John MacDonald: All parties set to over-promise and under-deliver

I seriously doubt that many of the promises being made by Labour and National will ever see the light of day.

The minor parties are promising things too. But it’s Labour and National I’m focused on because it’s going to be either one of those parties that leads the next Government.

The latest major party policy came out at the weekend with Labour’s promise to extend publicly-funded dental care to people under-30.

At the moment, there's no charge to go to dentist up to the age of 18. On Saturday, Chris Hipkins announced that, if Labour gets back in after next month’s election, that will be extended.

But it wouldn’t happen overnight. It would be two-to-three years away. And it would only be months out from the 2026 election when we’d have free dental for everyone under the age of 30.

But I’ll only believe it when I see it, for a couple of reasons.

First of all, where are all the extra dentists going to come from? I know Labour is saying that’s the reason why it wants to do all this on a drip-feed. Because the whole idea behind this policy is to get more people going to the dentist.

So, in theory, demand for dental services is going to increase. And I’m not convinced that we are going to have enough dentists and dental technicians and all that in two-to-three years.

The other reason I’ll only believe Labour’s dental policy when I see it, is the amount of water to go under the bridge between now and July 2026. Nearly three years away.

Who knows what re-prioritisation of spending might be needed by then?

Not to mention the fact that we are very good at forgetting things, aren’t we? Do you honestly believe that you’d be able to remember this particular policy three years from now? Come on - be honest. Of course, you wouldn’t. Just like so many of the other pre-election promises.

And what about one of Labour’s other big promises? GST off fruit and veges policy. Even if Labour gets re-elected and that one actually happens, I still won’t believe it because we are never going to know whether it’s making us better-off or not.

When we’re in the fruit and vege section at the supermarket, for example, it would be impossible to tell whether the price on the ticket is 15 percent less than what it would be if we were paying GST.

Prices fluctuate and the whole thing would be reliant on supermarkets and other fruit and vege retailers resisting the urge to charge more, for the sake of it.

So that’s a couple of examples of policies we’ve heard from Labour where either I don’t have confidence in them actually delivering, or delivering and it being impossible to know whether I’m getting any benefit out of it.

Then there’s National. Its most-recent promise was its tax plan which would us paying less tax by July next year.

But, since its announcement last week, more and more questions have been raised about some of the numbers behind the plan.

Especially this issue with $700 million that supposedly would come through the door and into the Government’s coffers from foreign house buyers, via a 15 percent tax for the privilege of buying a place here.

I was very sceptical of that part of the plan right from the start. Because it is 100 percent dependent on the choices of other people.

A Government has no control over whether a person has an interest in moving to New Zealand and buying a house. And, over the weekend, we heard more and more people questioning the assumptions that National has made on that front.

Either way, I reckon voters must be getting so punch-drunk with all the policies coming at us left, right and centre, that we are going to forget a lot of them. And whoever gets into Government will take full advantage of that.

Not to mention the fact that some policies will fall completely by the wayside because the governing party will realise that they way over-promised and they will (undoubtedly) under-deliver.

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