Brian Anderson The Western Front www.sunlive.co.nz

From a pre election survey, 47 per cent of the country believes the Global Financial Crisis is going to hit New Zealand sooner than later, but you would be hard pressed to remember any politician talking about how they would handle the GFC for New Zealand.

That is strange because, John Key in his interview with the BBC after the election placed dealing with our debt as his first major task and his focus for New Zealand riding the imminent GFC fallout.

What was all the rubbish about during the election build up? The Greens appealed to the young vote with idealism, knowing they will never be asked to form a government. They admitted this, but the young vote still went their way. A friend is a staunch Labour supporter, voted for the Labour ticket, but couldn't vote for the electorate seat. Her husband was a traitor and voted National because of the global situation.

Another commentator on the election described this year as a mess of emotional sound bites. There was no music or direction and the lyrics were recycled old ballads.

It was strange to see Phil Goff and John Key agreeing the brighter times could be round in three years. Yeah, right. Both were talking various versions of belt tightening, but neither was willing to admit that throughout the world, the crisis is seen as a structural problem which has to be addressed. Answers will mean more pain for many countries and recovery will take much longer than three years. Let's be honest. If either leader had talked of serious belt tightening without sweeteners his worm would have died and never made it to the bottom of the screen.

MMP is a blessing at the moment. Within this system, John Key has been able to approach other parties for memoranda of agreement. Let's face it. The current solution for a government in trouble is to sack the politicians, bring in the technocrats and form a unitary government. These technocrats, with their global finance experience, are then charged with delivering the hard messages needed for recovery. We have just chosen our most experienced technocrat already and all we have to do now is to stand up and take the medicine.

During the week, it was pointed out the government during the last few years has sheeted home much of its responsibility for infrastructure on to local bodies, hence the growth in rates and especially in the introduction of targeted rates. This week the Western Bay District Council is meeting to prune down its spending for the next three years in the Long Term Plan. The council is showing signs of concentrating on infrastructure and avoiding costly projects. This may be a little late with some budgets primarily taken up with servicing loans on earlier projects. The government has already warned banks not to borrow short term from overseas to cover current cash flow. Our local council is planning a financial partnership with other councils to refinance projects at supposedly cheaper rates by short term borrowing into a common pool of money. This is worse than intergenerational funding. They are raising money based on income from future rates or as another economist warned, they are playing games and are consuming our future.

Whether it is central or local government, it is important that both spell the facts out in a way that they never managed at election time. If we are to stand up and take our medicine, we need to know what is going on. We need to be trusted. Some 47 per cent of the population is aware of the imminent problems. The rest of us may have to catch up and forget the fairy tales. I remember my grandfather following every parliamentary debate on radio, a habit he learned during the Great Depression. In that time, every one was involved, informed and taking part and sharing responsibility for recovery. It is a different dance and it will be interesting to see how long it takes us to join the rest of the world.

We will need to be able to tell the difference when we start to regain lost ground that the little gems of good news are recognised as encouragement and are not lost in the mindless chatter of the type that has dominated our election week.