THREE KEY FACTS: There are 123 members of Parliament , three more than the previous term The extra three seats cost taxpayers an extra $5.17m Of the 123 MPs, 51 are selected from party lists Bruce Cotterill is a professional director and adviser to business leaders. He is the author of the book, The Best Leaders Don’t Shout, and host of the podcast, Leaders Getting Coffee.
OPINION They say that there are lies, damn lies and statistics . I don’t know much about the other two, but the stats are giving us bad news on a weekly basis. Everywhere we look, we seem to be underperforming .
We’ve talked about most of it already. The state of the economy, waiting lists, school attendance. School achievement.
Inflation isn’t coming down. Unemployment is going up. Interest rates aren’t budging.
And the Reserve Bank seems to have a different view of what constitutes a recession than the rest of us. I try hard to listen to what people are saying. I talk to a lot of people.
I read a lot. And every now and then I tune in to talkback. I’m often surprised by how wound up we get about things that don’t matter.
Here we are, racked with a multitude of major economic, social and even racial problems, and yet earlier this week the “collective we” ran off to talkback and became distracted by our MPs rightfully claiming their entitlement to a housing allowance for the time they spend in Wellington. It’s an entitlement. If we wish, we can stop it.
But, in the overall scheme of thing.
