Our Prime Minister revels in his reputation as a deal-maker – and with good reason. His success in making a personal fortune as a foreign exchange dealer is, it seems, a major factor in establishing his claim to be an expert in how to run our economy.

It may not be immediately obvious that the short time horizon of the foreign exchange dealer – perhaps at times only a few hours or even minutes – is necessarily the best qualification for making good long-term strategic decisions about our economic future. But few would doubt John Key’s ability to close a deal.

It is only when we look closer at the deals that the Prime Minister concludes that doubts might arise. It seems that his negotiating stance in approaching a potential deal usually begins with, “The answer’s yes, now what’s the question?”

Those doubts might seem to be well-founded when we look at some of the deals he has concluded in recent times. The “negotiation” with Warner Brothers over The Hobbit seems to have been a process in which the Hollywood moguls dictated their requirements – $67 million in tax relief and a change to employment law that reduced the rights at work of actors and film crews – and John Key’s government “negotiated” by meekly complying, with the passage of overnight legislation.

We see a similar pattern in the “negotiation” with Sky City over a convention centre in Auckland. The Sky City offer was made conditional by the gambling bosses on the award of a significant number of new pokie machines – something strongly opposed on social and health grounds by those rightly concerned at the damage done by gambling to families who can ill afford it, but immediately conceded by John Key.

On this form, we can be confident that we will see the same pattern in future “negotiations” with, for example, overseas firms wishing to drill for oil, or mining companies wanting to operate in conservation areas, or foreign buyers proposing to purchase national assets. In all such cases, we can expect our “deal” maker to take whatever is offered and run.

“Show me the money” was John Key’s election campaign challenge to Phil Goff; in his mind, it seems, “showing the money” is the essential and only condition needed to settle any deal on offer.

Peter Dunne’s blog last week, in which he warned that there were real dangers in the Prime Minister’s propensity to “cut through” obstacles to a deal, was making a similar point. John Key, it seems, is quite ready to set aside legal safeguards, as well as commonsense considerations, if that is what is needed to close out a “deal”.

The defining characteristic of the Prime Minister’s big-ticket deals is that they typically involve large firms, preferably from overseas. He seems so impressed at being involved with such entities that any concern about whether or not a “deal” offers good value for New Zealand goes out the window.

The worry is that, in negotiations like those with the US and others over a Trans Pacific Partnership, the Prime Minister will take a similarly cavalier attitude to the protection of our national interests. We are already being softened up for what seems now to be an inevitable outcome – that, on a range of important matters, such as a continued and unchanged role for Pharmac, the “negotiations” will end up with an abject capitulation by our government. For John Key, the outcome that matters is putting the signature to the “deal” – not the practical (and possibly adverse) consequences thereafter for our economic wellbeing.

A similarly short time horizon is in evidence when it comes to asset sales. It is almost as though the Prime Minister is so dazzled by the potential price tag of billions of dollars that he is blind to any longer-term disadvantage. Yet, selling assets that generate a minimum return of 7% per annum at a time when the government can borrow at roughly half that rate is simply to put a short-term gain ahead of a much larger longer-term loss for future generations.

As on so many other issues, John Key seems not to understand that the sale of our income-producing assets into foreign hands is to deny future generations important (but dwindling) national income streams. Their loss makes us poorer, increases our need to borrow from overseas and weakens still further our power to decide our own future.

We have travelled a long way from the time when New Zealand was prepared to take a stand and stick to it, even in the face of condemnation from powerful overseas interests. Ask yourself a simple question. If John Key had come to power before our non-nuclear policy had been decided, would he have taken the initiative and introduced it on his own account, and then maintained it against all the odds? Or would keeping in with the Americans have been his first priority?

Bryan Gould

8 March 2013