Year: 2018

Why are we gifting so much to farmers?

Michael Reddell Uncategorized

Despite announcing yesterday a plan that aims to eradicate mycoplasma bovis from New Zealand, there was no sign of the pro-active release of any background papers or analysis.   We don’t have copies of the relevant Cabinet papers, or the relevant advice from The Treasury or MPI.    Not that long ago, the incoming government talked of its commitment to open government, and now it plans to spend hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money –  without, it appears, any additional legislation – without giving us, up front, any of the relevant papers.

Here is the extract from the Minister’s statement yesterday

The full cost of phased eradication over 10 years is projected at $886 million. Of this, $16 million is loss of production and is borne by farmers and $870 million is the cost of the response (including compensation to farmers). We expect to do most of the eradication work in 1-2 years.

Government will meet 68 per cent of this cost and DairyNZ and Beef+Lamb New Zealand will meet 32 per cent.

The alternative option was for long-term management. This was projected at $1.2 billion. Of this, $698 million is the loss of production borne by farmers and $520 million of response costs.

To not act at all is estimated to cost the industry $1.3 billion in lost production over 10 years, with ongoing productivity losses across our farming sector.

We don’t know how any of these numbers is calculated.  I’m not sure what the average price of cattle is, but even if it is $1500, compensation for the cull of 150000 cattle is a long way short of $870 million.  We also don’t know what reasonable probability to assign to the success of the eradication strategy.    That matters, a lot.

But what we can deduce is that given the choice between long-term management and eradication (or doing the nothing), the costs of which would be borne by the industry (farmers), while two-thirds of the cost of the eradication strategy is to be borne by taxpayers generally.    As there appear to be no foreign trade issues (and even if they were, they would be costs to the industry) or food safety issues, it isn’t clear why taxpayers should be expected to meet any material proportion of the costs, when all the benefits will accrue to industry themselves.  It has the feel of the classic line about people being keen, when they can, to socialise losses and capitalise gains.

I’m not unsympathetic to individual farmers (there are quite a few past or present dairy and beef farmers in my wider family) but why isn’t this just an industry issue, in which if the industry regard eradication as the appropriate option that strategy is funded by an appropriate levy collected, say, per head of cattle?   Most of the cattle aren’t any longer in small scale operations (even the average dairy herd size in now 400).  Between the stock and the land ($40000 a hectare, median farm perhaps 100 hectares) and the milking equipment, a typical dairy farm isn’t a small business and the typical owner isn’t poor by any means.  An increasing share of the cattle is in very large business operations.

$600 million here, $600 million there, and pretty soon you are talking serious money.   If there is public money to spend so liberally on health, I’d rather it was spent on human health.  I’m sure there are other pressing needs within the natural ambit of government.  And, of course, there is always the option of returning our own money to taxpayers in the form of lower taxes.

I also don’t purport to understand the politics of this.  Perhaps the government is dead keen not to alienate further the business community and “regional New Zealand”, but this appears to be almost wholly an industry issue, and I’m not sure that mending party political fences with elements of the business community is really a legitimate use of public money.

Perhaps there is a stronger wider public policy case to be made for this intervention?  But if so, it hasn’t been made to the public so far.  Instead, they are just taking our money and giving it to the farmers, to directly benefit the bottom lines of firms in that industry.

New Zealand’s establishment and the PRC

Michael Reddell China, NZ politics, Uncategorized

Two interviews on Radio New Zealand’s Morning Report this morning followed on from the news, reported in the local media on Saturday, of a US Congressional commission having held hearings on PRC influence in New Zealand politics (and that of various other countries).

I wrote about the testimony and related issues here.   As I noted in that post, it was pretty clear that the testimony, by a couple think-tank staffers (one former US Defense Department, one former CIA), was secondhand, reporting (sometimes in slightly garbled form) the work of Anne-Marie Brady in particular, and people like Australian journalist John Garnaut.  Of itself, that isn’t a criticism – in any inquiry of this sort, looking into a number of different countries and not in great depth, it makes a lot of sense to draw on the work of others closer to the specific country.   What was interesting about the US inquiry was that it was happening at all, and that the New Zealand situation was getting this degree of visibility, and that is was before a longstanding commission with representatives from both sides of politics.

On Morning Report, one of the think tank staffers, Peter Mattis was interviewed.    I’m not going to suggest it was an impressive performance, because it wasn’t.    He didn’t have a good command of the sources he was drawing on, and seemed unable to cite specific examples of the sorts of behaviours and developments here that concern him.  Painting with a broad brush risks getting dismissed with a broad brush, and that is more or less what happened –  Mattis’s weak answers (unfortunately) spoke for themselves, and the tone was also evident in the voice of the interviewer, Guyon Espiner.

But let’s have a look at what Mattis said in his testimony (from p114) to the Congressional commission, and see what (if any) of it is wrong, or has been satisfactorily refuted.

First point is that Australia and New Zealand both face substantial problems with interference by the Chinese Communist Party. In both cases, the CCP has gotten very close to or inside the political core, if you will, of both countries. The primary difference between the two has simply been their reaction.

The problems that are there include the narrowing of Chinese voices, the CCP’s essential monopolization of the media outlets, the takeover of community organizations, and in a sense denying the rights of Chinese Australians and Chinese New Zealanders to exercise the rights of freedom of association and freedom of speech in public forums. And this relates to the political systems of these countries primarily because if these are the–if CCP backed people are the heads of these Chinese community organizations in those two countries, and politicians use them as their sort of advisors or their guide to what the Chinese community is thinking, it means that they really essentially have a CCP firewall, if you will, between the political class in both countries and the Chinese communities that live within them.

Of the “political core”, well no one now disputes that National MP Jian Yang was (and probably is –  since in CCP terms, no one leaves without being expelled) a member of the Chinese Communist Party, which controls the PRC.  Jian Yang served for some years on Parliament’s foreign affairs committee, and accompanied the Prime Minister and trade minister on official visits to the PRC.   This was the same Jian Yang who now openly acknowledges that he misrepresented his past as part of the Chinese military intelligence system (and who has now gone to ground, not accepting any interview requests from the English language media for many months now).

And on the other side of politics is Raymond Huo, currently chair of Parliament’s Justice committee (dealing, for example, with electoral law).  Huo may not have the same questionable background as Jian Yang, but was –  so it is reported, and hasn’t been denied –  responsible for taking a slogan of Xi Jinping’s and using it as a centrepiece in Labour’s election campaign among ethnic Chinese voters last year.

Of both Jian Yang and Raymond Huo, former senior diplomat, and now trade consultant and lobbyist, Charles Finny was interviewed on TVNZ’s Q&A show last year. As I recounted it

Finny confirmed that he knew both Jian Yang and Raymond Huo, the latter less well.  He observed that he thought it was great that we had Chinese MPs, and had no problem with them being in our Parliament.  But then he went on to note that he was always very careful what he said to either man, because he knew that both of them were very close to the Chinese Embassy.

As for community organisations, Chinese language media, and so on, no one has attempted to refute the claims made about the situation both here and in Australia.  From everything I’ve read and heard, it would be pointless to attempt to do so. It is just the way things now are.

Mattis went on

There’s also the issue of what you might call a three-way transaction where retired officials or politicians take on consulting jobs, if you will, and when a company tries to open their business in China and open sort of different avenues where they need political support, the CCP side simply says, well, you need to pay so-and-so to open the doors for you and to arrange the meetings, and that way there is never a direct, direct CCP payoff to a Western consultant or person, but rather it’s done through the companies themselves so it’s a bit of a proof to the pudding of Lenin’s apocryphal comment that only a capitalist will pay for the rope that’s used to hang him.

To the extent he is referrring specifically to New Zealand, some of this seems a little overwrought (although there is the egregious case in Australia of Andrew Robb, the former Trade Minister who went straight from Parliament to a (NZ)$1m a year part-time job working for business interests with close connections to the Chinese state).  But even here, we have former senior politicians on the boards of PRC (government-controlled) banks, and a former Prime Minister serving on a PRC forum, focused on extending the Belt and Road Initiative, all while also serving on the board of the New Zealand government funded New Zealand China Council.

Mattis again

With respect to the reactions, in New Zealand, both the last prime minister, Bill English, and Jacinda Ardern, have denied that there’s a problem at all, and although the current prime minister has said that the attempts to intimidate and to steal materials from scholar AnneMarie Brady will be investigated, that’s a far cry from any sort of productive action when you have people who have lied on immigration forms that are now sitting as members of parliament.

That’s pretty much a statement of fact.   No party leader seems bothered by the presence in Parliament of a former member of the Chinese military foreign intelligence system (who has never once been heard to criticise the PRC), or even by the acknowledged fact that he misrepresented his past to get into New Zealand.

And from the subsequent interchange with members of the Commission

MR. MATTIS: The answer is yes, that’s precisely what I was implying, that it should be considered on an ongoing basis, and the way some of what was described to me is that, yes, some of these individuals had not, don’t have direct access to the product of NZSIS or the Ministry of Defense, but because they were close to the prime minister, in the case of Bill English, that anything on China that was briefed to Bill English was briefed to Mr. Yang Jian, and therefore it may not be sort of official day-to-day access, but in terms of the conversations, the briefings, it was entirely present within the system.

And I think because it has gotten very close to the political core, one of the major, one of the major fundraisers for Jacinda Ardern’s party has United Front links, that you have to say this is close enough to the central political core of the New Zealand system that we have to think about whether or not they take action and what kinds of action, what do they do to reduce the risk, because especially once, once it involves members of parliament, it requires the prime minister to make a decision themselves of whether or not there’s an investigation of them. If the prime minister is not going to make that decision, then nothing can happen below that.

I presume here that Mattis is relating (in somewhat garbled fashion) the claim that Jian Yang, when travelling with official delegations to the PRC, is likely to have had access to highly classified briefing material prepared for senior ministers –  material for which, were he not a member of Parliament, he would never have been granted access to (as, given his background, he would never have been granted a high level SIS security clearance recommendation).   I’m not sure if this claim  –  regarded Jian Yang’s past access –  has been confirmed, but I’m confident that no effort has been made to refute it.  And recall Charles Finny’s observation –  confirmed in numerous bits of photographic evidence, including on Jian Yang’s own website –  of how close Jian Yang is known to have been to the PRC embassy.

Here is Brady

Yang accompanied New Zealand PM John Key and his successor PM Bill English on trips to China and in meetings with senior Chinese leaders when they visited New Zealand. This role would have given him privileged access to New Zealand’s China policy briefing notes and positions. Under normal circumstances someone with Dr Yang’s military intelligence background in China would not have been given a New Zealand security clearance to work on foreign affairs. Elected MPs are not required to apply for security clearance.

