Gordon Campbell on the Government’s rash of PR debacles, and Bob Marley
Plainly, the wheels are now falling off the government’s attempts to govern by tokenism and PR gimmicks – the nine day
working fortnight, the national cycle way etc etc. Only two firms, as Prime Minister John Key conceded on the weekend,
are currently lined up to participate in the nine day fortnight proposal, and the cost of the cycle way has ballooned
out from a never-credible $50 million to something more like six times that amount.
On RNZ this morning, business commentator Rod Oram gave a pretty good rundown on why the nine day work week was doomed from the outset. The government input was too small (only $20 million!), the
costs to business too high (one executive told Oram they would be paying 9 and half days pay for nine days work), the
training component was non existent and the conditions that the scheme would place on business were far too restrictive,
in that any worker on the scheme could not be fired.
Moreover, the scheme was ill-directed. Manufacturing, as Oram pointed out, was the sector most likely to join the scheme
– but job losses are occurring at the fastest rate in retailing, which was never likely to participate. In every
respect, the scheme is a shambles. A turkey matched only by… drum roll… the national cycle way.
When announced at the job summit in late February, Key claimed the cycle way would cost $50 million, create 3,700 jobs and take two years to build - and the main
benefits would accrue from increased tourism. In recent days, we have learned that only two in a hundred foreign
tourists would be likely to use it, that the $50 million price tag paid only for the surface, and the costs for signage,
bridge laning, land acquisition and related factors would push the cost out to something more like $300 million.
Moreover, tourists would be more likely to use cycle ways built near current tourist destinations than to ride a route
stretching from Cape Reinga to the Bluff.
If you think all that was pretty self-evident from the outset, you’d be dead right. At the time in February there were
sceptics. Here’s how The Standard blog reported on the cycle way back then
How to solve unemployment? Let’s build a $50m cycleway the length of New Zealand! Whoopee! Somehow, we’re going to build
this thing for just $25k per kilometre! Somehow, we’re going to expect that a $50m investment - just $12 per New
Zealander - is just the boost that this country needs to arrest the slide towards high unemployment levels and a deeper
recession! And over the two-year course of this project, if the workers received the entirety of the $50m in their
pockets, they’d get paid $6756 per annum for all their hard work and toil! Oh, how in ten years time we’re going to be
swimming in gold coins like Uncle Scrooge, crying ‘Mercy, it was that blessed cycleway that was the turning point!’
The $50 million price tag - let alone the basic concept - was always ridiculous. Back in 2007, Transit had reportedly done a feasibility study on what it would cost to create a walk and cycle way over the Auckland
Harbour Bridge, comparable to the one on Sydney Harbour Bridge. The likely cost for this small segment alone of any
national cycle way ? $35 to $40 million, and that was back in 2007.
Off With Their Heads
As the emptiness of the government’s plans to cope with the global recession become obvious, a tonal shift is also
occurring in how it does its business. A certain shrillness is becoming evident. When mistakes happen, heads will roll.
Why, any bureaucrat in Wellington these days can open their window and hear the sound of the tumbrils rattling over the
cobblestones on the Terrace. I know this is supposed to put the fear of God into the error-prone – and show the public
this government means business ! – but somehow, Judith Collins just makes me think of Alice in Wonderland, and the mad
Queen of Hearts. Remember her ? “The Queen had only one way of settling all difficulties, great or small. ”Off with his
head !’ she said, without looking around.”
In fact, few people actually get beheaded in Wonderland. ‘Its all her fancy,’ says the Gryphon, aka Simon Power. ‘They
never executes nobody, you know.’ And lo, Corrections boss Barry Matthews keeps his job. IMHO, I don’t think the
government is reading the public’s mood at all well on this one. To take another example : yes. the errors by the
Housing Department and by the Police in the past week were bad, but did they deserve to lead the news, night after night
?
People make mistakes – they try not to, but they do. The strident calls for sacrificial victims just look spiteful, and
ridiculous. More heads will roll at ACC, says ACC Minister Nick Smith – who has just bungled the sacking of ACC board
chairman, Ross Wilson, and made a pillock of himself in front of the transport and industrial relations select committee. Needless to say, it undermines Key’s Nice Guy
image when his lieutenants are baying for blood.
