Social spending Green priority

GREEN Party coleader James Shaw believes the $1.4 billion Crown surplus announced this week should not be totally spent on roads and bridges.

Instead, he believes social infrastructure, such as housing, education and health, should be a priority.

The Department of Conservation and police were among the public services which would benefit from more allocated spending.

Mr Shaw was in Dunedin for nearly two days and spoke positively to the Otago Daily Times about the surplus for the eight months ended February.

The Greens and Labour recently announced a joint fiscal strategy which pledged fiscal restraint.

Mr Shaw said the surplus was a good thing as it gave politicians options. He just believed Prime Minister Bill English and Finance Minister Steven Joyce were not taking the right ones.

The previous Labour government ran surpluses, cut public debt as a percentage of GDP, introduced Working for Families and set up the New Zealand Superannuation Fund but still got ‘‘pasted’’ as fiscally irresponsible.

‘‘Bill English is obsessed with small government over anything else. His fiscal policy is to cut costs, when times are good or bad. During the global financial crisis, if they had invested into housing, creating jobs, we would have added to the housing stock’’

Instead, Mr English invested tens of billions of dollars in roads and New Zealand was chronically short of affordable housing, Mr Shaw said.

The Green coleader was looking the part during his visit to Dunedin, having splashed out on new suits and ties. Asked about his meetings with business leaders, Mr Shaw said he was getting a good reception and if wearing a suit and tie was the expected image, that is what he would be wearing.

Many of the business leaders he met understood the problems faced by young New Zealanders. Although their children had private school education and degrees from overseas universities, they struggled to buy their first home. Everything was relative, Mr Shaw said.

One of his main priorities was trying to lift productivity in New Zealand. GDP growth was strong but only because it was driven by Kiwis arriving back into the workforce, or immigration.