And what of the fundraising aspects?  Note that Mattis did not –  contra the Herald headline –  suggest that the Chinese Communist Party was funding Labour.  His specific suggestion, channelling Brady, was

one of the major fundraisers for Jacinda Ardern’s party has United Front links

The Labour Party General Secretary and President claim no knowledge of what this refers to (Nigel Haworth went so far as to say Labour had no one working for them that fitted the description.   Anyone who has read Brady’s paper will recognise the reference to Labour MP (ie paid by the taxpayer) Raymond Huo.    Here is Brady

Even more so than Yang Jian, who until the recent controversy, was not often quoted in the New Zealand non-Chinese language media, the Labour Party’s ethnic Chinese MP, Raymond Huo霍建强 works very publicly with China’s united front organizations in New Zealand and promotes their policies in English and Chinese. Huo was a Member of Parliament from 2008 to 2014, then returned to Parliament again in 2017 when a list position became vacant. In 2009, at a meeting organized by the Peaceful Reunification of China Association of New Zealand to celebrate Tibetan Serf Liberation Day, Huo said that as a “person from China” (中国人) he would promote China’s Tibet policies to the New Zealand Parliament.

Huo works very closely with the PRC representatives in New Zealand. In 2014, at a meeting to discuss promotion of New Zealand’s Chinese Language Week (led by Huo and Johanna Coughlan) Huo said that “Advisors from Chinese communities will be duly appointed with close consultation with the Chinese diplomats and community leaders.” Huo also has close contacts with the Zhi Gong Party 致公党 (one of the eight minor parties under the control of the United Front Work Department). The Zhi Gong Party is a united front link to liaise with overseas Chinese communities, as demonstrated in a meeting between Zhi Gong Party leaders and Huo to promote the New Zealand OBOR Foundation and Think Tank.

It was Huo who made the decision to translate Labour’s 2017 election campaign slogan “Let’s do it” into a quote from Xi Jinping (撸起袖子加油干, which literally means “roll up your sleeves and work hard”)

and

During his successful campaign for the Auckland mayoralty, in 2016, former Labour leader and MP, Phil Goff received $366,115 from a charity auction and dinner for the Chinese community. The event was organized by Labour MP Raymond Huo. Tables sold for $1680 each. Because it was a charity auction Goff was not required to state who had given him donations, but one item hit the headlines. A signed copy of the Selected Works of Xi Jinping was sold to a bidder from China for $150,000.

I’m not aware that any of this has been refuted, even if Andrew Kirton and Nigel Haworth wish to attempt to plead ignorance.

(And to be clear, there is no suggestion that Labour operates much differently in this regard than National. I presume Mattis referred to Labour because they happen to be in office now.)

There is no suggestion in any of this that New Zealand electoral laws have been broken –  charity donations like that to the Goff campaign are not illegal.  But the suggestion Mattis made –  of close ties near the top of the political establishment –  appears to be on pretty safe ground.

Following the Mattis interview this morning, Morning Report also had on Labour Party President Nigel Haworth, who wasn’t exactly pushed very hard.      But why focus just on MPs raising funds for the party, when we could look at the role of party presidents, National and Labour, themselves.  From a post late last year.

A month or two ago, at the time of the 19th Communist Party Congress, it came to light through the Chinese media that the presidents of both the National and Labour parties had been sending warm greetings and congratulations.   This last weekend, the Labour Party went one step worse.

The Chinese Communist Party held a congress in Beijing for representatives of such political parties from around the world (300 from 120 countries) as it could gather to its embrace.    Most of them were from developing countries.  Nigel Haworth, the President of the New Zealand Labour Party, attended.   Here is how one Chinese media outlet reported the event.

The CPC in Dialogue with World Political Parties High Level Meeting was the first major multilateral diplomacy event hosted by China after the recently concluded 19th CPC National Congress.

It was also the first time the CPC held a high-level meeting with such a wide range of political parties from around the world…..

During the closing ceremony, Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi stressed that the meeting was a complete success with a broad consensus reached. He also said CPC leaders elaborated on the new guiding theory introduced by the 19th CPC National Congress.

“The innovative theoretical and practical outcomes of the 19th CPC National Congress not only have milestone significance for the development of China, but also provide good examples for the development of other countries, especially developing countries,” Yang said.

The Beijing Initiative issued after the meeting states that over the past five years, China has achieved historic transformations and the country is making new and greater contributions to the world.

It also highlighted that lasting peace, universal security, and common prosperity have increasingly become the aspiration of people worldwide, and it’s the unshakable responsibility and mission of political parties to steer the world in this direction.

“The most important thing between the 18th and 19th CPC party congress was the belt and road initiative,” according to the Russian Communist Party’s Dmitry Novikov. “And the most important thing about the initiative is the economic cooperation among various countries. Such cooperation leads to the promotion of relations in culture and politics.”

And the President of the New Zealand Labour Party was party to all of this.    In fact, not just a party to it, but someone who was willing to come out openly in praise of Xi Jinping.

Here he is, talking of Xi Jinping’s opening speech  (here and here)

“I think it is a very good speech. I think it is a very challenging speech. I think he is taking a very brave step, trying to lead the world and to think about the global challenges in a cooperative manner.  Historically we have wars and we have crisis, but he is posing a possibility of a different way of moving forward, a way based on collaboration and cooperation.  Making cooperation work is difficult, but he think that’s a better way for mankind. I think we all share that view.”

It is shameful.     Probably not even Peter Goodfellow would have gone quite that far –  if only because there might have been some (understandable) rebellion in the ranks if he had gone that public.

To which one could add that it appears that Peter Goodfellow and Jian Yang actually share business interests (and here) in promoting the PRC government’s Belt and Road Initiative.

To repeat, no one –  not Brady, not Mattis –  is suggesting that anything illegal is going on (except perhaps for the acknowledged and documented failure of Jian Yang to disclose his PRC intelligence past, apparently on PRC instructions, when entering the country). But they are suggesting a willed indifference to the nature of the PRC regime, and its activities threatening its own citizens (perhaps the least important issue for outsiders), threatening the interests of other countries that share our historic commitment to democracy and the rule of law, and its activities in New Zealand, at a political level and among New Zealand ethnic Chinese communities.    This isn’t just any other foreign government.  The United Front approach isn’t, for example, that of the British Council – the shameful sort of parallel that Guyon Espiner seemed to attempt to introduce in his interview with Nigel Haworth.

The (Beijing affiliated) New Zealand China Friendship Society also entered the fray.  Morning Report reported a text or tweet from their president suggesting that it was past time for a critical examination and review of Professor Brady’s paper.  I’m sure Professor Brady would welcome that –  it is how academe works –  and it has been nine months now since her paper was released, and I’ve not seen any serious attempt to refute or disprove any significant element of her paper.   Surely if she had just got the wrong end of the stick it would be easy to disprove? Perhaps the NZCFS would have asked someone to do so?  I had a look at their website, and found that their annual conference was being held this last weekend.  There was nothing on the conference programme suggesting any serious engagement with the issues.   Perhaps that would have been awkward for the sponsors.  Brady again:

The Xi administration’s strategy of working more with local governments for economic projects has now revitalized the CPAFFC, as well as the local equivalents they work with such as in New Zealand, the New Zealand-China Friendship Society (NZCFS). NZCFS, like their parent organization, went into decline from the 1980s on, and struggled to attract membership. Now thanks to significant support from both the PRC and the New Zealand government, a re-invigorated NZCFA is again promoting China’s interests, but this time it is an economic agenda—One Belt, One Road.

The Herald’s article on Saturday had some political reaction to the story.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was just another round of “nothing to see here” from both the Prime Minister and the Leader of Opposition.    In their never-ending pursuit of yet another trade deal –  serving the specific interests of a few influential business groups (including the universities) –  they sell New Zealanders, and our values, short, unbothered apparently  by the corruption of our own system. or the activities of the PRC regime.     And their craven stance –  never ever critical of anything the PRC do –  appears to have been ably represented this weekend by our Minister of Foreign Affairs.

When asked whether he would raise issues regarding the South China Sea, after China landed a bomber on one of the islands in the disputed territory, he said he expected the issue to come up, but said he would not do Chinese politicians and officials the “discourtesy” of airing New Zealand’s specific position on the matter via the media.

“The Chinese would not have any respect for me if I did that, and I do want them to respect me.”

(I wonder if he will ever tell us  –  citizens, voters, taxpayers – “New Zealand’s specific position on the matter”?)

One can only imagine that the PRC regime has about as much respect for Winston Peters (or Simon Bridges –  who wanted to sign us up for a “fusion of civilisations –  or Jacinda Ardern) as Hitler had for Neville Chamberlain.

New Zealand and the PRC: some US testimony

Michael Reddell China, NZ politics

For almost 20 years now, the United States has had

The United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission is a congressional commission of the United States government. Created through a congressional mandate in October 2000, it is responsible for monitoring and investigating national security and trade issues between the United States and People’s Republic of China. The Commission holds regular hearings and roundtables, produces an annual report on its findings, and provides recommendations to Congress on legislative actions related to China.

The twelve commissioners are appointed to two-year terms by the majority and minority leaders of the U.S. Senate, and by the minority leader and speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Not long ago, the Commission was hearing testimony about PRC activities in both Europe and in east Asia and Australasia. I only noticed this in a story this morning running under (what turns out to be) a somewhat exaggerated headline of

NZ should be kicked out of Five Eyes – ex-CIA analyst

As it happens, all the relevant testimony –  written and oral – is online, in a document  – the report of the Commission to leaders of the House and Senate – published a few weeks ago.

I’m not sure how often New Zealand comes up in testimony before Congress, or congressional committees.  One hopes that when we do, it is generally more favourable than what the Commission heard a few weeks ago.

The key relevant witnesses were a couple of people from US think-tanks, specialists in PRC-related issues.   In respect of New Zealand, there wasn’t much very new, mostly drawing on the work of Anne-Marie Brady (and John Garnaut in primarily an Australian context).   And yet it is sobering to see your own country described in these terms, and to reflect on the extent to which our political leaders have allowed themselves to be compromised in ways that serve the ends of the PRC.

Here was how the co-chair of the Commission, former senator Jim Talent, opened the session

The activities of the United Front Work Department, which coordinates the CCP’s overseas influence operations, deserve more scrutiny–and a careful response. Australia and New Zealand, members of the “Five Eyes” intelligence-sharing network, have seen a sharp rise in political donations and media investment from United Front Work Department-affiliated entities, and even individuals affiliated with the United Front Work Department and People’s Liberation Army holding office. Beijing also incentivizes political figures in Australia and New Zealand to parrot its line on issues it deems important.

And comments from Amy Searight of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, whose testimony related primarily to South East Asia.  These were from her oral testimony.

Recent studies on Australia and New Zealand have demonstrated the extensive and centrally coordinated efforts through CCP-led mechanisms to influence public debates and policy outcomes in these countries. John Garnaut and Anne-Marie Brady have both described their respective countries as “canaries in the coal mine” of Chinese political influence efforts. If countries with strong democratic institutions like Australia and New Zealand are vulnerable to Chinese influence and domestic political interference, one can imagine that countries in Southeast Asia, which have weaker governance, less transparency, and in some cases higher levels of corruption, would be even more susceptible.

She asserted that

Ultimately, China seeks to build a new order in Asia on its own terms where countries in the region will enjoy the benefits of economic linkages for the price of paying political deference to China’s interests and prerogatives.

