I know I'm not the only one not planning to vote on the basis of direct and material self-interest in September, but it sometimes seems that way. Labour's student loans king-hit certainly had a flurry of current and former students urgently totting up what was in it for them (I understand the online calculator got 60,000 hits in the first three or four hours). But no doubt I'd feel the same if I had a $50,000 loan growing hourly while I tried to work out what to do about it.
I don't have a student loan; indeed, I wasn't a student. But Labour's announcement seems to me to not only be clever politics but a solution to a problem that has weighed heavily not only on former and current students but on their parents and grandparents. It also has the effect of encouraging skilled graduates to stay and work here, and it's only a few months since we were agonising over that as a serious problem.
It has certainly been amusing to suddenly see Labour tossing out the lollies and National complaining that it is "irresponsible". National has a valid point in saying that it plans to give tax cuts to all New Zealanders while Labour is offering its deal to just one (admittedly large) group. But it's on dangerous ground suggesting that students (and their families) should be added to the ranks of non-mainstream New Zealanders.
The idea that students will now go hog-wild with their interest-free loans is harder to sustain. They've been spared interest charges during the course of their study since 2002 without any apparent wave of abuse of the free money. And it's also no longer possible to simply borrow a big pile of money and run off; loans are doled out weekly. You'd have to be a pretty dedicated scammer to work that system.
The Herald editorial has a fit of conniptions today over Labour's "desperate" move, on the basis that it might "pressure" National to now offer imprudently large tax cuts to win back the initiative (so Labour is now responsible for National's policies too?).
Digging deep into the editorial thesaurus, it declares this "cynical … irresponsible … scornful" policy to be "out of tune with six worthy years of fiscal rectitude," as summed up in Michael Cullen's last Budget.
Amazingly, this is the same editorial column that actually greeted Cullen's Budget by asking whether "prudence is being taken to extreme" and urged "a little less caution". I mean, huh?
The Herald was, of course, plumping for tax cuts in May, and the student loan policy is not actually a tax cut, and won't drain the public offers to anything like the same extent - but, for those involved, that is precisely how it manifests. It's IRD that takes the money, after all - and an effective marginal tax rate is just that. And in that sense, the new policy is entirely in line with Cullen's philosophy: that tax relief is not an end in itself, but an instrument of policy.
Where the Herald is correct is in seeing a looming electoral bidding war. I think that's the story of this election: stewardship has taken a back seat to self-interest, and that seems to me to be quite a pivotal change. But to suggest that it only became the case on Tuesday of this week is just naïve.
Can I just say: celebrity drug scandal! Kingpin! 55 year-old company director! Lana! Josh! (I'm allowed to say their names, as it turns out.) Thanks! Because this whole thing has been really good for traffic. Whether it's links from biggie.co.nz or nzrave.com, or search engine visits (if I told you what was in the logs, I'd be breaching the suppression order) it's been booming. Our weekday traffic is normally around 3500 visits. Last Thursday it was 6367. Our weekend traffic is usually around 2000 visits. On Saturday, it was 3602. We haven't had a weekday under 4000 since.
There's nothing like a bit of gossip, is there? So do, please, point your family and friends to David's post yesterday about his celebrity magazine cover generator.
Brian Rudman says pretty much what I would have said about National's proposal to knacker the Resource Management Act.
OneGoodMove has video of a Daily Show interview with Fareed Zakaria, the editor of the international edition of Newsweek on the topic of Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism. You might take issue with some of what he says (and some of the commenters on the blog certainly do), but it's a useful perspective on the issues.
Public Address alumnus Rob O'Neill (we still keep his farewell post around for old times' sake) is back on the blog with a brilliant idea: The New Zealand Blogging Corporation. Some readers may recognise the logo. Solid lineup too: Rob is joined by Chris Bell, Mark Broatch and Stephen Stratford.
Thanks to Robyn Gallagher for the link to this story from inside Australia's much-vaunted work for the dole scheme. It's funny. Sort of.
And finally, thanks for all the feedback on the Electoral Commission ad. Your views have been passed on and we have been promised a calmed-down version of the ad. In the meantime, Tze Ming's Post-It note solution might do the trick for you …