THE PRESS FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 1982. Plans and deeds

Press, 19 November 1982, Page 20

THE PRESS FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 1982. Plans and deeds

To argue that there should be less Government expenditure, . greater efficiency in Government, that there should be less protection for enterprises, that it should be the aim of the Government to provide a climate for growth, and that there should be fewer Government regulations, might seem to be mouthing the conventional wisdom of the 1980 s rather than outlining a programme for development. Those views, are very much what the latest report of the New Zealand Planning Council, “The Public Sector - an Overview” contains. The expenditure of the Government rises; the efficiency of the Government is difficult to judge; even if the climate is right for growth, there is little or no growth; the protection for industries , through import licensing is still the prevailing method, and the production of new regulations is one of the few growth industries. The views in the latest report have not been adopted, though the growth in public expenditure has been restrained and the protection of some industries is being lifted under the plan for closer economic relations with Australia and publicly owned enterprises being exposed to competition. Nevertheless, at the risk of being repetitive, the Planning Council is putting the ideas forward yet again. The report is not so much an exploration of ideas but summarises other reports that the Planning Council has made or has commissioned. There seems to be an undue emphasis on economics. Perhaps this comes about through the belief that the progress of the community is going to be stalled until the economy improves and until there is'money available to turn to other uses. Although the Planning Council, in this report, says little that is new, the fact that the Planning Council has said it lends some consensus and authority to some of the views, however well worn or even platitudinous they-might seem to be. The report is the last of the old, larger Planning Council. Possibly it is difficult to do other than to deal in generalities if a Minister, in this instance, the Minister of National Development, Mr Birch, sits on the council. It might be hoped that, if a Government Minister sits on the council, the recommendations of the report would have at least one champion in the Cabinet.

One of the most interesting conclusions to be drawn from the work that has been done under the auspices of the Planning Council is that the Government has caused the composition of social assistance to change. There has been a change in the distribution of incomes. The elderly are now better off than they were. While this

occurred, less tax revenue has been available to permit spouse and single income family tax rebates. It. could be argued that national superannuation thus distorts the spending on social welfare generally. However, the National Superannuation scheme was part of the platform on which the National Government was elected in 1975 and the Government has stuck with it. Furthermore, the net cost of the scheme is not dramatically higher than what a continuation of the previous scheme would be costing.

The council also makes the interesting point that public or private ownership of an enterprise is a less important issue than the way in which an enterprise is managed. Presumably with its own view in mind, the council devotes part of the report to recommendations about measuring the efficiency of the way in which Government departments carry out their functions. The council thinks . that public enterprises should be accountable to a much greater extent than some of them are now.

The council throws in a hint that need should be a more prominent criterion in determining social assistance from the taxpayer. The most obvious way of interpreting this is to believe that means and incomes testing should play a more prominent role in social welfare. That is at present being done in the benefits for students who cannot find work during their vacation. Any Government is likely to tread carefully about announcing an intention of introducing means or incomes testing or both for social welfare benefits. The Planning Council is not the Government and could have spelt out what it meant. It is typical of the lack of definiteness that it did not. If the Planning Council really wants public discussion about the important issues it raises, it will have to learn to say clearly what it means. Better still, the council will consider political realities and try to spell out how its proposals, many of them electorally unpopular, can be sold to the public, or sectors of the community. By no means all of the proposals of the council have been impracticable; they have been earnestly offered as ways to improve living standards and a fairer or more productive distribution of wealth. Time and again, however, the actions proposed have been easier said than done and recommendations that might be beneficial have had all the appearance to the public of being politically impossible.