In terms of the instruments of influence that China deploys, it primarily uses traditional tools of statecraft–aid, investment, commercial linkages and active diplomacy. The Belt and Road Initiative, along with the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank, have become the primary tools for China’s economic diplomacy…..

It’s also important to note that China resorts to economic coercion, both to directly punish countries that act in defiance of its interests and to demonstrate to others the cost of defiance, and the most notable example here is in the case of the Philippines. When the Philippines challenged Chinese seizure of Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea in 2012, Beijing sought to punish Manila by cutting off imports of bananas and other farm goods.

and

Recent examinations of Chinese political influence activities in Australia and New Zealand have revealed a number of mechanisms through which the CCP seeks to influence domestic debate in these countries. At the heart of most influence activities is the United Front Work Department, UFWD. UFWD efforts have focused heavily on overseas Chinese populations in Australia and New Zealand, including businessmen, community leaders, and students, but their efforts are not limited to ethnic Chinese and increasingly target the non-ethnic Chinese people in these countries. And we’ve seen allegations that have caused some real concern and public debate over a number of incidents, which include things like Beijing-linked political donors buying access and influence with party politicians; universities being coopted by generous donors for research institutions that have dubious neutrality in their academic pursuits; and voices that are coerced and silenced by networks on college campuses and elsewhere that are mobilized to silence criticism of Beijing. So these cases, the recent revelations in Australia and New Zealand, I think point the way for questions that should be investigated in the cases of U.S. allies and partners in Southeast Asia.

And these comments were from her written submission

Recent examinations of China’s political influence activities in Australia and New Zealand have revealed a number of mechanisms through which the CCP seeks to influence domestic debate in these countries. At the heart of most influence activities is the United Front Work Department (UFWD). UFWD efforts have focused heavily on overseas Chinese populations in Australia and New Zealand, including businessmen, community leaders and students. But their efforts are not limited to ethnic Chinese, and increasingly target non-ethnic Chinese people in these countries. Influence activities are broad and varied in these countries, but the allegations that have sparked the most concern include Beijing-linked political donors buying access and influence with party politicians; universities being coopted by financial largesse for research institutions that have dubious neutrality in their academic pursuits; and voices that are coerced and silenced by networks on college campuses and elsewhere that are mobilized to silence criticism of Beijing.

The second expert to testify was Peter Mattis, apparently a former CIA analyst but now Fellow in the China Program at the Jamestown Foundation.

First point is that Australia and New Zealand both face substantial problems with interference by the Chinese Communist Party. In both cases, the CCP has gotten very close to or inside the political core, if you will, of both countries. The primary difference between the two has simply been their reaction. The problems that are there include the narrowing of Chinese voices, the CCP’s essential monopolization of the media outlets, the takeover of community organizations, and in a sense denying the rights of Chinese Australians and Chinese New Zealanders to exercise the rights of freedom of association and freedom of speech in public forums. And this relates to the political systems of these countries primarily because if these are the–if CCP backed people are the heads of these Chinese community organizations in those two countries, and politicians use them as their sort of advisors or their guide to what the Chinese community is thinking, it means that they really essentially have a CCP firewall, if you will, between the political class in both countries and the Chinese communities that live within them.

There is the supporting of those voices that speak productively, in Beijing’s terms, about China, and there is the issue of suppressing voices that don’t through denial of visas, through pressure placed on institutions, and in some cases sort of calls directly to those individuals. There’s also the issue of what you might call a three-way transaction where retired officials or politicians take on consulting jobs, if you will, ….. it’s a bit of a proof to the pudding of Lenin’s apocryphal comment that only a capitalist will pay for the rope that’s used to hang him.

With respect to the reactions, in New Zealand, both the last prime minister, Bill English, and Jacinda Ardern, have denied that there’s a problem at all, and although the current prime minister has said that the attempts to intimidate and to steal materials from scholar AnneMarie Brady will be investigated, that’s a far cry from any sort of productive action when you have people who have lied on immigration forms that are now sitting as members of parliament.

And to quickly move to a recommendation, I think that at some level the Five Eyes or the Four Eyes need to have a discussion about whether or not New Zealand can remain given this problem with the political core, and it needs to be put in those terms so that New Zealand’s government understands that the consequences are substantial for not thinking through and addressing some of the problems that they face.

The Commission also reproduces the interchange between witnesses and Commission members.  Some excerpts

HEARING CO-CHAIR TALENT: Mr. Mattis, two questions. Mr. Mattis, you said that you noted that New Zealand is part of the Five Eyes arrangement, and you, I think you said in your oral testimony that the United States should consider that on an ongoing basis, and I think the suggestion here is that there is some risk that they may have been compromised to the point that perhaps we shouldn’t continue that arrangement. Am I reading you correctly that that’s an option we ought to take into account, and how high would you assess the risk? …

MR. MATTIS: The answer is yes, that’s precisely what I was implying, that it should be considered on an ongoing basis, and the way some of what was described to me is that, yes, some of these individuals had not, don’t have direct access to the product of NZSIS or the Ministry of Defense, but because they were close to the prime minister, in the case of Bill English, that anything on China that was briefed to Bill English was briefed to Mr. Yang Jian, and therefore it may not be sort of official day-to-day access, but in terms of the conversations, the briefings, it was entirely present within the system. And I think because it has gotten very close to the political core, one of the major, one of the major fundraisers for Jacinda Ardern’s party has United Front links, that you have to say this is close enough to the central political core of the New Zealand system that we have to think about whether or not they take action and what kinds of action, what do they do to reduce the risk

and

DR. SEARIGHT: Can I just add something on the New Zealand point? You know Peter raises some really important concerns, and he’s more knowledgeable about some of the specifics than I am, so I don’t discount his concerns, but I would say that the Five Eyes relationship with New Zealand is extremely important to New Zealand, and it’s one of the few pillars we have in our relationship.

We don’t have a free trade agreement with New Zealand. Obviously we walked away from TPP. We haven’t exempted them inthe steel and aluminum tariffs. I heard an earful about this when I was just in New Zealand two weeks ago. But I think there may be a disconnect between the political level and the bureaucratic level, I mean the government. The bureaucratic level is really turning on China and sees its connection with the United States and Australia as really significant in that sharpening of their policies, their thinking about China, and we heard a lot of thinking that was encouraging. And so I would just say I would be very cautious about cutting off a Five Eyes relationship because I think that really could have some tremendous negative blowback and push New Zealand in a direction that we would not be happy about.

MR. MATTIS: Two other points. I didn’t say cut it off. I said consider it because we–and you just highlighted a number of carrots that are on the table. There are sticks and carrots that we have with New Zealand, and I think on this issue we need to consider how to apply them and sort of encourage New Zealand to find the political will if they can find it because it does, especially in their system, given what has to come from the prime minister’s office, it is a question of politics, not a question of knowledge at the bureaucratic level.

Pretty sobering stuff, to have affairs in your own country described thus.

What was, perhaps, new was Dr Searight’s comments from her recent visit to New Zealand, in which she noted

The bureaucratic level is really turning on China and sees its connection with the United States and Australia as really significant in that sharpening of their policies, their thinking about China, and we heard a lot of thinking that was encouraging

It would be interesting to know who, and what, she meant by that (perhaps the intelligence agencies or Defence, rather than MFAT?).  To the public, there is no sign of any unease, or any change of course.  And of course our political leaders –  of all parties –  keep blithely on, preferring (for example) to avoid awkward issues like Jian Yang or Raymond Huo (the latter now chairing a major parliamentary committee) and to pretend that there are no issues.

I was reading yesterday the New Zealand China Council’s report on options for New Zealand to participate in the Belt and Road Initiative (the one in which the previous government agreed to work with the PRC towards a “fusion of civilisations”).  This report was paid for by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and the Secretary of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the head of NZTE sit on the board of the China Council.

It was quite as obsequious, and deferential, as ever.  In the preface, Council chair (and former Deputy Prime Minister) Don McKinnon gave a single mention to the need for New Zealand’s involvement to be considered in the light of New Zealand’s “deeply held values”.  That sounded briefly encouraging, but throughout the rest of the 40 page report there was no further mention of, or identification of, values.  One was left assuming that for the China Council, and perhaps their sponsors, the only “value” that mattered was the dollar one – as much trade as possible, never upsetting the interests of the Council’s corporate membership.

I’ve also been reading over the last few days, Clive Hamilton’s book on PRC influence activities in Australia (although with some references to New Zealand), Silent Invasion.  This was the book that the author’s long-time publisher pulled out of publishing at the last minute worried about the threat of (PRC-related) legal action.  Based on where I’ve got to so far, the book does have its weaknesses, but it also gathers a wide range of well-documented information on PRC activities in this part of the world, and we’d be foolish to think that things here are materially different than they are in Australia.  But as I read, it occurred to me that I hadn’t seen a single review of the book –  or article about its substance –  in any New Zealand outlet (although the Beijing-aligned New Zealand China Friendship Society did link to a negative review from an Australia paper).  It is as if the willed-blindness to the nature of the PRC regime, and its interests in keeping New Zealand and Australia quiescent by whatever means, and its attempts to use ethnic Chinese abroad in its interests (whether they really want to or not) extends not just to our political and business leaders but to all or most of our media as well.

I can’t see how kicking us out of Five Eyes helps anyone, except perhaps the PRC.  And in the current climate, the US Administration certainly doesn’t help the case of those interested in a serious sustained pushback against PRC influence activities, and aggression in and around the South and East China Seas, and in countries like Pakistan, the Maldives, Cambodia etc.  But the flakey and inconstant nature of the US at present doesn’t change the character of the issue, and shouldn’t distract us from the nature of the reprehensible regime our politicians and business leaders constantly want to make nice to.  Our Foreign Minister is in Beijing this weekend, but presumably will be as deferential as ever, seeking new deals with the regime, and keeping very quiet about what it seems to be doing here and abroad.

As I noted a week or two back, this government seems more like Neville Chamberlain than Michael Joseph Savage (whose government took a strong stand in the late 1930s).  The previous government was, of course, just as bad (and remain so now in Opposition), but I don’t suppose comparisons with Savage mean much to them.

UPDATE: A Herald story on this material, including some reactions from politicians  –  “nothing to see here”   – and academics.

 

 

 

Lifting productivity (and fixing housing, etc): what I’d do

Michael Reddell New Zealand economic performance, Productivity

When, a week or so ago, I wrote about how our political (and bureaucratic) leaders appeared to have given up hope, and to have lost any serious interest in turning around New Zealand’s dismal long-term productivity performance (and even worse short-term performance), and linked to my recent speech on such themes, a few commenters asked what policies I would implement, given the option.  One was specific enough to invite a “top 10 policies” list.

In what follows, I’m not suggesting that all these proposals are equally important.  It is also worth recogising that some are designed to directly improve economic performance, at least one is primarily about compensating some potential losers who might otherwise be a roadblock in the way of overdue reform, and some at improving confidence in our political system and associated institutions.   Part of what needs to accompany any significant reform package is a strong accepted sense that the politicians making the changes are working first and foremost in the interests of New Zealanders and their families, people of all ages, stages, and levels on the socioeconomic scale.  Change is, almost inevitably, costly and disruptive to some –  one reason why it doesn’t happen –  but people can be ready to accept disruptive change if they recognise it as something we do together, rather than something being done to them.

