During this election the media has been sucked into the idea that the most important issue around policies for governing our country is whether they have been credibly costed.
There are endless questions around such topics as whether wealthy Chinese buying homes in New Zealand will bring in enough money to fund tax cuts.
There is less discussion around whether rich New Zealanders will respond to the Green’s proposed wealth tax by shifting their wealth to foreign climes.
It may be that the media are entranced by the idea that somehow someone else than us will pay for all our communal hopes and dreams, from healthcare and education to saving the planet.
But there are other more important considerations than raw costs of promises.
Of crucial importance is what is being achieved.
The spending of the money is not an end in itself.
The questions can more usefully be asked around what the government expects to achieve and when might we start seeing results.
In some instances spending money can be expected to achieve little, since the job will only partially be achieved.
This may be where the wilding pine eradication programme finds itself.
There is absolutely no necessary connection between money spent and results achieved. Nor between employing more staff and services being enhanced.
Neither are services necessarily reduced because money ceases being spent.
When/if the Dunedin hospital is finally commissioned, we might expect that those who built it have finished their task.
Whatever they move on to, it would be silly to suggest not continuing to spend money on their wages is somehow a failure once the project is done.
Employing more teachers may help the woeful educational outcomes we are currently achieving.
Then again it may not. If the government gets the right advice, and takes it, it will spend education money on better outcomes.
But the amount of money spent will not be what should help us decide on who should be spending our money.
It is whether it is well spent that matters.
Another concern is around a lack of geographical equity.
No government says in a press release that it proposes spending which will be inequitable, since it depends where you live whether you will benefit.
This is obvious in health at the moment, where the government could put billions of dollars more into health with none of it spent in Otago.
Millions extra has been spent in the museum funding stream, but it appears to be being spent at Te Papa, not anywhere near here.
When policies are costed, no mention is made of flow-on effects for the government.
For example, if there is a policy that we pretend that we can support mentally unwell people in the community, the amount costed is the cost of mental health hospital services, not the total cost of picking up the pieces when it goes wrong.
The cost of keeping someone in prison is costed, but not the costs of failing to resource services for rehabilitation and support to reduce reoffending.
Policies are not necessarily costed with an eye on whether they are benefiting those they intend to benefit.
New electric car rebates, for example, are most likely to benefit the better-off people in New Zealand, who currently also get the benefit of not needing to pay for the roads and whatever else Transit New Zealand is doing with our petroleum taxes.
There is also no taking account of the cost to an ordinary New Zealander of the choices being made.
For example, there are possible costs of free prescriptions, but no-one is looking at whether it would be cheaper for households if chronic prescription users could have a six-month prescription, rather than having to clog up the general practitioners’ clinics or pay the cost of repeat prescription arrangements when six monthly will do.
In Dunedin, the cost to each citizen of driving around in circles in the central city to get anywhere does not turn up in the financial plans of spending ratepayers’ money.
The government can borrow money to balance the books, and it can print more money.
More borrowing is more money spent by us to be repaid by our children and grandchildren.
Printing money has effects on inflation.
In short, we need to focus on what we want them to achieve with the money they take from us and the value it has.
We need to think about whether policies favour those who are less able to fend for themselves and do not favour people for where they live or where they came from.
We need to know whether policies are likely to have the effect they are intended to have, thinking of the effect on our personal lives as well.
And whether there would be a better way.
Let us not let them away with just scrapping about whether their plans have been costed properly.
- Hilary Calvert is a former Otago regional councillor, MP and DCC councillor.
