The budget

Unusually, the Editor of the Star Midweek gave me a little promo on the front page of the paper – or else he had a little gap to fill - and decided to introduce my column thus:

Mike Crowl in his Column 8 today writes about the budget; well, sort of writes about the budget; well, would you believe almost writes about the budge on…Page 2.

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The budget

A friend asked me if I was writing about the budget. (I hadn’t thought about it.) Without waiting for a reply, he answered his own question: Well, I don’t suppose it’s all that funny, anyway.

So I’m half-heartedly writing about the budget which, funny or not, by the time you read this will have already banged or whimpered into our lives.

Firstly, I’m pleased to see from the Listener’s alternative budget that I’m not classed in the wealthy bracket anymore (in spite of the untold millions I earn from writing this column each week).

In fact, our size of family doesn’t even make it on to their charts. And it’s not because we have seventeen kids either.

I’d better explain. After my wife and I had our first child it became a standing joke between us that when anyone asked how many kids in total we were having, we’d say, seventeen. Even our Catholic friends turned pale.

We didn’t make it. Blame it on a lack of stamina, or too much writing of Columns Eight, or the high-chair falling apart, or running out of nappies - when it comes to a large family we hardly hit the mark.

There’s something to be said for a large family, though. (I haven’t been able to find out what it is, so I’ll carry on.) Older moviegoers will remember Clifton Webb as the indomitable father in the film, Cheaper by the Dozen. He claimed it was more economical to have a dozen kids and proved it time and again by fronting up to bemused shop-keepers and asking for discounts.

I didn’t see the film, but I did read the book. Practically all I can recall about it now was that the father, a time and motion study man, insisted it was speedier to do up his shirt buttons from the bottom, instead of the top. He would have made a successful politician, I think.

Oh, well, back to the budget. I see one of the economists in the Listener thinks we need more people in the country to make the economy work. I’ve held this same despised theory for years – although, like any economist worth his salt, I won’t be cornered about the details (and now Mr Birch is even coming round to my way of thinking).

Surely if more people come into the country (preferably with some ready cash) then there’ll be a need for more facilities and goods, and, in spite of what pessimists would say, more employment. New Zealand’s present immigration policy seems to be like a person who digs a moat round his castle then pulls up the drawbridge – and wonders why he feels cut off. No doubt some bureaucrats would say of the immigration policy that it’s all right here, but I can’t agree.

There’s probably an optimum figure at which things cease to work well, but at three and a half million I don’t think we’ve reached it. We’re already suffering in the South Island from an exodus north – why not open up some of our endless acres to the bodies standing shoulder to shoulder overseas? They’d be glad to have some personal space.

Oh well, back to the budget.

More people, more pollution, some would say. One scientist writes that because of pollution and jammed roads and motorway costs, bigger cities are now forcing drivers to leave their cars at home. People have to use public transport. It’ll come here, no doubt.

And built into that carless age we have a solution to unemployment. Everyone who’s anyone will have to take a bus, or a train – remember trains? Believe it or not, there’ll be buses going everywhere you want to go, instead of just where they think it’s economical.

Won’t that make the bus drivers glad? (They might celebrate by turning the lights back on in the buses so that when we’re travelling we can read again.)

I was going to get back to the budget, but unfortunately, having fewer pages to work with than our Ruthie, I seem to have run out of room.

 

Clifton Webb with some of his dozen children

This column probably shows why it was a good idea I never took up the role of an economist. Not that anyone asked me to. Since 1991 New Zealand’s population has increased to over five million, still no large number, since many cities in the world have the same population. And while we have a lot more cars, our roads are hardly jam-packed.

Unfortunately there has been a change in thinking about immigration, but not, I feel, a wise change. Instead of inviting people who had some money behind them, we’ve taken in a number of people who have nothing and who also bring their families with them – who have nothing – and we find them houses (somehow, even though houses are in short supply) – and we maintain them until they get on their feet. In spite of this, many immigrants prove to be practical and entrepreneurial citizens; a number do not, unfortunately.

As for stopping people bringing cars into cities, the powers that be eventually came up with a seemingly credible reason why we shouldn’t: climate change, and the damage cars’ emissions  was doing to the planet. So parking spaces are increasingly removed in cities, replaced by cycle lanes. Some cities are amenable to cycles, since their mostly flat. The city I lived in when this column was written was built on seven hills (supposedly) and cycling was only of value to people who stayed in the flat parts of the city, or who were excessively energetic.