Some of these policies were included in a call to embrace radical reform I outlined (and elaborated on more than I can do in this longer list) shortly after Jacinda Ardern became Labour Party leader.

  1. Cut the residence approvals target from the current 45000 per annum to a range of 10000 to 15000 per annum (in per capita terms, something similar to policy in the United States
    • within the residence policy, eliminate the preferential Pacific and Samoan quotas, to focus solely on skills, refugees (and foreign spouses of NZers)
    • make temporary work visas (maximum three years) generally available, subject to the employer paying an annual fee to the Crown of $20000 per annum per worker, or 10 per cent of salary whichever is larger,
    • eliminate most work rights for foreign students (other than Master/Phd)
    • remove the substantial subsidy for foreign PhD students
  2. Move to a Nordic system of taxing income, in which income from capital (profits, interest etc) is taxed at a considerably lower rate than income from labour (and considerably lower than at present –  say 15 per cent).
    • a progressive consumption tax would also have considerable appeal but (a) hasn’t been tried anywhere, and (b) a shift to such a system has major distributional implications.
    • eliminate R&D grants and/or tax credits.
  3. Legislate to allow two-storey houses to be built, at the owner’s discretion, on any land (subject only to narrow exclusions around, say, flood plains or serious land instability).
  4. (To the extent not inconsistent with 3 above) legislate to entrench existing planning restrictions at a neighbourhood level, while allowing neighbourhoods to vary such restrictions on a 75 per cent favourable vote of affected land owners.  (As a reminder, such provisions would parallel to a considerable extent the covenants that are voluntarily established on-market for many private residential developments.)
  5. Because I would expect 1 and 3 above together to result in a sharp sustained reduction in house and urban land prices, establish a compensation scheme under which, say, owner-occupiers selling within 10 years of purchase at less than, say, 75 per cent of what they paid for a house, could claim half of any additional losses back from the government (up to a maximum of say $100000).  It would be expensive but (a) the costs would spread over multiple years, and (b) who wants to pretend that the current disastrous housing market isn’t costly in all sorts of fiscal (accommodation supplements) and non-fiscal ways.
  6. Establish a Commerce Commission inquiry (or a Royal Commission if necessary) to get to the bottom of why building product prices appear so high in New Zealand, not ruling out direct government intervention in the market if the issue is found to be primarily one of lack of sufficient competition.
  7. Lift the age of eligibility for NZS to 68 (increasing by, say, four months a year, so that it would take nine years to get to that age) and beyond that index the age to future improvements in life expectancy.
    • tighten the residency requirements, so that receipt of full NZS would require 30 years of residence in New Zealand itself (and not treating, as at present, residence in Australia as counting as residence in New Zealand for these purposes).
  8. Institute a congestion-pricing regime for Auckland and Wellington.
  9. Reinstitute interest on student loans, perhaps at a government bond rate (still in effect concessional), while lifting amounts that can be borrowed
    • replace fee-free policy, with a somewhat more generous robustly means-tested student allowance for high-achieving students.
  10. Consider instituting a universal child allowance (radical as this may sound, it was an option covered in the 2025 Taskforce report)
  11. Replace the Secretary to the Treasury, appointing someone with a mandate to build an excellent institution, providing robust advice on lifting economic performance.  The Prime Minister or Minister of Finance can’t do it alone, and the current Treasury doesn’t appear to be up to, or that interested in, the job.
  12. Wind-up the New Zealand Superannuation Fund, using the proceeds to repay public debt
    • consider shifting ACC to a pay-as-you-go basis (public money-pots are corrosive of good government and a wise allocation of resources)
  13. End industry assistance (such as film subsidies), except when the government is purely a vehicle for collecting and enforcing industry levies to fund themselves).
  14. Since this package would be likely to be net fiscal negative (at least in the short-term), adopt as a medium-term target an operating deficit of 1 per cent of GDP, and be willing to allow net debt (currently around 7 per cent of GDP) to rise to 25 per cent of GDP.  (A modest deficit of that size will be consistent with stable debt to GDP ratios over time.)
  15. Prioritise a substantial improvement in water quality in streams and rivers.
  16. Require postal ballots of residents for all major new items of local authority spending (some size threshold to be determined, perhaps relative to annual rates revenue), and establish provision for recall petitions for members of local authorities.
    • prohibit local councils from undertaking investments in individual commercial operations.
  17. Overhaul the Official Information Act, to provide for pro-active release of major documents (notably Cabinet papers) as the default standard, and to amend existing provisions frequently used to delay or prevent release of official information (with parallel changes to the LGOIMA for local government).
  18. Mandate the (all but real-time) disclosure of all political donations in excess of $200, and ensure that the political donations law is written in such a way that it encompasses (for example) donations through charity auctions.
  19. Prohibit former politicians and senior government officials taking paid roles in organisations controlled, directly or indirectly, by foreign governments, and impose a three-year stand-down period on any former minister taking a position in an enterprise s/he was involved in regulating (directly or indirectly) as a minister.

There are all sorts of other policy changes I’d no doubt be happy with, and whole areas I haven’t even touched on.  One is infrastructure finance. I have no particular problem with the interesting ideas that are around on innovative vehicles (used in the United States) allowing infrastructure debt to be tied to the specific landowners where the development is occurring, rather than as a general charge on local councils).  But on my set of policies, expected population growth for the country as a whole would drop to something less than half a per cent a year, reaching zero before too long (as the total fertility rate is now well below replacement) so that action on that issue is much less pressing than if we continue with the deeply flawed “big New Zealand” policy of successive governments.

I haven’t mentioned emissions targets either, but such targets would be hugely easier, and less costly and disruptive, to meet under this set of policies, than under the set we are actually operating.  I haven’t mentioned capital gains taxes: I don’t really believe the case for them has been made, but equally a well-designed CGT probably won’t do much harm.  But with the land market fixed, there wouldn’t be much revenue, at least from the housing side (which attracts so much attention).  Having fixed the land market, one could even follow the US example and include owner-occupied houses in a CGT net (with rollover relief): again it would raise very little revenue, but it might better meet some people’s sense of fairness.

The macroeconomic bottom line of this set of policies I would expect would include:

  • affordable houses,
  • materially lower real interest rates (relative to the rest of the world),
  • a substantially lower real exchange rate,
  • materially more business investment (including foreign investment), especially in the tradables sector, and in time
  • higher exports and imports as a share of GDP,
  • higher productivity, and
  • higher wages.

And a New Zealand that was really working for New Zealanders.

Thoughts/comments/reactions welcome.

 

Over-egging the pudding

Michael Reddell Trade

Yesterday it was one of our leading political journalists suggesting of the proposed agreement between the EU and New Zealand

But a free trade deal with Europe has the potential to be transformative for the entire country, with the potential to grow this little rock-star economy even further.

And today on Stuff we find Business New Zealand’s chief executive Kirk Hope, suggesting that such a deal would be the “holy grail” (this is in fact the headline in the hard copy version), and ending by asking

Could now be NZ’s long-awaited hour?

That scale of benefits is about as well-grounded in fact, and unlikely, as the creative literature around the grail itself.

It would be one thing if a genuine free-trade agreement were in prospect –  although even then the scale of the possible would scarcely be transformative for New Zealand –  but Kirk Hope, and everyone else from the Minister on down, knows it isn’t.

But he seems determined to keep up the spin

Such deals are central to NZ’s prosperity

Well, no.  There are, probably, some modest economic benefits that have flowed from some of deals done over recent decades, but not even MFAT would claim for the China-New Zealand deal the scale of benefits Kirk Hope wants to claim (the entire increase in New Zealand exports since then).   Such assertions are nonsensical, without foundation, and arguably worse than that.   People discredit the worthy, indeed noble, cause of free trade with such over-egged claims.

And ‘central to our prosperity” in a country that has experienced barely any productivity growth for five years, and where overall exports and imports as a share of GDP have been shrinking?

Then there is the questionable, not entirely straightforward, representation of New Zealand’s trade with the EU countries.

New Zealand is well known as an agricultural producer, but we are more than just that – our services trade to the EU made up 41 per cent of our total exports in 2017.  These ranged from the education and training industry to financial and insurance services, alongside professional services such as engineering and architectural consultancies.

Well, yes, no doubt.  But as I pointed out yesterday by far the largest component of New Zealand services exports to the EU (or the euro-area) is in the form of Europeans taking holidays in New Zealand.  Export education also ranks quite high on the list.  Neither is likely to be affected at all by any EU-New Zealand deal.

Canada and the EU reached an agreement a few years ago (the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement), still not fully in force because of obstacles in the ratification process.  I had a quick look round to see what the estimates were of the gains to Canada.

I found a study by the Canadian Parliamentary Budget Office. It won’t be the last word by any means, but equally it wasn’t just done by a couple of backroom opponents of the deal.  This is some of what the study says of that deal

  • CETA will lead to some gains for Canada, but they will be modest.
  • Canada and the European Union have different tariff levels going into the agreement. Canada’s tariffs are higher on average (weighted). Canadian and European exporters both faced tariffs greater than 10 per cent on almost 500 products (Harmonised System, 6-digit level).
  • Canada will gain in terms of increased economic output (almost $8 billion, or 0.4 per cent of GDP, over the long term) and investment (0.6 per cent of GDP), even though the trade balance deteriorates. Greater specialisation and increased production efficiency lead to net economic gains.
  • The diversion of trade to the EU will reduce Canada’s exports to the United States by more than a billion 2015 dollars over the long term. To the rest of the world, by another third of a billion dollars.

The predicted gain (in the quantifiable areas) to GDP is 0.4 per cent (not very different from the 0.5 per cent estimate –  from an EU study –  bandied around in talk of a New Zealand deal), for a country that is reducing its tariffs by more than the EU will be.  That wouldn’t be the case in a New Zealand deal –  and recall that tariffs mostly hurt the citizens of the country that imposes them.  It is also good to see, amid all the talk of possible increased EU-NZ trade, estimates of the extent of trade diversion: one of key risks/costs of such preferential agreements.

None of this is to suggest that the Canada deal is bad for Canadians (or Europeans for that matter), just that if there are gains, they are small.  It is most unlikely to be any different for a New Zealand-EU agreement.    And whatever the trade effects, reaching behind respective borders to constrain the freedom of governments to regulate, or not, is pernicious, chipping away at the flexibility of elected governments.  That might be part of the raison d’etre of the EU hierarchy, but it isn’t supposed to be the New Zealand way.

Perhaps the clue to this over-egged, utterly unconvincing, piece is in the final paragraph.

To pull off an FTA with the EU would be an outstanding achievement for this still-new Government.

Anyone can do a deal, the question (as yet unknown) is the character and quality of any deal.  But from the tone of that final comment, one might deduce that Hope’s column is more about trying to curry favour with the new government –   business and the government being offside on various other issues –  than it is about serious analysis.  Stuff should probably have charged him for the sycophancy: advertising space rather than the business op-ed pages would have been a better positioning for it.

