Back Room Player: Craig Renney, the person behind the person controlling New Zealand’s purse-strings:
VERY FEW NEW ZEALANDERS would have the slightest idea who
Doug Andrew was or is. And yet, in his role as an economic advisor to the then
Leader of the Opposition, David Lange, Andrew was one of the people who helped
prepare the way for “Rogernomics” – the introduction of neoliberalism to New
Zealand. Seconded in the early 1980s from Treasury – then a hotbed of “Chicago
School” free market economics – Andrew was one of the principal conduits
through which the economic ideas animating the governments of Margaret Thatcher
and Ronald Reagan found their way into the policy-making forums of the New
Zealand Labour Party.
Thirty-four years later, another economist, also with a
Treasury (and Reserve Bank!) background, is proffering policy advice to another
Labour Finance Minister. Craig Renney, identified by Stuff’s Vernon Small as
one of the key “back room players” in Jacinda Ardern’s new Labour-NZ
First-Green Government, has become Grant Robertson’s “economics adviser”; “the
man who did the grunt-work on the Alternative Budget – and disproved National’s
claim of a ‘fiscal hole’.”
And, that’s it. To find out any more about the person behind
the person controlling New Zealand’s purse-strings, it is necessary to go
hunting in the forests of the Internet.
Fortunately, Mr Renney is a pretty easy quarry to track
down.
He appears to be a citizen of the United Kingdom, aged in
his late 30s, who embarked on his professional career by enrolling in the
University of Stirling as a student of Economics and Politics in 1997. After an
intriguing stint in Prague (2000-2001) Renney undertook post-graduate study at
the University of Northumbria in Newcastle, from which he received a Masters in
Urban Policy and Sustainable Regeneration, and another, in Public
Administration.
Upon leaving university, Renney worked, variously, in local
government, the UK Audit Commission, and as a public-sector consultant. In 2012
he emigrated to New Zealand to take up an analyst’s position in the NZ
Treasury. Between 2014 and 2016 he was a Senior Policy Adviser in Steven
Joyce’s Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment – from whence he was
seconded to the Reserve Bank. In January of last year, he took on the job of
Senior Economic Advisor in the Office of the Leader of the Opposition.
It’s an impressive CV. But, it tells us virtually nothing
about the political leanings of its subject. The north-east of England, where
Renney spent his university years, is generally regarded as the British Labour
Party’s heartland. So, it is tempting to paint the advisor to our new Minister
of Finance as a Geordie with traditional Labour sympathies. Certainly, the work
he undertook for local governments in the north-east has the whiff of
progressivism about it. On the other hand, Renney’s student years coincide with
those of Tony Blair’s “New Labour” Government. So, it’s just as easy to see him
as an eager follower of Anthony Gidden’s “Third Way” economic and social
project.
The point is, we don’t know anything like enough about Craig
Renney, let alone the direction in which he is steering our new Minister of
Finance. And, dammit, we should know! Thirty-four years ago, advice was being
tended to Roger Douglas that led directly to the radical restructuring of the
entire economy and society of New Zealand – and we knew nothing about it!
This is what the New Zealand historian, Hugh Oliver, had to
say about what was happening to Roger Douglas all those years ago:
Clearly an enormous
shift had taken place in Douglas’s positions on economic policy and it appears
that most of this shift occurred in the latter half of 1983. It is also
apparent that the shift was towards the kind of free market economics that were
espoused by the Treasury. It cannot be proved that the shift in ideas resulted
from the influence of Treasury officials; however, it can be shown that it
coincided in time with the presence in the Opposition Leader’s Office of Doug
Andrew, a Treasury adviser with whom Douglas developed close links … During his
time with the Labour Opposition Andrew produced papers on a range of economic
policy topics and debated with existing opinions in the Caucus Economic
Committee. Andrew argued for lower levels of trade protection as the key
economic policy instrument. He argued for floating the currency as a matter of
course.
Similarly, it is possible to show that Labour’s adoption of
its radically self-limiting “Budget Responsibility Rules” coincided in time
with the presence in the Leader of the Opposition’s Office of an economic
adviser from the UK called Craig Renney. The same Craig Renney identified by
Vernon Small as the person who did the “grunt work” on Labour’s Alternative
Budget.
But what, exactly, does that mean? Is Craig merely putting
flesh on the bones of Grant’s, and the Labour Policy Council’s, ideas? Or, are
Grant and Labour merely repeating ideas and policy positions fed to them by
Craig? And, if it’s the latter, then what are the ideas and policies our new
government is being asked to swallow?
It is a question that has always intrigued me: “Who is more
powerful? The person with a loaded rifle? Or the person who supplies the
ammunition, places the rifle in another’s hands – and tells them who to shoot?”
This essay was
originally posted on The Daily Blog
of Tuesday, 31 October 2017.
