THE RE-WRAP: Who'd Be an Economist?

THE BEST BITS IN A SILLIER PACKAGE (from Tuesday's Mike Hosking Breakfast) Seriously. What Do They Do All Day?/What Does the Commerce Commission Do All Day?/Tribunal Shock Decision/My Darkest Secret/Why Is This Still Racist

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
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Speaker 2 (00:24):
A rerap okoy Idea and welcome to the rewrap for
Tuesday versus yesterday's news. Sorry, if you've got a newstalks,
they have been yesterday. When you're expecting a rerap I
think that's been fixed now, I mean I'm not really
you've got a newstalks. They have been thrown in for free.
You're lucky buggers. And here you haven't been listening to

(00:47):
news dogs. They'd been all this time, and you've thought, ah,
now I hear what I'm missing, let's go and look
that up. Either that you just shut it off and
carried on with whatever the next podcast was in your
queue anyway. So Banking Competitions, Market Competition, Commerce Mission, you

(01:08):
a few more words about that. The White it has
been a shock decision from the white homing Trobman. Also,
we're going to have to highlight that this employee you
are remuneration bill, so everybody can find out what everybody
else is making money wise. And the government's finally got

(01:32):
rid of all the race based policy everywhere. So that's great.
We're going to fash up with the inflation figure where
there is inflation, but it's not as bad. Well, it's
not quite as bad as you what he thought it
was going to be.

Speaker 3 (01:42):
Let's deal with the good news, shall we Inflation not
as bad as they thought. They thought two point nine,
it was two point seven. We're an interesting company. I
mean the US, for example, at the moment is two
point seven having just gone up like us?

Speaker 2 (01:55):
Is that good?

Speaker 3 (01:55):
Well, they feel a bit like us. I think a
lot of people don't like the economy. A lot of
people think things are getting more expensive. So here's your
real story. Tradeables, stuff we can do something about, is
at one point two percent, very low decent sort of figure.
Non tradables, though, stuff we can't do anything about. Three
point seven. Three point seven not good and well outside

(02:15):
the Reserve Bank zero to three band. What's leading those
non tradable numbers, I hear you ask, Well, the answer is,
of course, councils and rates. They are the robber barons
of the New Zealand economy. Their cost plus accounting is
wreaking havoc all over the countryside, and there isn't a
thing you can do about it. Electricity prices too, by
the way, are also in there. They fall into the
same category in my view as councils. But because the
Reserve Bank only looks at some things and not others,

(02:38):
they're not doing what they should be doing, which is
helping the economy grow. Though they will tell you. Have
a look at the latest official GDP figure that was
zero point eight percent, So what are you complaining about?
Are the latest quarter on live reading is tracking at
zero point four percent, so that's halved, and that annualized
doubt is still leaving us going backwards. You might, I
mean might with those numbers cobble together the ongoing argument

(03:00):
that slowly but surely things are coming right. But the
real question is what's right. Infometrics adjusted to their forecast
for all of next year two two percent. That's two percent.
It's pathetic. That's the rebound. As long as all this persists,
the funk will continue. It'll be easy to feel down

(03:21):
trodden and it will upbeat. This is a slog and
the Reserve Bank view of the world fails to recognize that.
And the vultures who keep charging more because they can
don't care.

Speaker 2 (03:31):
So we I mean, we talked quite about yesterday about
how the inflation figure was going to be so bad
and it was going to be less than that and
all the other thing, and then everybody goes, ah, that's
not bad, and so then we get an economist on
this morning talk about it. Yeah. God, it's so hard
to know, isn't it. This is like, what do you
do about you economists? I'm sick of you economists. It's

(03:52):
a rewrap actually firmly and though what do you do
all day? Department? I think we can put the Commerce
Commission in there as well, can't we?

