Andrew Dickens Afternoons

COMMENT:The closer we get to this election the less able I am to differentiate between the leading parties. They seem to be morphing into one indistinct blob. It started when the issue of opening the border seemed to disappear from National mouths just as Todd Muller disappeared from public life. It continues when Judith Collins started agreeing that the government had done a good job to this point. This was in her early days as Opposition leader where she acknowledged that the steps taken to date were effective. It validated the elimination argument and watered down the flames that had been fanned by Todd Muller that our border control was a shambles. Then she threw out the financial targets that had been suggested by Paul Goldsmith around paying off debt.  Goldsmith said the party would try to reduce net core Crown debt to 30 per cent of GDP in roughly a decade, requiring $80b less borrowing on current GDP projections. Collins didn’t like putting numbers and targets on things which could come back to bite t