Goff has a bob each way on Tiptoe Tuesday

ABOUT THE HOUSE - BY JANE CLIFTON

OPINION: The trouble with being a relatively new Opposition leader is that one's opponents have inconveniently good memories about what one did and didn't do in government - as Phil Goff found when he evaluated the Government's new fiscal plan in Parliament yesterday.

"We know," he thundered in his best Black-Day-For-New Zealand voice, "that GST is regressive!"

"You brought it in!" pointed out National's Nick Smith, who was not even a spotty backbencher when Mr Goff proudly helped promote and implement the first 10 per cent GST in the mid-1980s.

Mr Goff brought the House to a noisy standstill when he went even further and declared, "I oppose GST!" This was news to everyone, not least his own caucus, as GST has been uncontroversial Labour party policy for more than 20 years.

"I oppose the increase in GST," he hastily corrected himself - only to be loudly reminded that he had been a senior member of the past government that increased it to 12.5 per cent.

Still, at least in Opposition you can have a bob each way. While predicting the new fiscal plan would cause catastrophic hardship, Mr Goff also dismissed it as "having very little substance".

Mr Key's minders had billed the announcement as Big Tuesday. "More like Tiptoe Tuesday," said Mr Goff. This might have left onlookers unsure whether 15 per cent GST would grind the faces of the poor, or merely chuck them under the chin a bit, which was a pity, since the other party leaders hardly threw light on the matter.

ACT leader Rodney Hide began his contribution to the fiscal package debate in the manner of an Oscar acceptance speech. The new fiscal programme had only been made possible because of ACT, he said, and he would therefore like to thank all ACT's supporters, his fellow MPs and the members of other caucuses with whom ACT had worked so tirelessly to bring about much-needed reform.

Almost as an afterthought, he thanked Prime Minister John Key with whom he had worked closely.

"We have built a mutual respect and trust," he said. This, if true, is just as well, since this is more than Mr Hide has managed to build with his own caucus, which is still debating whether it should sack him following a failed coup manoeuvre last year.

Mr Hide then devoted the bulk of his speech to the "three strikes" policy, which is not part of the fiscal package, but for which ACT also takes full credit, thus making it relevant to the debate, in his view.

Green co-leader Russel Norman avoided detailed evaluation of the fiscal package by declaring its central purpose, to boost economic growth, was a very bad thing.

His was not a train of argument that everyone would have been easily able to follow. He said the concentration on GDP did not factor in the effect of the death of seagrass on the snapper population. This meant there were fewer snapper for amateur fishermen to catch in order to get themselves a free dinner. People standing on rocks to catch a fish for their dinner were not a factor in GDP either, he said. Such people were refusing to participate in GDP by getting their own food for free - seagrass allowing, presumably.

At length, Mr Norman managed to make clear that, in his view, all this non-participation in GST was a good thing, valuing as it did "nature's prosperity".

Mr Hide, sitting balefully across the aisle from him and making small gestures of impatience, might have concluded that the death of seagrass was good for GDP if it stopped all this unproductive and GST-avoidant behaviour.

The package itself was presented at a clipping pace by Mr Key, whose delivery grew progressively faster and more gabbled. It would be nice to think this peculiar rush to get through it was out of embarrassment at having to read awful euphemisms such as "progressing an action plan to unlock resources" and "removing barriers that prevent resources being used more productively" - meaning digging up tracts of pristine land in the conservation estate - and blatant non-sequiturs, such as hailing a new fund to invest in conservation, then revealing the fund would come from royalties derived from mining the conservation estate.

He may also have felt a bit guilty about couching a pending price rise in all goods and services, and therefore in inflation and probably interest rates and the dollar, as "the Government . . . carefully considering a modest increase in the rate of GST to no more than 15 per cent".

But he didn't appear to notice he was committing a subtler faux pas - delivering the whole speech with his back to Finance Minister Bill English, who bore this with a faintly menacing half-smile.

But never fear - Labour's Trevor Mallard interpreted the body language in a mocking bray. "Look! They're still arguing!"

- © Fairfax NZ News