(What was going to have been today’s more substantive post will be along later.)

Some scepticism about EU trade

Michael Reddell Trade, Uncategorized

Count me more than a little sceptical about the agreement the government and the EU are planning to negotiate over the next few years (should be EU itself survive long enough –  the latest threat being Italy).   It isn’t even clear how to describe the proposed deal.  Champions seem to like to talk of “free-trade agreements”, but of course this will be anything but on the trade side (no free trade in agriculture is in prospect), with lots of more regulatory stuff in the agreement as well, often in areas that are likely to impose additional burdens on economic activity or constrain the government’s future freedom of regulatory action.  Throw in some additional bureaucratic overhead in various areas, and perhaps the proposed agreement should just be called “Agreement between New Zealand and the EU on sundry matters”.  New Zealand officials and ministers have long been aggrieved that the EU wouldn’t negotiate such an agreement with New Zealand, so for them it is, no doubt, a win.  Whether it is much, if any, of a win for New Zealanders is another matter.

Peak hype seemed to be reached in Stacey Kirk’s column in the Dominion-Post this morning in which we are told

But a free trade deal with Europe has the potential to be transformative for the entire country, with the potential to grow this little rock-star economy even further.

That would be the “rock-star economy” that has had almost no productivity growth for the last five years, and where exports and imports as a share of GDP have been shrinking?

And when Kirk says “transformative”, it must just be intended to sound good.  A couple of paragraphs later, we read

But early estimates suggest an EU free trade agreement could add another $1b-$2b to New Zealand’s annual GDP over time, with a 10 to 22 per cent increase in trade volumes.

Since annual GDP is already around $280 billion, even on those numbers it is a gain of perhaps 0.5 per cent.  I know productivity gains have been in short supply in New Zealand recently, but on no measure is a 0.5 per cent gain (probably arising over 10-20 years) anything resembling “transformative”.

Government releases have noted that total two-way trade with the EU is around $20 billion at present ($22 billion in 2017). Of that, around $4.5 billion is with the UK, which is leaving the EU next year (and where the New Zealand and British governments plan to sign their own agreement).

But it is worth noting that we import a lot more from the EU than we export (exports are about two-thirds of imports).  That isn’t a problem at all, but it is a reminder that from a New Zealand perspective, this agreement isn’t about $22 billion of trade, but about $5.6 billion of exports to EU countries other than the UK.  Stacey Kirk tells us that “the cost of importing European goods would be significantly reduced”.  That doesn’t seem very likely as most of our tariffs are low already.  More importantly, if we wanted to achieve those particular gains (however large they are) we could do it tomorrow: just lift the tariffs we impose, and which tax our own people.

And what is it that New Zealand firms export to the EU?

Major goods exports $m 2017
Meat and edible offal           1,543
Fruit              649
Wine              562
Fish, crustaceans, and molluscs              233
Optical, medical, and measuring equipment              205
Major services exports
Travel services           2,369
      Business travel               91
      Education travel              209
      Other personal travel           2,069
Transportation services              437
Other business services              224

By far the largest items are “other personal travel” (holidays) and meat.    There are no tariffs (or quotas) on EU people holidaying here –  so no gains from the mooted agreement there –  and meat seems likely, on past EU form, to be a considerable sticking point, where any gains are small and quite a long time coming.   “Educational travel” also seems unlikely to offer any gains.

If we focus just on trade with the euro-area (the summary numbers SNZ provides –  and the biggest difference between the EU and the eurozone is the UK) personal travel and meat are still by far the biggest exports.

But, as already noted, it is just goods and services.  On Kirk’s telling

The final deal with include requirements around sustainability and climate change, labour standards and animal welfare.  Parker has already suggested that New Zealand might face barriers over whether its goods and deemed to be environmentally friendly or sustainable enough.

Intellectual property isn’t an area in which the EU is known for its liberal approach. Thus, in the same newspaper this morning, trade consultant/lobbyist and former MFAT staffer Charles Finny notes that

Patents for medicines, geographic indications (such as Parmesan cheese), data localisation rules and investment will all be difficult to resolve.  This will also be one of the first negotiations where New Zealand will be arguing for provisions on gender and indigenous issues.

What?  Finny points out that we have an indigenous chapter in the New Zealand agreement with Taiwan.   In it the two sides commit (p199) as follows

2. The Parties shall, through their coordinating authorities:

(a) hold at least one meeting each year for the planning of measures designed to enhance economic, cultural and people-to-people contacts between the indigenous peoples in the Separate Customs Territory of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu and New Zealand’s Māori;

(b) promote and facilitate the exchange of experiences relating to indigenous peoples’ issues, including the following areas: economic and business development, tourism, natural resource development, artistic performances, agricultural production, culture, language promotion, education, human rights, land ownership issues, employment, social policy, biodiversity, sports and traditional medicine;

(c) promote and facilitate the development of direct contacts with or between academic institutions, non-governmental organisations, local government bodies and tribal authorities, to support these endeavours;

(d) promote indigenous personnel exchanges in academic, cultural and business exchanges through conferences on a rotation basis, including educators, cultural workers, language instructors, writers and artists, linguists, and ethnologists;

(e) promote stronger relationships between Māori exporters and importers in the Separate Customs Territory of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu;

It might be mostly bumpf, but it all costs money, and involves the state going where it really has no business.  Then again, I don’t suppose the EU will be agreeing to recognise that rights and interests of the Catalans.

Perhaps too we’ll find everyone in New Zealand required to adopt something very like the incredibly onerous new data protection and privacy regime just coming into effect in the EU.  And for what?

Assessing any economic benefits depends a lot on the specific details of any agreement that might be reached (and ratified –  as the EU/Canada agreement illustrates, ratification is no sure thing in Europe).  But I noticed some results from a paper ,with an interesting discussion of the potential issues relevant to New Zealand and including some modelling, done a couple of years ago by some Lincoln University researchers.  I can’t speak to the quality of the modelling, so am just passing on what I read.

A scenario of full trade liberalisation between the EU and New Zealand was modelled. Whilst an unlikely outcome of the free trade negotiations between the EU and New Zealand, it is an important indicator of the most extreme potential economic outcomes of more likely moderate agreements. This scenario can be thought of as the upper-bounds of any trade agreement outcomes.

(remarkably, this scenario includes New Zealand removing remaining tariffs on milk powder imports)

And here is their summary of the modelling results (again, for a full liberalisation scenario)

Importantly these results show that for the agricultural commodities considered in the modelling exercise, total producer returns in both the EU and New Zealand are expected to increase, be it marginally. The most significant changes would be for apple production and returns in New Zealand which rise significantly, whilst sheep and wool returns are expected to drop slightly. Most other changes are marginal, although wine producers in New Zealand are expected to experience an increase in returns of almost 10 per cent even given a drop in production.

In another article in the last couple of days we read

Dairy Companies Association executive director Kimberly Crewther said New Zealand dairy exports to the EU were “highly constrained” and the elimination of all existing tariff barriers should be a priority.

“In 2017, just 9000 of the more than two million tonnes of butter consumed in the EU was imported. Maintaining this level of protection does not make sense when the EU is a competitive dairy exporter in its own right.”

A laudable goal –  indeed, getting to the crux of the issue – but I doubt anyone thinks it is going to happen.  This simply won’t be any sort of agreement providing for free-trade.

I would commend the government on its decision to exclude ISDS provisions from future agreements, and the Minister’s comment here

“At the start of negotiations, we’ll be releasing a package of information outlining our negotiating priorities for this agreement and how we will be engaging with New Zealanders as negotiations progress,” David Parker said.

suggests the beginnings of a more transparent approach.  But it is far from clear that there are net benefits to New Zealanders from the sort of deal the government is actually likely to conclude.  No doubt, some classes of firms will be a bit better off –  and those gains will be concentrated, so those interests will be vocal –  but there are many areas in which New Zealanders as a whole could find themselves potentially worse off, and with the potential for future governments to take a different stance constrained by an ever-more-complex web of international agreements.

I’m all for free trade.  Among an group of (genuine) market economies and democratic countries, I’d also have a pretty much open-slather approach to foreign investment.   New Zealanders would benefit from that. But we’d also benefit from retaining a freedom to regulate, or not, domestic activities according to our own analysis, and our own preferences.  And leaving citizens and governments in other countries free to govern themselves.   But that isn’t what is on offer in this agreement.  There is a risk that it is more about political symbolism –  the interests of politicians –  that of substance that benefits citizens as a whole.

Conduct among the regulators

Michael Reddell FMA, Reserve Bank

As we know, the Reserve Bank and the Financial Markets Authority have been playing the populist politicians, “demanding” that banks (in particular) prove that they are not guilty of the sort of misconduct coming to light in the Australian Royal Commission.  The Governor had told us he thought New Zealand banks were different, until either he saw which way the political winds were blowing, or saw the FMA getting on the bandwagon and didn’t want to be left behind.  But proving your own innocence is simply not something anyone in a free society should be required to do.

But what about the regulatory agencies themselves?  They don’t deal directly with the general public very much, but if they are mounting their bully pulpits and demanding banks (private businesses) prove themselves, we might first reasonably expect the highest possible standards from them.  After all, the FMA and the Reserve Bank are public institutions; they work for us.

How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when you yourself fail to see the plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

How, for example, do the boards of these institutions handle conflicts of interest?   This is a particularly significant issue for the FMA, where the Board has direct responsibility for all the agency’s decisionmaking (the administration of things like the Financial Markets Conduct Act and associated rules and regulations).  They make decisions directly affecting specific businesses, and interests.

It is less of a direct issue at the Reserve Bank, where the Board itself has few powers.  But Board members are still privy to considerable amounts of inside information, and have preferential access to the ear of the Governor.  The Bank runs a commercial business (NZClear), and has significant property interests (the building on The Terrace) and major commercial contracts around notes and coins.

A few months ago when the Independent Expert Advisory Panel reviewing the Reserve Bank Act reported, they included in their report this reference

114. The Board has a code of conduct. The Panel recommends that this be reviewed in light of the legislative changes.

So I asked for it, lodging a simple request

Please supply me with a copy of the code of conduct.

And the Bank responded quite quickly.   There was, I was told,

no Board document of that name, but the Charter outlines conduct expected of Directors.

The text of the “Charter” is at that previous link.   I’ve written about the so-called charter previously.  But one thing I didn’t notice then –  and recall, they say this document describes expected behaviours of directors –  is that there was nothing dealing with possible conflicts of interests, and how those should be handled.    That seems more than a little surprising.

I’ve previously had minutes of Board meetings released to me under the Official Information Act, and there was no sign in any of them that conflicts of interest are appropriately disclosed, and handled, or rules meaning that no member with a conflict is able to participate in matters relevant to that discussion. For example, one Board member is also a director of an insurance company, and the Bank is prudential regulator of insurers.  The Board, and the Bank, can’t control who ministers appoint to the Board, but they have clear responsibility to manage any conflicts.

