As a modern democracy, we are so used to political spin that it can be hard to see straight at times.

1 NEWS Columnist Dita DeBoni Source: 1 NEWS

Successive governments have certainly spun all sorts of negative news, and there’s no doubt they all engage in it, but I would argue the current government takes it to a new and almighty art form.

For some ministers it seems to roll off the tongue, such as many of those who have been telling us for a long time that everything in Christchurch is ticking along nicely.

Somehow, to the rest of New Zealand these ministers are able to explain away the fact that five years after a set of deadly earthquakes, it is normal to have the central city still resemble a car park and hundreds of people living in garages, on couches and in cracked and damaged homes.

Just recently the same people tried to pull our legs by telling us that the amount of mental health funding for the traumatised of Christchurch was perfectly enough. This despite the fact it was less than any other district in the country – none of which have been recently ravaged by natural disasters.

Apparently, on Valentine’s Day, minister of heath Jonathan Coleman had a brainwave in light of another serious quake: “I was sitting up in Auckland and thought, this is going to be big in terms of the health sector,” he told Stuff.

No kidding. But can I suggest instead what I think happened instead: the inequity of mental health funding in Christchurch being unable to service enough of that population, and particularly its poor little kiddies, caused a public outcry, which prompted a rethink, which prompted $16 million extra to service a desperate need.

The Valentine’s Day earthquake simply provided cover for this political expediency.

In a similar vein, we have been constantly told to “calm our farms” about, well, farms, as many struggle to operate in a flooded global marketplace.

Every time the dairy sector receives more bad news, the Deputy PM is wheeled in to reassure us that all is OK, and that in the “broader context”, all is well.

Never mind that the “broader context” in New Zealand is an economy very reliant on the prosperity of dairy farmers.

Today, to National Radio, Bill English has had to concur that a set of extremely scary economic indicators do actually have a basis in reality.

Yes, Fonterra is about to cut farmers incomes by $400 million due to falling global prices.

Dairy shipments have indeed fallen 13 per cent in the last quarter. OK, farm prices could fall by as much as 40 per cent by 2018.

Sure, farm debt has reached $38 billion, defaults on loans have increased by almost 50 per cent, there are as many as a dozen farmer suicides each year and thought to be rising, and huge numbers of farms have been put up for sale.

But where mere mortals might have started hyperventilating at this kind of picture, Mr English took a much more sanguine view.

"The indications are it will have some impact, but it won't have such a big impact on the broader economy as it does on the industry itself," he told the state broadcaster.

This seems a rather rosy-hued view of the situation, to put it mildly.

While it is true that the Government can’t do much about global markets, and the saturation thereof, there are things it can do here that would, say, more actively promote diversification, actively disincentivise more production and/or intensification, and work more closely with Fonterra and the banks to ensure the country’s investment in the sector isn’t unnecessarily squandered.

The best minds of the country could be called upon to come up with answers to the challenges ahead.