Truths no politician is telling you this election

An ex-politician can say things a current politician can't:

The country’s economy is in a mess. It was in a mess before Covid. All that Covid has done is hasten the day of reckoning and helped highlight the burgeoning debt. But the rot was in long before that. Bill English made a half hearted attempt to pull things together after the growing shambles left by Clark and Cullen. But there was shambles even before Labour...
    We are trying to live a five star lifestyle on a two star income. We spend like a fat cat and earn like an alley cat. We want the cake with all the trimmings but we can barely afford the flour and sugar.

Why is no politician even talking about this problem, let alone promising reform of the magnitude and type required? Why is no-one demanding it?

Any party or politician who promised reform of the magnitude and type required would 'be gone by lunchtime.' The MSM would crucify and then ignore. We are so conditioned to being promised the moon we think we own it. There is almost zero understanding of the perilous position we are in. When you are sucking the tit you don’t want to hear the udder is dry.

So what would a politician with balls offer?

They would face the debt mountain and the agony that health care and superannuation are rapidly becoming unaffordable...
    Growth in GDP won’t fix it. Our real GDP/capita is stuffed. We don’t know how to work smart, how to achieve higher productivity, how to attract high performers as immigrants, how to figure out shifting investment from low-return housing to high tech, how to create an attractive new business investment climate, how to improve the quality of our exports rather than the quantity...
    How many politicians are focusing on any of the above? Instead they are clambering over one another to build a bikeway over a vulnerable harbour bridge. We want to give ourselves more holidays, more sick days, more guaranteed paypackets...
    We are becoming a nation of low performing advisors... Can a population of 5 million people (a medium-sized city in many places) really justify 150 government departments, 26 Cabinet Ministers and Under Secretaries, 80 local authorities, endless numbers of states agencies, 8 universities, all expensive fiefdoms with grossly overpaid staff. There are populations of 5 million with one governing authority, one hospital, one bureaucracy.
    With all of that low-productivity army we cannot fix a housing problem; we are lost in a jungle of low-quality inadequate roading, uneconomic rail, battles over ports, broken sewage and water infrastructure. Our kids are leaving school poorly educated, often unable to read or write and feeling the world owes them everything. Our health system is managed by waiting lists and trying to supply ambulances at the bottom of the cliff. Welfare is about entitlement not need....
    The longer we leave the day of reckoning the harder it will be. I fear for my grandchildren having to live through the reforms because it won’t be pretty. It will be as tumultuous as it will be inevitable.
    Is there a politician who cares? Do any understand? Is there a steely spine among them? I doubt it. But happen, it will. Call it necessity.