Clear the decks

Soaring inflation is forcing Labour to tuck away pet projects and look instead to a hip-pocket lifeline.

- JANE CLIFTON

Mythology and literature have a variety of disposal methods for inconvenient monsters - alas none that seem applicable to inflation.

They can be eaten, as befell the Bible's sea serpent Leviathan and the mutant stone fruit in Roald Dahl's James and the Giant Peach, but any kind of consumption only makes inflation more monstrous.

Aggressive pursuit is lethally dangerous, as per Moby Dick.

Perhaps inflation is more like Jaws: endlessly replicable. It savages extensively before it's vanquished, only to lurk in the deep, ready for its next sequel opportunity.

It is Finance Minister Grant Robertson's fate to be devising a Budget in the interregnum between Jaws' last big feasts - pandemic, supply-chain sclerosis and the Ukraine War - and its next possible banquet, a global recession. If Russia takes a decisive hammering from sanctions, economists worry the world will suffer a thudding downturn. Paradoxically, if Russia succeeds in conquering Ukraine, the world's energy crisis will deepen. Either way, inflation stands to be fed fatter than a Strasbourg goose.

The orthodox remedy for inflation is for governments to cut spending. Alas, cutting spending can flip into creating outright austerity, making recessions into depressions.

Had Robertson an inkling he'd face the most ghastly set of options and risks known to any finance minister since the last world war, he might have begged Winston Peters to inflict his kingmaker power on National instead of Labour back in 2017.

Robertson is just one of many Captain Ahabs, vainly trying to harpoon the great white whale. But our Moby is bigger than their Moby. New Zealand's inflation rate is higher than several of our main trading partners, and our greater market distance and lower population only partly excuses this.