We all know that Labour’s numbers don’t stack up. They are banking the world on Capital Gains Tax filling the massive holes in their budget. The problem is that no one really believes them because Phil Goff keeps muffing the numbers. Phil Goff fails the Blink Test and as a result so does Labour.
Labour still wants to borrow billions more than National at a time in the world where debt is considered toxic.
David Farrar points out as did Steven Joyce yesterday that it isn’t just Labour’s big spending policies that should have us worried it it the policies of the “Coalition Stack”.
We don’t have much to worry about on the National side. If ACT can deliver a couple more seats off of the back of a John Banks win in Epsom we know that they will be looking fore a reduction in debt and in government spending.
This isn’t the case with the Coalition Stack on the left. It includes Labour, Greens, Winston First and the Mana party. All those parties have massive spending committments and as Farrar points out they will all have reasonable stakes in such a hodge-podge of a government should it get over the line.
Quite apart from the fact that Phil Goff has ruled out Hone Harawira (are we really going to believe Phil wouldn’t cut a deal?) and Winston has ruled out everyone (like he did previously), in order to govern Phil Goff must work with all of them. But Labour won’t be in a position of massive power like they have every other time, they will be diminished and have to share, something they don’t do well.
When you add up the spending in the left wing Coalition Stack what you find is actually a mountain of debt that can’t possibly be funded from labour’s capital gains tax. That would require heroic assumptions from even the most optimistic Labour flunky.
Make no mistake, debt is toxic, we have too much now but under the Coalition Stack that Labour would lead that debt mountain would only get worse.
Phil Goff needs to explain that should he be in a position to form a government how exactly he is proposing to pay for the Green promises and NZ First promises and Mana promises. He can’t run from this, he can’t hide, he has to front. If he is to govern with the motley crue of the left and all their big promises he must tell New Zealand how he intends to pay for it.