I’m not suggesting actual impropriety –  I assume they must (surely?) have some unwritten practices –  but I wonder how they would prove their innocence to some crusading bureaucrat or politician?  Paper trails matter and, as I’ve noted previously, the Board has form in that area, being in clear breach of the Public Records Act in the way it conducts its regular business.  For a government agency, that is pretty clear misconduct.

What of the FMA Board?  They get marks for this explicit statement on their website

The FMA Board recognises conflicts of interest as serious governance issues. The FMA maintains a Board Conflicts Policy which manages how interests are to be disclosed, registered and properly managed in relation to any matter that the FMA is considering.

So I asked specifically for this document, which they released in full a few days ago.

FMA Board Conflicts Policy

For the most part, it looks pretty good. They seem to define conflicts reasonably broadly (at least in some respects), and recognise that such conflicts might arise from the interests and activities of spouses, partners, and children.   There is active requirement to disclose, and an encouragement to be open and broad in applying the policy –  members are even referred to a relevant Supreme Court case.

6. A Member who is interested in a matter:
(a) must not vote or take part in any discussion or decision of the Board or any Committee relating to the matter or otherwise participate in any activity of FMA that relates to the matter;
(b) must not sign any document relating to the entry into of a transaction or the initiation of the matter; and
(c) is to be disregarded for the purpose for forming a quorum for that part of a meeting of the Board or Committee during which a discussion or decision relating to the matter occurs or is made.

And they are required to advise the Minister of any breach of the policy.   I was quite impressed.  Until I came to this, near the end.

The Chairperson may, by prior written notice to the Board permit one or more Members to remain involved in a matter to which they have an interest if the Chairperson is satisfied that it is in the public interest to do so. Such permission may be subject to any condition which the chairperson considers necessary. All such permissions must be disclosed in FMA’s annual report.

Not even a majority of the Board has to agree, just the chair.  How can it ever be appropriate for someone with a conflict of interest to be, or remain, involved in the FMA’s determination of a matter in which they have an interest?  The Board has a range of members, and presumably can call on outside expertise on any matter on which it needs advice.  It seems almost unconceivable that there could be a circumstance in which a person’s contribution was so unique and irreplaceable that they should remain involved despite having declared and established a conflict of interest.    It is, perhaps, some small comfort that any such occasions have to be disclosed in the Annual Report (I didn’t see any in the latest Annual Report) –  but the Annual Report comes out with a considerable lag (and probably isn’t widely read).  Since making this sort of exception isn’t a breach of the rules, it doesn’t even need to be disclosed to the Minister at the time.

That rule, set up by the Board to govern its own conduct, falls well short of the sort of expectations we should have for a powerful public agency.  It should be clear and straightforward: if you have a conflict, you take no further involvement, and go out of your way to stay clear of this issue.  At very least, it is potential misconduct –  inappropriate conduct –  by the Board of the FMA, an institution content to demand that banks prove their innocence.

I could go on.  Compliance with the letter and the spirit of the Official Information Act is one of those standards of conduct we might expect from our regulatory agencies.  The Reserve Bank falls a long way short of the mark on that one (they are, for example, still fighting to keep secret their analysis, from last November, of the extent to which Kiwibuil might crowd out other construction).

And then there were some of the issues I wrote about a couple of weeks ago, whether neither the Bank nor the FMA could reasonably be considered to have met the sort of standard they expect –  under law, or not –  from others.

Wasteful and ill-disciplined councils

Michael Reddell Wellington

Mostly this blog is focused on national policy issues and national economic developments.  But local government matters too.  Often the choices local government make affect us at least as much as questionable central government choices do, and  –  so it seems –  they are typically based on less-robust analysis, and with less transparency and serious accountability.  The cavalier approach towards the use of our money –  from people who would not be so rash in their private lives, with their own money –  would almost beggar belief.   “Almost” except that public choice literature has been analysing for decades the incentives, and absence of constraints, that lead to such behaviour.

In the headlines this week have been the efforts of the Auckland Council.  The Mayor, it appears, commissioned a $1 million report on a possible new ($1.5 billion) sports stadium, which his own fellow councillors have not been allowed copies of.  The Mayor and his office –  again – defy for months the provisions of the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act (the local government equivalent of the OIA).   The first element of the purpose statement in the LGOIMA is

The purposes of this Act are—

(a) to increase progressively the availability to the public of official information held by local authorities, and to promote the open and public transaction of business at meetings of local authorities, in order—

(i) to enable more effective participation by the public in the actions and decisions of local authorities; and

(ii)to promote the accountability of local authority members and officials,—

and thereby to enhance respect for the law and to promote good local government in New Zealand:

Something that too many mayors, councillors, and local government bureaucrats seem to treat with contempt.

The Wellington City Council is at least as bad as any of them.  On the LGOIMA, I gather that requesters have still not been able to get from the council documents relating to the subsidy the residents of Wellington are paying to Singapore Airlines (now to provide additional flights between Wellington and Melbourne).   It is as if councillors  –  and their staff –  believe we work for them, not the other way round.

On spending, we don’t have anything quite as expensive as a $1.5 billion stadium –  not happening for now, but presumably only a matter of time.  But that is about $1000 per Aucklander.    Here, we’ve had the desperate desire of councillors to kick in $100 million or so to extend (privately-owned) Wellington airport’s runway (a project fortunately stymied, at least for now, by the courts), $90 million to refurbish and strengthen the Wellington Town Hall, $165 million for a convention centre and film museum.  Not one of those projects would be likely to survive the scrutiny of a proper cost-benefit analysis, but that, of course, doesn’t deter our council.

And the waste –  and the arrogance – flows all the way down to individual neighbourhoods.  I live in Island Bay, a pleasant seaside community of about 8000, where the residents as a group tend to vote for big-government parties (around 60 per cent of the party vote in last year’s election went to Labour and the Greens).  We had the misfortune to be the test-bed for the Council’s cycleway policy (which I wrote about here).

The plan was for a cheap cycleway all the way from Island Bay to the city.  Never mind that the supporting analysis never stacked up, or that hilly Wellington is one of the least propitious places for cycleways anywhere.  Years later, we have a deeply unpopular cycleway to nowhere (running a couple of kilometres along one of the safer wider roads in Wellington, before petering out just as things start to get tricky for the few potential cyclists).  The Council spent $1.7 million putting the thing in –  originally they thought to spend less than that getting the whole way into the city –  and is about to spend another $4 million to change the scheme, and in doing so they still avoid responding to the clearly expressed preferences of residents in a fairly well-designed and run “vote” organised by the residents’ association.   $700 per resident –  almost as bad as a sports stadium on Auckland’s waterfront, and a great deal of aggravation later – all to impose something that local residents simply don’t want, and wouldn’t choose to spend their money on.  But councillors have a dream……while we have a nightmare (expensive, unattractive, and dangerous).  One might suppose that on an issue that affects no one outside the local neighbourhood, majority local preferences should be an absolute basis for not proceeding, not wasting public money.  As it is, there is next to no effective accountability, since Island Bay is subsumed in a larger ward and of the local councillors who voted for the scheme, one resigned shortly afterwards to become an MP in rock-solid Labour seat, and the other has announced he is moving to Christchurch and will be standing down at the next election.  The Residents’ Association is reduced to taking costly and risky legal action against their own council.

But today I wanted to highlight another small Wellington City Council excess.  It is of no wider interest, except as symptomatic of the way our money is wasted by councillors up and down the country.  As I said, Island Bay is a pleasant seaside place.  Just to the left of the photo, fishing boats lie at rest, and the eponymous island guards the entrance.  There is a pleasant sandy beach, good for swimming (if somewhat bracing).   There weren’t a lot of people around when I took this photo on a cool late-autumn morning, but on summer afternoons the beach is often crowded and finding somewhere to park can be a challenge.

island bay

And so what is the Wellington City Council in the process of doing?  Why, removing probably half a dozen carparks  on the main road (you can see where the dark new seal is by the van) –  and others on the side street –  as part of putting in a new roundabout.  This little project is said to be costing $400000.  There was, it appears, no consultation with either residents or beach users.

Both roads are wide, and neither is particularly busy (I walk down there most days).  There is no obvious problem, no apparent record of accidents, but that doesn’t stop the Council frittering away public money.  I guess we should be grateful for small mercies: a few years ago when the sea wall was damaged in a storm, some councillors wanted to rip up the road (past the new roundabout) altogether and let the sea “take back its own”.  Fortunately, they lost that battle.

Each individual project like this doesn’t sound like much.  But they add up, and before you know where you are, hundreds of millions of hard-pressed ratepayer’s money is being lavished on the big stuff with little rigour, less transparency, and not much accountability.   It is a shame there is no way to have councillors put rather more of their own money on the line: perhaps for each new initiative they vote for councillors could consider making a personal contribution equal to, say, ten times the average per capita cost of the project in question.   When the mayor, Justin Lester writes a personal cheque for $4000 as a contribution to the convention centre, and another for $2500 for the town hall refurbishment or the runway extension, I’d start taking the views that underpin his wastefulness (with other people’s money) a little more seriously.  Of course, even then it might just be considered a campaign expense on a journey towards Parliament.  Instead, we go on with citizens being plundered to pursue the whims of councillors and specific vested interests.

 

Amy Adams and the National economic model

Michael Reddell National Party, Productivity

National Party finance spokesperson Amy Adams was interviewed on TVNZ’s Q&A programme on Sunday.   Amid the to-ing and fro-ing on aspects of the government’s Budget, there was an odd exchange about the underpinnings of economic growth in New Zealand.

AMY Can I just finish, though? Can I just finish? Even Treasury is saying that the GDP growth that they’re forecasting is only held up because of strong and, in fact, growing immigration numbers — something that Grant Robertson went on about for nine years in opposition. So it’s been driven by immigration, industrial law changes, foreign direct investment, new taxes. Those things will slow the economy.

CORIN Are you seriously criticising this government for relying on immigration to grow its economy when your government relied on immigration and housing?

AMY Am I going to get a chance to answer? Okay, so what I’m going to say, Corin, is that for nine years in opposition, Grant Robertson made a big deal about the fact that immigration and the net flow of migrants into New Zealand was what was holding up the economy. What I’m pointing out is that Treasury, in its own estimates in the Budget, has said it is continuing strong immigration that is going to continue to see GDP held up. We’ve always argued that you need a good inflow of skilled workers. We’ve never made any bones about that, but this is a government, again, that talked one game in opposition and is entirely going the other way in government.

CORIN Fair enough — that’s a fair point, but it’s a bit rich to criticise them for relying on immigration.

AMY I’m not criticising them for doing it; I’m saying I’m criticising them for breaking their promises about what they said. They said in the campaign they would slash immigration, and now it’s strong immigration numbers that they’re looking at, or at least, Treasury are looking at to support those figures.

If I’m reading Adams correctly she appears to be

  • criticising the government for not carrying through on what she describes as their promises to “slash migration”,
  • arguing that, on Treasury’s account, continued migration-led population growth is a key element in the GDP growth forecast over the next few years (Treasury having revised up its medium-term immigration assumptions), and
  • acknowledging that in National’s term in government, the numbers relied very heavily on large immigration inflows.

