National rejects Treasury advice

I'm coming on here, despite my self-imposed academic-hermit existence in finishing my dissertation, to post about Finance Minister Bill English's rejection of the Treasury's infamous 'advice' that they always give to incoming governments.

I recently wrote a research essay that made the argument that this National Government was a return to the party's traditional moderate and pragmatic ideology. While this doesn't discount that the party remains dedicated to many free market sacred cows, the fact that English so carte-blanche ignores Treasury's advice is very good news.

Why? The Treasury's advice tends to be from the perspective of monetarism/free market economics. This is demonstrable in their recommendation to the incoming Government should not implement a fiscal stimulus package because they will have to "pay for it later". This is a direct contradiction to the ideas of such luminary economists as Keynes, who intelligently argue that during downturns the Government needs to borrow and spend to 'flatten out the troughs'.

Unfortunately, Treasury's tired old right-wing logic, that you should never borrow or spend during cyclical downturns in the economy, caused a lot of pain and agony under both Labour and National Governments during the 1980's and 1990's.

English has symbolically rejected this mode of thinking. I wait with anticipation to see what shape the stimulus package the Government will unvail in the next few weeks. My prediction is that National is not going to shift the burden of this financial crisis onto the poor, and the policies they introduce will strongly resemble those of Helen Clark's Labour Government - if not even to the left of them on some issues!