"On present form, Luxon is looking like a watered down version of John Key, and Willis a watered down version of Bill English."
"The Prime Minister was elected on the basis that his previous career as CEO meant he had a much greater business acumen than Labour's leaders. ... However, yesterday it was revealed .... that the builder of the now cancelled new ferries ... has put in a claim stemming from the terminated $551 million contract ... [and] KiwRail don't know what will be the size of the claim that the NZ taxpayer will ultimately end up paying. ... [I]t's not up to Kiwi Rail's lawyers to decide what is "fair" - it depends on what HMD's lawyers also believe what is fair - and should the two not agree, it ultimately must be decided in court. Furthermore, the government cannot tell anyone what will be the cost of smaller, scaled-down ferries.
"The crux of the matter is ... the question ... how could PM Luxon & Finance Minister Willis pull out of a billion dollar deal with no idea of the legal consequences?
"With no idea of the costs of the claims that will arise?
"With no idea of the price of a replacement deal?
"PM Luxon talks a big game but has he ever done a three-billion dollar deal before? No. Has he ever pulled out of a billion dollar deal before? No. Elon Musk tried pulling out of a multi-billion dollar deal to buy Twitter. It was a nightmare - so costly that he ended up going ahead with it.
"If Luxon and Willis don't smarten up and prove they know how to do deals ... show they know [for example] how to do a quality-enhancing health-care reform (rather than pretending abolishing the Māori Health Authority is a reform plan) then we will know in quick order that both are not the real deal.
"On present form, Luxon is looking like a watered down version of John Key, and Willis a watered down version of Bill English. Labour were so bad that anything is an improvement. But these two are so far looking like not much of one."
~ Robert MacCulloch from his post 'Who, with an ounce of business sense, pulls out of a deal with no idea of what legal claims will arise, and with no idea of the price of a replacement deal? PM Luxon and Finance Minister Willis.'
3 comments:
I noted with glumness the way National Party people talked up Willis because (among other things) she'd been paid big bucks by Fonterra ($400k/year IIRC), because of course Todd Muller had been talked about the same way and as a Fonterra supplier back then I had only bad memories of the way that executive team had fucked up the company, even before the chickens came home to roost in 2018.
Looks like it's happening again.
Oh, and on the matter of Key, here's me on Kiwiblog in 2008 (may have put this up here before)
what is National going to do should it win this November beyond babysitting the institutions of Labour and the Left. Nursing those things along, tiring all the time and steadily losing votes simply by being in Government and getting blamed for the insanities of those self-same institutions. Until the day comes, one or two election cycles down the road, when a revitalised Labour gets back into power and gets to push forward some more. Ratchet Socialism at its best.
At this stage I'm simply being fatalistic about this country. I guess we might eventually get a Milei but it seems such a waste to have to go through an Argentine experience first.
@Tom: Yes, watered-down versions of two milquetoast men is hardly what is needed, is it.
This isn’t entirely wrong: https://www.wheresyoured.at/tss/
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