Places, please

As the election campaign kicks up a gear, politicians start behaving as if they've won lead roles in a local amateur dramatics show.

- Michele Hewitson

Pirates. Petulance. The Prefu. Who'd have thought the first official week of Campaign 2023 would deliver the makings of a Gilbert and Sullivan musical.

With the curtain finally up, the most anticipated all-singingall-dancing act was Treasury opening the government books. This is known, rather boringly, as the Pre-election Economic and Fiscal Update, or Prefu - an acronym pleasingly close to Snafu, or Situation Normal: All Fucked Up. The books have to be opened before a general election so that an incoming government doesn't get a terrible shock when they open the fridge of our nation's scungy flat to find that all it contains is a half-eaten pottle of yoghurt with somebody else's name on it.

People get terribly excited about the Prefu. No, they don't. RNZ's business editor, the wry Gyles Beckford, could barely contain his lack of excitement at the prospect of his forthcoming trip to Treasury offices. Morning Report co-host Corin Dann asked: "Do they give you lunch?" There may have been a snort. A free lunch in these fiscally straitened times? Don't be daft. "No. You can bring your own coffee sachet and they'll give you a splash of water," said Beckford, hardly bitter at all.

In an expert analysis, then, the Prefu amounted to not quite a Snafu or a half-eaten pottle of yoghurt. The big news seems to be that the country will probably avoid recession. The deficit, meanwhile, was up to a whopping $11.4 billion from the forecast $7.6 billion in May's Budget. Interest rates may rise again. Only economists, Treasury wonks and doomsayers have a clue what any of this means. Maybe, probably some time in 2026, we will be able to afford a whole pottle of yoghurt.

CRINGE FACTOR