It was very clever of the Government announcing that it was going to pump $12 billion into defence before saying anything about where the money’s coming from.

A lot of us got all excited about the defence money because, even if you’re a pacifist, you would have to agree that our defence force has been running on the smell of an oily rag for a very long time. That’s just a fact.

And we kind of accepted that there would have to be trade-offs. We just didn’t know, and we still don’t know, what those trade-offs are going to be.

Today though it’s being proposed that NZ Super should be the Peter that pays Paul, and that we need to sort out the elephant in the room and make people wait longer before they get the pension. And I agree.

It’s come from economist Cameron Bagrie who has been trying to find out where the defence spend money is coming from. Without any detail forthcoming from the Government, he’s suggesting the Super scheme.

He’s saying: “We cannot continue to shy away from that rising expense if other priorities, such as defence, are going to be met.”

He’s not the only one talking about the pension scheme needing a reworking.

The NZ Herald’s head of business Fran O’Sullivan says it was a National Government that increased the entitlement age for NZ Super from 60 to 65.

But that the current National Party leadership is sticking with the idea of not doing anything about the eligibility age until 2044. The party’s current commitment is to keep the age at 65 for another 19 years.

Fran O’Sullivan describes that as “nonsense”. And I agree with her too. There is no way we can afford to keep paying the pension to anyone and everyone once they turn 65 for another 19 years.

National’s policy at the moment commits it to increasing the age of entitlement to 67 after 2044, which means no one born before 1979 will be affected. So someone who is 47 now, for example, would still get the pension when they turn 65. Crazy.

There’s also nothing in National’s policy about doing something about the other nonsensical part of all this – where people still get the pension if they keep working beyond 65.

Because the pension —when it comes down to it— is to help stop people falling into poverty after they retire. That’s what it’s designed for. It’s not there to pay for some joker’s beer on a Friday and Saturday night, who doesn’t need it for anything else because he’s still working and earning a salary or wages.

Or he might be someone who’s made a truckload of money running a business and still earns a dividend or maybe even still draws a salary.

Back to Cameron Bagrie. He’s saying today that health and NZ Super make up 37% of government operational expenses and that things are only going to get tighter with more defence spending.

He says: “We now have a new pressure in the mix: national security - which is being prioritised. No credible political party can ignore that.”

Referring to the pension, he says: “We cannot continue to shy away from that rising expense if other priorities, such as defence, are going to be met.”

It’s not something former National Prime Minister Jim Bolger shied away from.

Somehow, he managed to convince New Zealanders that increasing the qualifying age for was “plain common sense”, because people were living longer and receiving the pension for a lot longer.

Age eligibility went up to 61 within a year of that and it’s been 65 since 2001.

And just like it was looking less affordable then, it’s looking even less affordable now.

That's why we need to have the same fortitude - or our politicians do - and they need to bite the bullet, instead of ignoring it.

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Here’s a stat for you: 25 percent of cigarettes sold in New Zealand are from the black market.

They’re being smuggled into the country and criminals are making millions selling them on Facebook Marketplace and construction sites. All over the place. And you probably don’t have to go far to find a dairy selling them, either.

That figure has been put out by the tobacco industry in New Zealand. Although, there was an expert saying this morning that he reckons it’s not quite as bad as the tobacco companies are saying.

Either way - whatever the figure actually is - there are smokers balking at the cost of a packet of cigarettes and pouches of tobacco and they’re quite happy to buy the illegal stuff.

And I reckon the time has come to have a re-think about how we’re dealing with cigarette smoking.

Because the approach that’s been taken so far - aside from treatment programmes and all that - has largely been about punishing people in the pocket if they want to smoke.

More and more taxes, to the point where people are paying a small fortune. And, if we want to try and reduce the amount of illegal tobacco trading going on, then I think we need to think whether piling more tax on tobacco is worth it.

I don’t think it is. I’m not saying that we should make cigarettes cheaper - but I don’t think we should make them more expensive than they are now.

