Its now quite clear that things are never going to change while Labour and National play good cop bad cop with us but continue business as usual not even attempting to dodge the iceberg when they rearrange the deck chairs. I guess the real honest truth is that we are now in the third world but no-one will admit it, and we have had worse than third world governance out of our politicians for the whole post WWII period. It’s hopeless. This government was our last hope. The only good thing they’ve really done is confirm the truth – no-one speaks for us!

Also Oz is resistant to doing stupid stuff like getting offside with the biggest economy in the world or signing up to a ETS that they know will hurt their standard of living.

“… please give us the following numbers on Australia:

1. Mining as percentage of GDP.

2. People employed in mining as percentage of the work force.

Save me looking them up, Berend post them please.

However, I quote the Wall Street Journal of 9 November: “…Minerals comprise 8% of Australian GDP but 48% of total trade…”

I think you will find services well under half that proportion.

As for Berend’s

“…Mining has very little to do with a 50% wage gap between us and them…”

Stupid me, Berend, I thought that was why hundreds of young Kiwis head for West Australia to make big money in the mines, alongside Aussies with trade and other qualifications who come for the wages.

Labour has long ago forgotten its founding constituency of miners and hard-work folk though. Otherwise I would have long ago been put right by a lefty.

DANYL:… the reason we couldn’t copy all the initiatives of Aussie was because we had a Liabour Government which collared all the money through high taxation.(and then wasted it)

When the East Asian tigers took off, tariffs on manufactured goods were sinking fast- down from 40-60% on average globally in the 1960, to around 4% by the end of the decade.

We specialise in goods that are hard to sell, and where our trading competitors, spends hundreds of billions of dollars every year to lower our returns.

Hell may freeze over and Winston become a virgin first.

[DPF: I have criticised John Key on many issues, including the 2025 report. But that doesn't mean I don't think he is overall doing a good job - a view shared by most NZers.

I criticise MPs when I disagree with what they do, and support them when I agree. That goes for John Key, Trevor Mallard and Russel Norman. The only exception is Winston who is always wrong]

Please post your answer here. One hint: it wasn’t during the Labour years.

I thought Notional was the government now. Neither the Notional govt or the Brash taskforce have shown how this might be achieved, either.

And while japan, taiwan, korea, singapore have done well without vast mineralr eserves, you’d run a million miles before adopting the corporatism that brought about their success.

1. Mining as percentage of GDP.

2. People employed in mining as percentage of the work force.

Shocked when you found the numbers? That’s what I thought. Don’t repeat Michael Cullen’s nonsense here as we actually know the numbers. Mining has very little to do with a 50% wage gap between us and them.

At a long-term cycle thing, we got into a lot of trouble during the 70s and early 80s and our macro-imbalances (current account, budget deficit, inflation, debt) put us in a much worse starting position. We’ve been trying to play catchup for a long time.

The other problem is the size of the Government spend in NZ (and it’s composition). As a general trend, public sector spending tends to rise a little faster than GDP. So the percentage tends to rise. NZ’s unique problem, is that we have an economy (in per capita terms) that is smaller than the US and Australia but with a much higher level of Government spending. It is out of proportion (too large) for an economy of this size. It is starting to approximate many European economies, which again, have much larger per capita incomes.

So we’re pretending that we can afford a European-sized welfare state on an economy that is actually, too small for the job.

…Why don’t we do what the Australians have done – highly progressive tax system, invest in research and technology, employer super, capital gains ect?

Nothing to do of course with having world leading or near world leading resources of iron ore, coal, uranium, bauxite, gas; major reserves of gold; substantial reserves of rare earths and minor minerals; interesting reserves of oil. Nor with having a variety of climates in that vast continent that allow it to be a leading player in beef, wool, wine and agriculture products ranging from rice and pineapples to apples and apricots?

Countries without such resources can of course be highly successful economically, for example, Japan and Taiwan. But they have definitely not followed policies similar to NZ Labour. In both cases business, chiefly big business, has a much bigger say in strategy.

It’s very easy to say we need conservative, incremental and sustained growth, Danyl, but Labour has not shown in practice or even in theory, how NZ might achieve this.