Sir Roger returns to haunt – Richard Long

THE DOMINION POST: The return of Roger Douglas. You have to admit to a touch of nostalgia.

 

The architect of the 1980s reforms suddenly looms, Dracula-like, from what everyone assumed was a retirement grave and starts speculating about a Cabinet position, privatisation and a flat tax.

 

It's the best thing Labour have had going for them for a long time.

 

Sir Roger was once one of theirs. But they have now disowned him and demonised him - while keeping most of his reforms - and like to use him to frighten the electorate, like an evil character from the Brothers Grimm.

 

He's lurking in the woods again, Deputy Prime Minister Michael Cullen warns.

 

He could get loose if National and ACT get elected. But National leader John Key settled that in emphatic terms. Not on his watch, he said.

 

No position in a National Cabinet, no hidden agenda. He even allowed himself to get mildly annoyed - clever politics that.

 

He was buggered if he was going to allow National's policies to be subverted by some right-wing crusade. ACT have always had the subtlety of a sledgehammer. Zealots cannot comprehend that politics is the art of the possible.

 

They were advised by a hot-shot Australian strategist before the 2005 election that as National had stolen most of their voters they needed to shake them loose if they were to improve.

 

Accordingly they sandbagged National at strategic moments. Never mind the effects this would have on the chances of a centreright government: they were dealing with survival.

 

The then National leader, Don Brash, was powerless to deal with this as he was on record as backing ACT economic policies and had even been described by ACT as its tenth MP.

 

Mr Key has none of this baggage and is a genuine centrist. In some countries Sir Roger would have settled into a revered position as the saviour of an economy which was on the rocks and was operating, as Labour leader David Lange noted at the time, like a Polish shipyard.

 

A sheep retention scheme subsidy had produced unmarketable mutton which was ground up and dumped at sea. The Railways were instructed to absorb excess staff to keep unemployment down.

 

The Post and Telegraph Office had a staff the size of a small New Zealand city.

 

Each election year new Post Office branches would sprout in marginal electorates for political reasons, not business demand. In one jump we went from the most regulated economy outside the eastern bloc, to one of the most free.

 

Top income tax rates were slashed from 66 to 33 cents. There is an echo of the Douglas reforms now in Britain, where the Labour Government is in turmoil over the need to close uneconomic post office branches.

 

Twenty years ago Douglas lieutenant Richard Prebble dealt with that problem here. An official observed to Mr Prebble that he would not be able to close all 432 uneconomic branches at once.

 

"Just give me the list, I'll deal with the politics," Mr Prebble famously responded - and promptly closed the lot.

 

As for Sir Roger's proposed flat tax, it is worth recalling that the Labour Cabinet then was unanimously in favour of the radical proposal till Lange took fright and unilaterally abandoned the measure while Sir Roger was overseas.

 

Sir Roger returned to fight for the tax but basically lost the battle on the front page of this newspaper, which published in great detail the findings of an official committee investigation into the effects of such a tax.

 

There were doubts, among other things, whether income maintenance proposals for lower wage earners would work as intended. The report was never intended to see the light of day, but some democratic soul wrapped it in brown paper and sent it to me, to Sir Roger's great chagrin.

 

And that device, I can't help but muse, is a whole lot better than whistleblowing. The whistle-blower in the Hawke's Bay District Health Board saga got restructured out of a job.

 

The Environment staffer who blew the whistle in the Madeleine Setchell case suffered much personal abuse.

 

A whole lot better, it seems to me, to wrap the stuff in brown paper and send it to your favourite reporter. Mind you, I get wistful whenever I think about the 23-cent flat tax that could have been - and the fillip that would have brought the economy.