Phil Goff has admitted that Labour made a few mistakes and let sideshows sidetrack them from what really mattered.
But he hasn’t yet and maybe never will, accept that they also did the wrong thing with the things that mattered.
He cites Working For Families as one of Labour’s achievements.
Turning middle and upper income families into beneficiaries is nothing to be proud of. This policy and others like interest free student loans, KiwiRail, buying vast tracts of the high country at inflated prices . . . put New Zealand into recession early and continue to hold back the recovery.
Nanny state sideshows annoyed people. But Labour’s expensive social policies and the handicaps they put in the way of economic growth did, and continue to do, much more harm.
Homepaddock 
Reading Mr Goff’s preconference promo has all the hallmarks of a US military spokesman talking about collateral damage.
He lists some of the minor matters that can be deflected to others not in his party or if they were in the party, “have now taken the gap”.
I know he will not address the economic majors that you have listed but I would add the shameless grab for a constitutional rort for a further term, the EFA, the continued support for an increasingly discredited minister of foreign affairs and racing, the ineffectual and fruitless dredge of Mr key’s time at Merril Lynch for dirt, the support for an increasingly politicised public service and the complete arrogance in the face of ebbing political support. Oh to have a ruthless media to take issue with this whitewash when just as the spin comment from the military spokesman ignores the actual dead civilians Mr Goff ignores the dead bodies of our economy, our democracy and our future.
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actually, I’m not sure you can claim to understand compound interest (the exponential function) and still champion economic growth.
Where I do my learning, that’s an oxymoron.
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He’s never had a real job or been a real employer..how can he understand anything. But he can certainly gab.
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His muck raking in the Worth affair and Labours venonmus atacks ON Bennet & English do not enhance Labours standing at all
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Seems to me that creaming-off 50,000,000 in ‘currency trading’ wasn’t much of a real job either.
Neither Key, nor Goff, nor the current Green of Maori leadership, actually get anywhere nere where we have to go.
Political commentator Colin James tried to point this out in a recent op/ed in the ODT, probably aimed at the junior Labour ranks – people like Caygill junior. James understands where our species is headed, and is worth reading carefully.
We have to remember that growth hit it’s last possible ‘doubling time’ last year, which meant that the ‘sub-prime’ scapegoat was a symptom, not a cause. That was just the manifestation of fiscal activity overshoot – momentum overshooting any underpinning.
Any effort to kick-start that dead motorbike, will only (at best)see us run for a short time on reserve.
The leadership needed to address a powerdown scenario hasn’t even surfaced yet – it will – and what we are seeing is the dying throes of the last.
Anyone with ten more years left in them, will witness the whole transition.
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Currency trading was only ‘one’ of the (real) jobs he had. Good pay though wouldn’t you agree? Less than 1 year in so be patient. It’s like trying to turn the (NZ) Titanic around with some of the engrained mind processes.
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good analogy. Which way was it facing when it foundered, again?
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