Because, if we do, then the illegal trade is going to grow even more and that will mean less tax revenue for the Government through the legitimate tobacco market.

The thing too about not adding more taxes to ciggies and tobacco, is that it would still keep the price out of the reach of people like teenagers. People who could become the next generation of smokers.

I was talking to someone who said their partner used to make a special trip into town to buy tobacco from a dairy in Christchurch that was selling pouches that were about $20 cheaper than what the legitimate stuff was going for.

And they were saying that their partner would go into the dairy, ask if they had any of the cheap stuff and, sure enough, reach into the drawer and out it would come.

It was worth the drive into the city to get it, apparently.

Customs is saying today that these groups are bringing truckloads of the stuff into the country - mainly by sea - using what customs describes as “sophisticated smuggling tactics similar to the tactics used by drug smugglers".

It says they are serious criminals. Not just opportunists having a go because they’re worried about the price of tobacco”.

The expert from Auckland University who was on Newstalk ZB this morning says the solution is getting more people off smoking.

I agree. But I also think that’s your ideal scenario kind of thing.

Which is why I think the time has come to stop piling more taxes on cigarettes and tobacco. It’s done its job. Making cigarettes more and more expensive is just going to feed demand for the illegal stuff.

Which is ripping us off. Because with every packet of illegal cigarettes sold, there’s no tax revenue. Money that we could all benefit from.

And why would we continue to let that happen?

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I love the way David Seymour is describing the size of cabinet and the number of government departments.

He says the whole lot are "a big, complicated bureaucratic beast". And he is spot on.

Here are the numbers that say it all: we have 82 portfolios, 28 ministers, and 41 separate government departments and agencies. If that doesn’t sound like a complicated beast, I don’t what does.

So no argument from me.

No argument also from Oliver Hartwich, who is Executive Director at the NZ Initiative think tank. He says part of the problem is that we have created all of these different outfits that, pretty much, look after similar things.

Now Oliver Hartwich thinks we could get away with having as few as 15 cabinet ministers instead of the 28 we have at the moment. But he reckons maybe 20 is more realistic.

Although, he also told Mike Hosking that he heard Ruth Richardson say recently that she thinks we should have no more than 12 cabinet ministers.

Now, granted, I've never been a cabinet minister so I don’t have any inside expert knowledge, but I'm going to give it a go anyway. And I reckon we could go really hardcore and have a prime minister with two deputy prime ministers reporting to them.

Those two deputies would have all the other ministers reporting to them. And I would streamline the total number of ministers, generally within the areas of law and order, finance, defence and security, health and social services, education, and the arts.

That’s just a rough example of my streamlined cabinet.

But Seymour's not just having a go at the number of cabinet ministers, he’s also got the number of government departments and agencies in his line of sight, and I know a thing or two about them.

Because in previous lives I've worked at a few, and they are monsters.

David Seymour is describing them as "bureaucratic beasts". I’d describe government departments and agencies as “beastly spaghetti junctions”.

And that’s just what it’s like inside these departments, let alone what happens between them. Because, despite politicians talking about these departments being “all of government”, they’re not.

That’s this theoretical idea that all government departments get on swimmingly, and talk to each other about everything, and they're all best mates, and because of that us taxpayers get the best bang for our buck.

But it’s not like that at all. They work in silos. They compete with each other for funding. They don’t talk to each other.

One great thing the government has done to try and sort out this shambles is in the area of weather forecasting.

NIWA and MetService aren’t government departments exactly, but they are state-owned enterprises, and Simeon Brown announced a few weeks back that they’re going to be merged.

Which makes perfect sense. And that’s what we need to see more of.

Examples: do we need a Ministry of Education and an Education Review Office? I don’t think so. Do we need a Ministry of Justice and a Department of Corrections? Possibly not. Do we need a Department of Conservation and a Ministry for the Environment?

See what I mean?

So I'm right with David Seymour, and I think we would all be winners with less cabinet ministers and less government departments and agencies.

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