Mike's Minute: The Treasury report shows why Labour won't win the election

I said earlier this week that the Government will be re-elected next year because, all things being equal, history tends to show you get two terms. 

Plus, the Opposition remain the same people who stuffed the place a year and a half ago and the pain of that, the closeness of that, is still real for too many of us. 

Unless of course they rejuvenate the party or say sorry – none of which is going to happen. 

This was all backed up by Treasury who, in one of their latest papers which is well worth reading, basically says the Government overspent. They were told not to overspend. 

And whatever spending they were doing should've been targeted and directly linked to Covid. None of that advice was followed. 

They sprayed money at a rate that equated to $66billion, or 20% of GDP, and when the worst was over they kept spraying. 

And here we are a couple of years later bogged down in their economic incompetence. 

The politics of it all is in full swing as Labour tried to blame the current Government for the mess. What's making that argument slightly complicated is the ongoing criticism, which is justifiable if you ask me, that for all the announcements and noise, this is a timid Government that really had licence to go for broke and they have largely chickened out. 

They have dabbled and poked and prodded and done some decent, common sense stuff. In just the past few weeks we've had changes to building products, garden sheds, speed limits, RUC's and NCEA. 

There is no shortage of bits and pieces but it's not transformational, hence the slow progress and the opening for Labour to have a crack. 

Labour are praying you forget all this is on them. But it is and the Treasury paper very clearly says so. 

They told Grant Robertson to tighten it up, to be disciplined, but socialists with majorities and egos are not for turning and so the ruinous money party was on. 

Writing about it doesn't fix it. But it is proof positive that this lot inherited one of the most ill-disciplined, ill-advised, arrogant, bungling, fiscal messes of the modern age and if you don’t believe the National Party, believe Treasury. 

Labour don’t have a leg to stand on. 

And the same people who did that to us are still there wanting you to forget and give them another crack in a years time. 

That is why they will not win. 

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