I’m mostly interested in that final point.  On my analysis of Labour’s manifesto, there was never a promise to “slash” migration, or even to take steps that would cut the net inflow for more than a year.  And those were policies put in place when Andrew Little was still leader; from her silence on the issue once she became leader it was pretty clear Jacinda Ardern didn’t really believe in those policies.  There was no change promised in the centrepiece of our immigration policy: the residence approvals target number of 45000 non-citizens per annum.    (There hasn’t yet been any sign of the modest changes Labour did promise –  some sensible, some not – although we are told they are coming.)

But what of National’s approach to economic policy.   A couple of weeks ago, the National Party leader was touting his party’s economic credentials

When I was Economic Development Minister, our plan for the economy was set out in the Business Growth Agenda.

The BGA comprised over 500 different initiatives all designed to make it easier to do business by investing in infrastructure, removing red tape, and helping Kiwis develop the skills needed in a modern economy.

Some of those were big, some were small. I’ll admit some weren’t as exciting spending a billion dollars every year.

But together they were effective.

New Zealand has one of the best performing economies in the developed world.

But, in fact, what it came down to mostly was a lot more people, and the activity that a lot more people generate.  At least Amy Adams seems to recognise that.

In the five years to the end of 2012, New Zealand’s population is estimated to have increased by 4.3 per cent, and in the five years to the end of 2017 the increase is estimated to have been 9.3 per cent.    More than all that increase resulted from changes in net migration (the natural increase was smaller in the second period than in the first).  Coping with a lot more people – especially when the increase is unexpected – generates a lot of economic activity (people need houses, schools, shops, offices etc), but not necessarily a lot more long-term economic opportunities to support the increased number of people.

Note that I deliberately used the words “not necessarily”.  At some times, and in some circumstances, migrants can help create or tap whole new opportunities, helping to lift economywide productivity, increase the outward-orientation of the economy (and the associated investment), and so on.  But it is an empirical question, that has to be reviewed in the light of experience.  Sadly, there is little or no sign that we’ve seen those sorts of gains here.

I’ve pointed out previously (perhaps ad nauseum) that total labour productivity growth in New Zealand in the last five years was only about 1.5 per cent.  Over that period, too, trade with the rest of the world (exports and imports) have been shrinking.

trade shares may 18

When National first came to office 10 years ago they recognised that sustainably successful economies tend to be ones that find more and better products and firms that successfully take on the world (in turn, enabling us to import and consume more from the rest of the world).  Perhaps unsurprisingly, foreign trade rated no mention from Amy Adams.

So we’ve had

  • little or no productivity growth in the wake of the population surge,
  • a shrinkage in the proportion of our economy traded with the rest of the world, and
  • increasingly ruinous house prices in much of the country.

Twenty years ago when people first started to worry a bit that there wasn’t much sign of New Zealand catching up again with the rest of the advanced world, one hypothesis that did the rounds for a while was that of ‘the cheque is in the mail” –  just be patient, and the gains would materialise soon.   They didn’t then, but perhaps this time is different?

One place we might look for signs of that is business investment.  But, as even the Reserve Bank Governor has been pointing out, that has been pretty muted.   Here is business investment (total gross fixed capital formation less government and residential investment spending) as a share of GDP.

bus investment may 18

That mightn’t look too bad to you –  after all, the line has been edging up over the last few years.  But even now the share of the economy devoted to business investment is lower than in every quarter from 1993 to 2008, and we’ve had much larger and more sustained total population increases this time round than in the previous couple of cycles.  More people need more capital.  It doesn’t look as if business has been planning for even better times ahead, more or less just meeting the domestic demands of the rising population itself.  (And as I illustrated on Friday, Treasury doesn’t expect any recovery in the export/import shares of GDP in the next few years.)

Consistent with that, here is a chart I’ve shown previously, using SNZ’s annual capital stock data.

cap stock growth may 18Growth in the per capita “productive” capital stock –  public and private, but excluding houses –  has been low and has been trending downwards.  I’ve also shown (orange line) a proxy for natural resources per capita: since natural resources themselves are fixed, this is just the inverse of the rate of population growth.  Per capita natural resources are falling.  That mightn’t be a problem –  it is, after all, true of every country with a growing population – if other resources were taking the place of the natural ones.  But there has been no sign –  in business investment, productivity, or the foreign trade data –  of that here.

Productivity growth here (real GDP per hour worked) in the last five years was 1.5 per cent in total.  The best-performing eight OECD economies averaged 11.3 per cent over the most recent five years (some to 2016, some to 2017).  Most of those countries are still a bit poorer and/or less productive than New Zealand –  but not all (the list includes Turkey, Slovakia, and Korea). And those gaps are now a greater deal smaller than they were even five years ago.  New Zealand GDP per capita is currently around $60000.  If we’d managed 10 per cent productivity growth over the last five years –  instead of 1.5 per cent – the economy would be around $5000 bigger per man, woman, and child.  Just think of the possibilities that would have opened up, individually and collectively.

Instead, pretty much all we had was the activity generated by a lot more people, and more working hours for those already here.  Probably inadvertently, the National Party finance spokesperson has finally acknowledged it.

Of course, the outlook under the current government is more of the same, or even worse.  The immigration policies of the two main parties are all but identical in substance (although the cyclical dimension does appear to be turning), but the new government throws into the mix the ban on oil and gas exploration, a determination to do more on water standards, and to do much more around emissions.  Perhaps each of those policies is individually worthy, but they are all likely to come at an economic cost, a cost exacerbated if policy keeps on trying to drive up the population –  in a location that hasn’t shown the (beneficial) economic fruits of such a policy for a long time now.  And should the government somehow manage an acceleration of the rate of housebuilding, that too will only squeeze out –  through higher interest and real exchange rates – more of the business opportunities that might otherwise have supported a growth in material living standards.

More people, at least in New Zealand, isn’t a path to higher productivity, and higher productivity is what aspirations for higher material living standards rely on.  More people is just a path to more activity to accommodate more people –  skewing the economy inwards again, and undermining our prospects of ever getting back towards that upper tier of advanced economies.  On this score, Amy Adams (and her leader) appear quite as blind as Grant Robertson (and his). It is only two years until the next election campaign will be getting underway: the Adams interview doesn’t suggest any sign of a rethink of policy, or even a recognition that activity is no substitute for productivity.  And the latter is sorely lacking in New Zealand.

 

Orr defends himself

Michael Reddell Adrian Orr, Uncategorized

There seems to have been almost no media coverage of an extraordinary statement put out late on Wednesday by the going-rogue Governor of the Reserve Bank, Adrian Orr.  Perhaps he was fortunate that all eyes were already on Thursday’s Budget.

I’ve been drawing attention to the way in which Orr has been speaking out on all and sundry issues – often contentious political issues – for which neither he nor the Bank has been assigned responsibility by Parliament.   We’ve had climate change issues, infrastructure spending, both sides of the bank conduct issue (where he was defending the banks only to flip sides and start poking a stick at them), sustainable agriculture, and capital gains taxes. (Various posts touching on the Governor’s comments are here.)

Last week he was at it again, giving an interview to Stuff’s Hamish Rutherford in which he took the opportunity to attack the way the Christchurch rebuild had been done, including in particular the lack of opportunities for his former employer, the New Zealand Superannuation Fund.  And a couple of days out from the Budget, he took another opportunity to call for more government infrastructure spending, more government borrowing, and to offer his thoughts on public procurement processes.  Anyone would think he was a party leader at election time.

There were two separate classes of issues arising out of the interview with Hamish Rutherford.  The first was around the details of what Orr was saying about the Christchurch rebuild and the substance of NZSF’s involvement or lack of it.    The former minister, Gerry Brownlee, understandably took umbrage at the substance of Orr’s remarks, but the details of that particular spat weren’t my concern (although a commenter in detail here suggests Brownlee was on the stronger ground).

The second class of issues –  and the focus of my concern – is around the appropriateness of the Governor speaking out at all on these (and the other) issues.   As I summed it up the other day, the Governor’s comments are very unwise and quite inappropriate –  and would be so regardless of any substantive merits in his views.   The Governor holds an important public office, in which he wields (singlehandedly at present) enormous power in a limited range of areas.  It really matters –  if we care at all about avoiding the politicisation of all our institutions –  that officials like the Governor (or the Police Commissioner, the Chief Justice, the Ombudsman or whoever) are regarded as trustworthy, and not believed to be using the specific platform they’ve been afforded to advance personal agendas in areas miles outside the mandate Parliament has given them.   We don’t want a climate in which only partisan hacks have any confidence in officeholders, and only then when their side got to appoint the particular officeholder.  And that is the path Adrian Orr seems –  no doubt unintentionally – to be taking us down.  As I’ve noted previously, as his time in office lengthened, Don Brash made something of the same mistake.    That was unfortunate and inappropriate, but in 14 years in office I’d be surprised if Don managed as many overtly political comments as Adrian Orr has delivered in less than two months.

I’ve had conversations with people, including journalists, who can’t really see a problem.  I guess Orr is still in his honeymoon phase, and the journalists are still just grateful they no longer face a Governor who wouldn’t even communicate properly on issues that were his clear and specific responsibility.  Perhaps it helps to see the problem by supposing that a new Governor had come to office and was giving interviews calling for, say,:

  • doing nothing about climate change,
  • cutting capital taxes,
  • lamenting that the government had not just stayed out of central Christchurch and had just landowners get on with it,
  • suggesting that the state stay out of housebuilding,
  • promoting irrigation schemes, and (for the sake of argument)
  • attacking light rail

That new Governor might be perfectly technically capable of doing monetary policy and financial regulatory tasks.  But nonetheless, there would almost certainly be an outcry –  people from the left attacking the Governor for his attacks on policies of the government of the day, and people on the right using the Governor’s comments to buttress their anti-government rhetoric.  It  would be unwise, and should be quite unacceptable for a Governor to be making such comments.  And it is no more wise, or acceptable/appropriate, for him to be making comments on the other side of such issues.

I’m not suggesting that the Governor is an active Labour/Greens partisan, making the comments he does to try to advance the interests of the governing parties.  Probably he believes he is better than them anyway.  But clearly his personal views on all manner of issues seem to align with those of Labour (in particular), and since he has lots of turf battles to win (around the reform of the Reserve Bank) he probably judges that it doesn’t hurt his personal cause to be speaking as he has.  But even if that works out for him in the short-term it isn’t desirable.  His interests aren’t the national interest.  It is conceivable that the second half of his term could see him working with a National government, and he’ll have made that more difficult with these overtly political comments, ranging well beyond his brief.  And he will have increased the risk that future Reserve Bank Governor appointments will be made on an overtly partisan basis –   “if the Governor feels free to speak on absolutely anything, we want someone who’ll be championing our particular causes”.  That would be highly undesirable.

After Orr’s comments last week, there was an outraged response from Gerry Brownlee (on the specifics) but there was also a response from the Opposition leader, Simon Bridges.  That upped the ante quite a bit, even though Bridges’ statement was pretty moderate.

