and Business NZ head Phil O’Reilly both want us to believe that it is business as usual. But before they convince themselves of that they would do well to read the reports from the IMF on how countries that implemented the kind of policies Labour is now advocating survived the global economic crisis better than those with policies similar to our own. If such policies are a return to old-school socialism, how does John Key explain how we have a massive national debt of over 90% of GDP while these countries have an equally large surplus?” asks Pellett.

It is time for our politicians to stop throwing the old “left” and “right” labels around with regards to economic policy, and start thinking about “right” and “wrong”. The policies we need are those that will allow us to succeed as a tiny nation in the middle of nowhere, and we need to judge such policies on their merits, and not on the throw-away labels politicians hang on them. Right now, the empirical data appears to strongly support Labour’s new found belief in such policies, especially when measured against the failure of the Washington Consensus in serving our economy. If John Key and National truly believe otherwise, then they need to step up, debate the issue, and make their case. They helped create the mess, and we all deserve their full attention in trying to clean it up.

ENDS

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