Corrections Minister Judith Collins and Social Development Minister Paula Bennett pose an additional image problem for
the government. For a party that made a meal out of gender stereotypes about Helen Clark – Helengrad, the nanny state
etc etc – this pair are doing National no favours at the petulant and shrill end of the spectrum. The dreadful
performance so far by Collins, Bennett and Education Minister Anne Tolley only underline how much the National party has
lost with the exit of Katherine Rich – who could project unruffled competence, and transcend gender stereotypes by hard
work and knowing how to do her job.
In her absence, the insecure likes of Bennett are running their portfolios mainly on hot air and posturing. As, again, The Standard has pointed out, the clip of Bennett on RNZ last week denouncing Labour MP Claire Curran for handing out a pamphlet –
with actual ideas in it! - at the Otago regional jobs forum is a genuine classic of the genre.
Heaven forbid that at a forum intended to canvass ideas on how save jobs, anyone should dare to hand out background
information on how one of those ideas might work in practice. Bennett’s rationale was that the public threw out Labout
at the last election, and so no one wants to hear their ideas now. So much for eliciting ideas, so much for
inclusiveness, so much for all of us being in the same boat together.
If we are in the same boat, a lot of us are traveling in steerage. In that respect, one of the biggest danger signs has
been the rumblings of criticism over Key’s latest PR stunt – that people who get their tax cuts on April 1st should
think about donating them to help the less fortunate. In his speech to the Philanthropic Foundation, Key expressed the
hope that an “American style’ culture of giving might come to flourish in this country.
It was a pretty incredible statement. Essentially, Key was 'fessing up to the fact that the design of National’s tax
cuts would benefit – as his critics alleged all along – those who have plenty, at the expense of those who have very
little and who, on April 1st will get nothing at all from National’s tax cuts. On the weekend, the NZ Herald, to its credit, let Key have it with both barrels:
The [tax] cuts now look simultaneously like a luxury the country can't afford and a lifeline that hard-pressed middle
New Zealand can't do without. The Government tried to put a brave face on it by spinning the cuts as a fiscal stimulus,
hinting that we all had a patriot duty to run out and spend the extra money to stimulate economic activity. It was a
good try, but it just made the PM look out of touch: if he didn't know that the vast majority of households already have
the money earmarked - for luxuries like new tyres, clothes for the kids or repairing the lawnmower - somebody should
have told him.
It is understandable that Key, in his speech to Philanthropy New Zealand would want to depict the tax cuts as an
opportunity for the better-off to act on their better instincts…. But he still has some gall to make the plea. He knew
when the Nats designed their tax-cut programme that it was criticised for unduly favouring the well-off and effectively
increasing the tax burden on those at the bottom of the income ladder. For him now to turn to those who did not need,
deserve or ask for a tax cut and suggest that they give it away looks suspiciously like an attempt to have someone else
cover up his blunder. It is not up to the beneficiaries of ill-conceived policies to mitigate their effects on the
socially vulnerable; it is the responsibility of Government to target economic and fiscal policy correctly in the first
place.
When even the Herald can be so trenchant about tax cuts, which are the National’s raison d’etre, then the wheels are
indeed wobbling. And remember, this government is still not even six months into the job.
Bob Marley Inc.
And how, you are probably wondering, is Bob Marley bearing up in the global recession ? Pretty darn well actually.
The rights to Bob Marley’s image have just been leased out to a Toronto firm called Hilco Consumer Capital, a firm that
specialises in buying up the intellectual property rights to well known but defunct retail brands and then selling them
exclusively to retailers. Bob Marley joins their roster alongside Linens and Things, Bombay Home Furnishings and
Polaroid as a dead but still profitable brand.
Hey, Hilco were going for the Beatles, Supertramp and Pink Floyd - and last year it pursued a deal to license Jimi
Hendrix, but the talks went nowhere. “Hendrix would have been great, but Bob Marley is way better,” a company
spokesperson said. “He stands for peace, love and redemption. With everything going on in the world, it just makes a lot
of sense.” The deal will see Hilco step up the merchandising of Marley on everything from footwear to video games.
The Marley family have essentially hired Hilco to be their revenue sheriff. As happened with Elvis Presley, the target
will be anyone trafficking in the non-licensed use of Marley’s image. You want to put his image on a t-shirt or a poster
or a lunchbox ? From now on, you will have to deal with Hilco, or Hilco will deal to you. One love, mon. And as the
Marley family have demonstrated more than once before, that love is money.
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