Treaty Obligations Delay

Let me get this right. Just so we all know where we're at. The Labour Party, who I'm assuming still want to be taken seriously this election, have had a major issue up to this point, the issue being they have no policies. Even though a lot of us, and to be thanked, probably most of us, don't actually need the state to pay for a doctor's visit. Their other policy we sort of knew about was this future fund, and it would contain the SOEs whose dividends would go into creating jobs and growing the economy. So update now on the future fund. We aren't going to know about that until after the election. Good news is, of course, they're not actually winning the election, so it sort of doesn't matter. But they will make it even harder, I would have thought, to crack a winning uh chance at the election now, given that voters sort of want to know what stuff costs, especially large stuff. Further trouble is that the hold-up is they need advice, apparently. We were informed of this yesterday. That's right, bogged down yet again in Matters Māori. Originally they told us the SOEs involved were commercially sensitive. Now it's treaty troubles. Previously, Chris Hipkin said the fund would create jobs. Yesterday, Barbara Edmonds didn't know how many jobs, because that would depend on what the fund invested in and what SOEs were in the fund and what advice they got around the treaty obligation. So no job stats, no cost stats, no real detail on who's in, who isn't, on one of what they call their cornerstone policies. So no policies until there is a policy, but sort of a secret policy that if you vote for us, we'll tell you about it after the election. Small question at this point. Do they honestly believe one, we're that stupid, two, that this is any sort of way to conduct an election campaign, or three, this is any sort of excuse this close to an election. Actually, four, are they smarter than we think? And this is basically their white flag because they don't actually want to win the government anyway. Part of what haunts them, of course, from last time, is their inability to actually do anything apart from spray money. They talk, they don't do.