Bridges did not directly answer questions about whether he believed Orr comments were a sign he had sided with the new Government, or on the tone of Brownlee’s comments, but said Orr would have taken a lesson from the episode.

“I am sure he [Orr] will have seen what Mr Brownlee has said, and you know, there’ll just be a lesson there in terms of sticking to the knitting in terms of what his remit is.

“I’m sure he’ll want to be very careful about not wanting to step into legitimate political debates, rather than his mandate as Reserve Bank governor.”

Bridges said National had supported Orr being appointed governor.

“He’s a good guy, he’s a clever economist, he’s a great communicator, so he’s got the skills to be governor.”

That “stick to his knitting” line was particular welcome, but it was still a pretty emollient statement. Opposition leaders don’t wade in every day criticising the Governor –  in fact, memory suggests (perhaps incorrectly) it is really quite unusual –  but it was clearly a statement that was seeking a de-escalation.  There was no criticism of Orr’s appointment or his basic skills and qualities, and really just a quite moderate call for a minor course correction.   When I saw the Bridges comments, I assumed that would be the end of the matter: the Opposition would take it no further, Orr would retire to lick his wounds and reflect, and perhaps in time emissaries might be dispatched to make clear that the Bank recognised where its core responsibilities did and didn’t lie.  Others at the Reserve Bank, meanwhile, (better schooled in the responsibilities and limits of a central bank) would breath a sigh of relief

But no.  Instead late on Wednesday the Governor put out a full page statement under the Reserve Bank name defending himself, and if anything taking the offensive, claiming the freedom (nay, responsibility) to speak out on almost anything.   “Doubling down” was my quick summary.

The Governor began

I greatly respect and appreciate the operational independence of the Reserve Bank.

Maybe, but talking so freely on all manner of contentious political issues does nothing to foster long-term public support for that operational independence.

My comments about infrastructure investment reported in the recent Stuff article of 15 May related not only to my previous role as CEO of the NZ Super Fund, but also to my current role as Governor of the Reserve Bank.

There are two points here.  First, as Governor he shouldn’t be giving interviews about his previous job –  we didn’t hear Don Brash giving interviews about Trustbank or Alan Bollard about Treasury once they were Governor. It is all the more important to maintain that clear separation given that in this case the Governor had previously had another government job.    But, second, this is where he begins to double-down, claiming that it is right and appropriate, as Governor, to be talking openly about these contentious political issues, for which he has no direct policy responsibility.

He disagrees

I spoke openly and frankly because that is a desired feature of the role of Reserve Bank Governor.

Yes, we would welcome a Governor who spoke clearly, and accessibly, on the issues Parliament has assigned to him.  His immediate predecessor didn’t do that bit of the job well at all. But that is very different from a Governor sounding off, without nuance, on all manner of highly contentious issues.   The Governor himself may “desire” to do so –  and no doubt it makes good copy so journalists won’t say no –  but perhaps the Governor could point to any other indication that the public interest is being served by the approach he is taking?

There follow a couple of paragraphs about the specifics of NZSF and Christchurch rebuild issues, including

Any lack of investment by the NZ Super Fund was not caused by lack of commitment from either Mr Brownlee or the NZ Super Fund. Rather it was due to no access for third-party capital into the core infrastructure space, for example, ports (air and sea), transport, electricity distribution and so on. These were decisions made by the appropriate authorities at the time.

It still isn’t clear why NZSF involvement (or any third-party capital) would have been appropriate in any of the major public aspects of the rebuild process,  most of which were (as my commenter points out) well below the size threshold NZSF itself says it is looking for (and bigger ones, notably the convention centre and the stadium remain of questionable economic value).    But, even setting that to one side, there is something extraordinary about this issue being fought on the website of the operationally-independent Reserve Bank.  It is, quite simply, none of the Bank’s responsibility.

But here the Governor pivots to try to claim that this is all very much part of his new responsibilities.

That challenge is not unique to Christchurch or New Zealand. It is a global financial challenge and one that leads to financial instability at times, especially stressed balance sheets.

This is a stretch, to say the very least.    Even if we were to allow that it was a “global financial challenge”, it wasn’t one in Christchurch, and certainly posed (and poses) no threat to financial stability in New Zealand.     One might, as well, worry about pots of government money, and the way they can be used to subvert good decisionmaking, robust allocation of capital, and so on –  perhaps especially if the Governor of a central bank starts championing the causes of such government funds.

The Governor attempts to generalise

The Reserve Bank Act requires us to promote a sound and efficient financial system. The Policy Targets Agreement that I have signed with the Minister of Finance also requires that, along with maintaining low and stable inflation, the Reserve Bank must contribute to maximising sustainable employment.

But even here he, no doubt deliberately, skates over some important language in the Act and the Policy Targets Agreement.  For example, the Act does not require the Reserve Bank to “promote a sound and efficient financial system” .  Here is the key provision of the Reserve Bank Act

68 Exercise of powers under this Part

The powers conferred on the Governor-General, the Minister, and the Bank by this Part shall be exercised for the purposes of—

(a)  promoting the maintenance of a sound and efficient financial system; or

(b)  avoiding significant damage to the financial system that could result from the failure of a registered bank.

In other words, it isn’t a general obligation, but a constraint on how the Bank’s statutory powers are used.  The specific statutory powers to regulate banks must be used in a way that promotes the maintenance of a sound and efficient financial system.  There is quite a difference from weighing in championing PPPs, more government debt, or specific solutions to particular Christchurch rebuild issues.

Similarly, in the Policy Targets Agreement –  a provision governing the conduct of monetary policy – there is just this descriptive statement

The conduct of monetary policy will maintain a stable general level of prices, and contribute to supporting maximum sustainable employment within the economy.

and a requirement to explain in each MPS

The conduct of monetary policy will maintain a stable general level of prices, and contribute to supporting maximum sustainable employment within the economy.

No one thinks that offering interviews on PPPs, sustainable agriculture, or the Christchurch rebuild is what is meant by “the conduct of monetary policy”.

Well, no one other than the Governor that is. Because he goes on

I have spoken about specific issues recently because increased infrastructure investment opportunities provide sound investment choices, risk diversification for financing goods and services, and improves maximum sustainable employment by relieving capacity constraints.   These are all core components of the Reserve Bank’s role and something we often speak about in our Financial Stability Reports.

I almost fell off my chair laughing when I read that line.  When I was young at the Bank we used to occasionally argue that we were free to talk about absolutely anything because almost anything could be argued to affect price stability, in some form or another (resource usage and all that).  There was even a statutory provision.

10 Formulation and implementation of monetary policy

In formulating and implementing monetary policy the Bank shall—

(a)  have regard to the efficiency and soundness of the financial system:
(b) consult with, and give advice to, the Government and such persons or organisations as the Bank considers can assist it to achieve and maintain the economic objective of monetary policy.

But no one took that sort of ambitious –  rather silly – argument very seriously.  At least, it appears, until the Governor came along.    Now, it seems, the Governor wants to openly argue that absolutely anything if within his purview.

Even then he seems confused. For example, he claims that

…..increased infrastructure investment opportunities………improves maximum sustainable employment by relieving capacity constraints.

Well, maybe eventually if the infrastructure investment itself is robust and cost-effective (a test much infrastructure spending in New Zealand fails).  But, as no doubt his economists could point out to him, in the short to medium increased infrastructure spending puts more pressure on resources, and exacerbates capacity constraints and inflationary pressure (all that additional spending before the capacity comes on line).  And then he goes on to assert that these are “core components” of what the Reserve Bank does. and are “something we often speak about in the our Financial Stability Reports”.   Which is an odd claim, since issues about relieving capacity constraints would appear more naturally to belong in Monetary Policy Statements.  And doubly odd in that when I checked the most recent Financial Stability Report, there was a but one reference to “infrastructure” in the entire document, and that a reference to something they call the “retirement saving infrastructure”.   But there is a new FSR out next week, so I guess the Governor will be ensuring it does touch on infrastructure issues?

It all smacks of a statement pulled together in a rush, under pressure.  He clearly hasn’t stopped to think of the total non-viability of a Governor addressing such issues in ways the government of the day doesn’t like (and thus the inappropriateness of only addressing it in ways they do like) or of the implications of his position –  at future press conferences or FEC hearings he’d have no grounds to refuse comments on almost any aspect of policy some mischevious questioner wanted to ask about.  Immigration policy Governor?  Welfare policy Governor?  And so on.  It is a reckless path.

It isn’t unlawful, of course, for the Governor to speak on these issues.  Perhaps, over time, a Governor could develop a sufficient reputation in office for his stewardship of his core responsibilities that people look to him or her to comment occasionally on a slightly wider range of issues. But to wade in, on so many contentious issues, in an utterly non-nuanced way, so early in his term seems extremely unwise and quite inappropriate.  The Minister of Finance and the chair of the Bank’s Board should be making that point forcefully to the Governor, as often as is necessary until his behaviour changes.

Back when the Reserve Bank Board advertised the job last year, two of the qualities they claimed to be looking for were:

  • Personal style will be consistent with the national importance and gravitas of the role.

  • The successful candidate will also demonstrate an appreciation of the significance of the Bank’s independence and the behaviours required for ensuring long-term sustainability of that independence.

Orr’s approach at present isn’t consistent with either of those.

And he appears to be carrying on as he started. In the Sunday Star-Times yesterday, Orr was again being quoted on things that are little or none of his responsibility.

Last year, New Zealand banks reported a combined $5.19b in profits, up just over $355 million year-on-year.

New Reserve Bank governor Adrian Orr said he was perplexed by the ongoing strength in bank profits.

Perhaps he might be “perplexed” but it really isn’t anything to do with a prudential regulator.  If there are competition issues, we have a Commerce Act and government ministers.  He went on

Checks on whether bank profits were sustainable would form a significant part of the “culture check” being undertaken by the Reserve Bank and Financial Markets Authority, Orr said.

A Royal Commission of Inquiry into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry in Australia revealed serious misconduct by New Zealand banks’ parent companies.

That prompted New Zealand regulators to demand more information from New Zealand banks, which they had until May 18 to deliver.

“I think you’ve always got to be sure that they are competing properly and they are behaving responsibly,” Orr said.

“If they’re making profits, good on them, but let’s make sure they’re long-term sustainable profits and there’s true competition in the markets.”

To repeat, almost none of this is anything to do with the Reserve Bank’s statutory areas of responsibility.  Perhaps it plays to a populist mood, but it fails to respect boundaries, including the reasons why we assign different functions to different agencies.  And the public mood is a fickle mistress.

Perhaps comments on bank profits are slightly less egregious, in some circumstances, than those on climate change, sustainable agriculture, capital gains taxes, PPPs or whatever, but none of its suggests a Governor with the sort of self-discipline and recognition of limits that the role demands.  Much of it seems more attuned to grabbing headlines, than to offering the sort of nuanced reflection that might occasionally provide a useful contribution to a thoughtful debate on some important issues.

It is still early days in the Governor’s term, but a change of approach is already well overdue.  It is not as if there aren’t plenty of issues that the Governor is most definitely responsible for –  and accountable for –  that he could be getting quietly on with.