Speaker 3 (04:00):
See? Here was my point with the Commos Commission and
the Commerce Commission. Have a look at the banks and
the fed farmers go oh, collusion, collusion, collusion, and the
Comments Commission I have a look and goes, no, there's
not there's nothing to see here. Then why is it
suddenly different when you talk to somebody like Nikola Willis,
who goes, the banks were ripping us off? How come
there's no collusion to be found when it comes to

(04:20):
farmers and United Nations deals? But there is in the
general market. A Nikola, how's that butter meeting gone for you?
Interesting to note from the Prime ministu yesterday that Fonterra
called it, which surprised me. What's mile's going to do
about it? You're going, well, here's how it works. How

(04:40):
much is a pack it a butter? Prime Minister? And
see back in the days when they asked those questions,
that was back in the day's New Zealand, and the
New Zealand government ran everything, and there was only one
pack of butter, and there's only one bottle of milk,
and there was only one bag of cheese, whereas now
there's millions of them. And so the reporter who claimed
it was eleven dollars was correct, because you can of

(05:01):
course find a bit of butter for eleven dollars. Equally,
the prime minister was correct, you can find a bit
of butter for eight dollars fifty because there are prices
for every thing all over the place. Hence we don't
ask stupid questions.

Speaker 2 (05:12):
Again, See what the hostess is done. There is is
let's slip that they buy bag. They buy cheese by
the bag with the hosking hawksby household, which means they're
going grated, which I mean that's a luxury item right there,
isn't it. I mean I will confess that we have
both grated and a block in our fridge. I know,

(05:34):
I know, I know, big note, I know, but I maintain,
I still maintain that the grated actually works out in
your favor because you only use as much. You know,
you don't over grate. You can overgrade if you're doing
manual grating, you can go, oh yeah, the old great
about that much, and then you are no that we've

(05:56):
ended up with way too much. And I'm not even
allowed to eat cheese anymore. But I just I just
sort of eat cheese vicariously through other people. I put
it on what they're having, and then I watch them
eat us and pretend that it's me and the White
Tangy Bunal. Shock shock, horror decision, I think, yeah, astounding.

Speaker 3 (06:20):
Right, the White Tangy Tribunal. So they've rejected this is
the good news. They've rejected an application to hold a
fast track bid to mind the Seabird of party. This
is Taranaki, of course, so Trans Tasman Resources. They've applied
through the fast track. This is this new law to
mine for some iron and sign titanium, some vanadium South

(06:40):
TARANICKI bike whole bunch of harpoo and eue. They went,
that's not fair. We don't want any of this, So
of course, straight to the White Tangy Tribunal to seek
an injunction. Normally, they'd get a special hearing, because that's
what the Tangy Tribunal does these days, because they're a
bunch of activists, and they'll go, oh yeah, we'll have
a special hearing. It'll lead nowhere. None of them leads
anywhere because they've got no legal power whatsoever. They just

(07:02):
keep publishing report after report that gets ignored anyway. So
Judge Sarah Reeves agreed with the Crown. My god, I
wonder if I wonder if you needed a cup of
tea to lie down. Sarah Groups agreed with the Crown
that the fast Track needed a chance to be proven
to be fair. Blow me down. The Crown argued a
panel had not even been appointed and that he we

(07:24):
will contribute to that selection and get us say once
the decision making panel is working. So that almost sounds
like normal people in a room having normal discussions and
agreeing with each other. Wonders will never cease.

Speaker 2 (07:38):
I guess it's possible that some people were away sick
and they left the usual minority of normal people there
to make the decisions. Somebody in the way would turn
that decision, then we don't have normal decisions being made.
The rewrap right now, this concerning issue of people wanting
to know how much people get paid. This is just

(08:02):
one of those things that I've always thought was very
impolite to discuss how much we get paid with anybody else,
and I never have. But anyway, this is what they're
trying to do.

Speaker 3 (08:14):
It's the sort of theoretical nonsense you would expect from
a bunch of wonks like the Labor Party. But blow
me down if the nets haven't clambered on board as well.
Camilla Bellich has a member's bill. Members bill don't normally
get to where's hers has given. If they did, the
party would have gone that's not a bad idea and
run with it anyway. But her Employee Remuneration Disclosure Amendments

(08:34):
Bill has passed its second reading, and given the NATS
has now turned up, it seems it'll become law now.
The underlying I'm quoting here, the underlying reason for the
bill is to ensure that people who are discriminated against
have the ability relative to other employees doing the same
work and allows them to discuss that, In other words,
discuss your pay. You serious. So this is how this

