The economy is spluttering:
4.8% unemployment - a near four year record high - even as NZ keeps breaking new records for citizen departures
Employment confidence declined to the lowest level since the first Covid lockdowns
The Quarterly Survey of Business Opinion reported firms are more pessimistic about their current trading conditions than they have been since 2009
Record numbers on benefits - the same population proportion as during the Global Financial Crisis
6% of the population are on job-seekers despite National’s attempts to make it harder to receive, and stay on the benefit
Job postings continue to plummet - the third consecutive month in November
Almost 10,000 public sector positions have now been eliminated with many more to come - including over Christmas time
~80,000 Kiwis have fled NZ over the last year - many of them public sector professionals who were snapped up immediately by Australia, valuable construction engineers and experts, experienced police officers, health professionals and many more
Today it was revealed, half of our local nursing graduates have missed out on a job offer. Guess where they will be forced to go too?
I wish someone had warned Nicola.
If only someone told her that austerity budgets deteriorate economic performance and harm the country.
If only economists had told her her fiscal policy was deepening and extending the recession
If only there was anyone in the room to plead that she should respond to facts before she borrowed $12b more for $15b of tax cuts
If only somone had the courage to call austerity austerity and speak to its social impacts.
If only, if only, if only.
Except we know that many did stand in front of Nicola and tell her what the inevitable path would be.
Even if she she could not fully comprehend detailed policy documents, Willis only had to look over to the UK to see the undeniable: crippling, systemic, entrenched and long term effects of austerity.
All of National’s policies will need to be paid back in the future for our country’s prosperity and well-being.
As Willis admitted in May on Jack Tame’s Q&A program, future generations will pay - either through increased taxes or more cuts in services.
It may have taken $10 to try to remediate once, but after austerity, it will take ten fold to recover.
That is the hidden explosive in what may appear to be budget cuts masked as ‘efficiency’ and ‘value for money’.
i.e. The unquantifiable, hidden cost includes e.g. the indomitable value of top talent and our best and brightest.
Talent and quality is often unquantifiable but anyone who has worked with, or hired, a motivated, passionate, thoughtful and competent worker versus those who are not - will know the truth of which I speak.
Inflation is another factor. It now costs ~40% more to build a bridge, and 30% more to build water or sewage systems in just three years.
And if, as National appear to be doing, they make decisions in silos e.g. build tunnels without considering the interconnections with public transport, local planning, and other routes - all this does is seed new, much larger problems into the future.
Ditto to their shameful climate change and environmental approach.
Earlier in the year, Louise Upton acknowledged her government’s policies would lead to brain drain, but concluded it was all just Labour’s fault.
That shows a drastic dereliction of duty at every level.
Is this the government that we voted for?
Who knew that cutting your own revenue base (taxes), losing our best and brightest overseas, and demolishing investments in health, infrastructure, climate change, science, technology, people, public services, education and anything outside of roads and doing businesses favours, would hurt this country?
But none of this is new.
National, Christoper Luxon and Nicola Willis were warned from the very outset - including from Treasury
The government’s plan is to use private money, sell off national assets where it can, and try to present “favourable” KPI results and budget numbers by the time the next election meaningfully rolls around.
So long as they have enough aligned commentators and media interests, they believe they will win.
But it’s a shell game, and one in which - outside of wealthy vested interests - no-one will be a winner.
PS
To be fair to New Zealand, 16 Nobel Prize economists warned in July that if enacted, Trump’s policies would reignite inflation. Their advice was roundly ignored in the plethora of noise and mixed commentary in the States.
So when 15 of our best economists stepped forward last week to urge the government to rethink its fiscal policy, it was only inevitable that they would be cast aside as renegades and too “left leaning” to be taken seriously too. It’s the way the game is now played unfortunately.
Noise overcomes truth telling.
Have a great Thursday.
EXTRAS
Charter Schools
Yesterday, David Seymour announced his first charter schools will go live in Term 1 / 2025.
$153m for the start of another deeper attempt to privatise education that was at the expense of public education’s need for high needs children.
And Seymour has successfully ensured that the charter schools are shielded from appropriate financial disclosure requirements on our taxpayers’ money.
And shielded operators from OIA:
One of the more odious features of the bill is that it makes charter schools secret and unaccountable by exempting them from the Official Information Act.
No policy rationale has been provided for this unconstitutional position, but last time round it was pitched as allowing charter schools to avoid "costly and vexatious requests" - which tells us what National really thinks of transparency and accountability.
Alwyn Poole, the charter school advocate who siphoned off $450,000 from one of his last charter schools to a trust run by his wife and other school board members - received funding for another.
Charter schools teachers don’t need to be accredited, financial transparency is low, and if all students were funded to the same rate as those given in charter schools, wouldn’t we all benefit?
Today NZ Herald brings us the all important news that David Seymour is now dating Epsom private school educated and real estate agent Vincent Martelli. At least, he’s happy.
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