Mike's Minute: Labour's fiscal plan is a failure

With the period of digestion now complete, I think it is more than fair to suggest that the Labour Party's fiscal plan has been marked a failure. 

This is not just me, but as far as I can read virtually every journalist and commentator, including economists, say so. 

This politically should be a disaster. Economic credibility, this election in particular, is everything. 

The election's almost sole vote swinging or determining issue is: who do you think can run the economy better? 

Has the Government done enough to convince you they have stopped the bleeding and a path to better days is in front of us? Or do Labour have an alternative plan that appeals enough to you to give them your vote? 

In that last bit is their biggest problem. By looking to be as close to National as possible, they have stuck to the $2.4 billion new money annually. They have promised the same surplus target, and they've more broadly promised debt reduction over time. 

So, ironically, there's not really any reason to vote for them given it's no different. 

But what has undone them is no one can square away the head room, the $10 billion, and the equity bill that’s coming. 

Even if it sits within the $10 billion that means nothing left for anything outside health, which is partly covered by the CGT. 

Police, defence, cost of living, teacher's strikes – there is no money. So they have bagged the Government for austerity and yet offer the same thing, if not worse. 

Not one person has made it work arithmetically. They have snookered themselves. 

The PREFU came and went. The fiscal plan came and went. Those who quite rightly were suspicious that there was something not right with all the Labour reassurances that it would all be explained, all add up and all make sense, have been proven correct. 

At the very, very best there are a lot of questions left unanswered. But it's more probable, in reality, that it was always a con that they were hoping you wouldn’t ask too many questions about. 

But they made such a song and dance about the big reveal that when it finally came, the snake oil almost drowned us.