(08:56):
is going to go, isn't it? Jenny told me? Jenny
told me she earned seventy six thousand dollars a year,
and we all know she's useless. So how come I'm
on sixty nine thousand a Obviously, the room for interpretation
here or misinterpretation is immense. What you think of yourself
and what the person handing out the money thinks might
well be very different things. Jenny might have been there longer,

(09:17):
might have been hired away from another employer, hence they
needed a sweetened to get her across the line. Might
have been employed by a different person in the same company.
None of this leads anywhere productive. As far as I
can work out, this is basically sticky beat law that
will lead to resentment, anger, if not fury about who
does what, gets what, what they're really worth. It'll be
off as gossip. It'll lead to people ganging up on

(09:37):
people to rumor to when you end a backstabbing. In
a general sense of our needs not to mention the
fact that if you have an arrangement with your boss.
That's between you and your boss. There's a privacy issue. Obviously,
unionize jobs of mass pay are different, but a lot
of the world's on a contract, and that contract is
legally binding, and it's a legally binding understanding between you
and the other party. I'm not sure Camilla or her party,

(10:01):
or now the NATS quite get the fallout that's coming. Look,
if I told you my income, it'd be a headline
and stuff in about half an hour's time in a
national debate would ensue and ten thousand keyboard warriors would
have a field day. Under this new law, there's nothing
stopping me.

Speaker 2 (10:15):
I mean, I don't want anybody to know how much
I get paid. Imagine if my boss has found out
how much they're paying me. They just think that I'm
here voluntarily on a sort of an intern basis. And
that's why they don't say how come you're not doing
a better job, because they feel a bit guilty because

(10:38):
they don't think that I'm doing a job. Anybody could
find out that I don't know that.

Speaker 1 (10:48):
It's a rewrap.

Speaker 2 (10:49):
Now, if there's one person who's going to hold this
government to account on its pledged to get rid of
ethnicity based policies. It's my costing, and here he is
doing just that day.

Speaker 3 (11:01):
Here's once again I read to the National Party's problem.
I don't and this is not about Maori. This is
not race based on whether you agree with or disagree
that you can agree or disagree all you want, doesn't
really matter. What this government or what this party said
is they would get rid of race based policies. That
was the policy. That's what they promised they would do.
So when I ask a question like will you have
a race based policy for this new medical school, the

(11:23):
answer is, well, we campaigned, of course on getting rid
of them, so no, we won't. That would have been
the answer, or well we've changed our mind and know
we're going to all that. Well whatever, But this business
of while we're having a review and we're having how
many reviews they're having. We're still standing by for Tama
Potarker's review into the electioneering, and that's going on. I mean,
they're just every time they want to obfuscate or stall,

(11:45):
they just go, well, we're having a review into that,
And all that does is lead you to believe they
say one thing, but they don't really want to do it,
and hence their trouble in the polls, and that's the
difficulty they've got. And they can't keep hiding because this
election is going to be a bad business. If this
is the way they're going to continue operating, just take
a stand and stand behind your stand and believe in it.

Speaker 1 (12:07):
Ye.

Speaker 2 (12:07):
So if you don't quite understand what's haending there, Mike
talked to something in Brown this morning. I wanted to
know exactly how they were going to make sure that
they had the right kind of doctors doing their their
studies at the new Waikato Medical School, and because they
want them to be regional and they want them to

(12:28):
go back to the regions and somewhere along. And I
sort of missed it because it was kind of a
bittory if I'm going to be privily honest, and I
had you messages to check and emails to reply to.
But yeah, somehow it got into a conversation about whether
they were trying to get Maori people to apply to

(12:50):
be doctors, and if they did, would they need to
have quite the same amount of qualifications and expertise to
get into the course at Wakato that non Mardi would,
And got it to a whole different area, and I

(13:12):
don't know why that necessarily equals regional, because we do
have to be careful because we want regional people to
be farmers as well. There would be a bit of
a problem with suddenly all the children of farmers ended
up being doctors and there wasn't anybody to keep doing
the farming, because apparently the farming is the only thing
that's going right. Just complicated, isn't it being a charge
of stuff? That's why they get paid the big bats.

(13:36):
I assume I'm being hat. They actually get paid to
do this. Isn't that crazy? Don't tell anyone though. See
you tomorrow.

Speaker 1 (13:53):
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