Fran O'Sullivan has just ruined the PM's weekend. Her column in today's NZ Herald is worth reading from several perspectives, but the bits we like the best relate to Fran's reaction to the PM's speech on Wednesday. Like The Hive Fran appears to have been disappointed by the PM's attempts to look to the past to find blame for current problems.
Prime Minister Helen Clark's attempt to take the wind from John Key's election sails, by claiming today's young violent criminals are the children of "the mother of all budgets", betrays an element of desperation.
Toss in Police Minister Annette King's claim that the hot summer and full moon have contributed to a mad January in South Auckland and you would have to wonder when Nicky Hager will get around to penning a sequel to The Hollow Men.
If the spate of summer madness afflicting the Beehive continues, The Hollow Women promises to be a pre-election best-seller.
But Fran goes further. She reminds us why the Bolger Government had to introduce the mother of all budgets, and it is this, rather than coining "The Hollow Women" phrase that we are sure will hang around to haunt for the rest of the year, that will really worry Helen:
Clark's not on solid ground when it comes to hidden agendas. As deputy Prime Minister and Labour's key strategist at the 1990 election she helped perpetrate the big lie of that campaign.
In 1990, New Zealand was teetering towards economic recession. But the Labour Cabinet kept claiming right up to election day that the Government's accounts were in surplus.
National Prime Minister Jim Bolger's plans for a decent society were scuppered when he was confronted by officials just one day after the election with news of a serious fiscal crisis that they had kept secret under Labour's orders.
The Bank of New Zealand was about to go belly-up, something senior Labour ministers had known about for weeks, and the Treasury was forecasting a $3.7 billion deficit for the 1991/92 year which would blow out to a $5.2 billion deficit by 1993/94 unless drastic actions were taken.
Bolger's Cabinet had to cut costs to avert a major credit rating downgrade for New Zealand.
These are the conditions that led to the mother of all budgets.
But beneficiaries were not the only ones to feel pain.
New Zealand businesses folded as the recession bit and many Kiwis lost their jobs and were forced into major reductions in their living standards. It was a horrible time because the country was broke.
I'm sure we would rather have been prepared for the hard times ahead by a truthful Government instead of being conned by the snow-job perpetrated by Clark and her senior colleagues at the 1990 election.
We should all be reflecting on the Clark of 1990 and the Clark of 2008. Read her speech again. Are her assurances about the health of the New Zealand economy, the strength of business confidence ringing true for you? They aren't here at The Hive. Add in the uncertainties created by a climate change policy response that hasn't been properly analysed or costed, and Clark could be about to bequeath problems of even great order than those that Bolger inherited.
