Barbara Edmonds: Labour Finance Spokesperson dosen't take blame for the worse than expected economic update

Grim readings from the Treasury's half year economic and fiscal update.

The government's books will stay in the red until at least 2029, a year later than previously predicted. Although the government says it will aim to return to surplus a year earlier. 

Finance Minister Nicola Willis is blaming the opposition for the bad result, saying in the past five years Labour added more than $100 billion to our debt.

Labour's Finance Spokesperson Barbara Edmonds has pushed back.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Barbara Edmonds, who is Labour's finance spokesperson, joins us. Right now, Hallo.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
Barbara, good morning Andrey. How are you very.

Speaker 1 (00:06):
Good at your phone? You use works, unfortunately Gavin's does not. Okay, Well, look,
we had some grim readings for the Treasury's half year
Economic and Physical Update. The books will stay in the
read until at least twenty twenty nine, a year later
than previously predicted. And Finance Minister Nichola Willis is blaming you, saying,
in the past five years Labor added more than one
hundred billion dollars to our debt. So you have the

(00:29):
chance to rejoin to that. What do you reckon?

Speaker 2 (00:32):
Yes, I heard the question posed by one of your
listeners earlier. So do you look at government financial statements
going all the way back to say nineteen ninety nine,
meaning obviously its sorry to donate. With the change in government,
a debt had tracked from around twenty billion dollars had
gone up over sixty billion dollars. That was to cover

(00:53):
the GFC and to cover christ Church rebuild. We clearly
had a pandemic and that increase debt to just over
our hundred billion dollars. What we saw is that as
a percentage of debt to GDP that started to come
down in the same way that most government starts to
pay down that debt. As certain as that sort of

(01:13):
crisis is over, what has happened so far is that
Nichol Willis is borrowing more, has more debts and a
larger deficit. And that's because we're not sure why she's
borrowing more, except for obviously tax cuts, which really said
are unaffordable. She chose bringing back interest productibility for landmarks
and then tobacco companies obviously with their tax break. So

(01:36):
for me, it is her reputation that intestinesn't out well.

Speaker 1 (01:41):
My text that you heard me read the text out
from Hugh. He actually did a two parts and one
whether you felt any embarrassment for the position you put
in New Zealand in while you were in charge of
the benches. He also went on to say, while you
can argue the Coalition hasn't got their recovery right, if
the Labor Party of the labor governments hadn't been so
profligate with the money during the panic and over that
period of time, we wouldn't need the recovery in the

(02:03):
first place. So do you take any part responsibility for
the situation this country finds itself in today.

Speaker 2 (02:10):
So I take responsibility for the funding that we gave
out as part of COVID to help people with the
wave SUBSODI, to help businesses with the wave Subjedy, so
that employees and employees that could stay connected. The COVID
Residents Support scheme is obviously people needed them money as
they were losing jobs because of COVID and also because
of the small business Casher Loan scheme. The issue was

(02:30):
this of they're borrowing more and it was the tax
cuts which were unaffordable. The plan that they came up
with the budget this year, those figures have been revised
and they're worse than what they were. So we're not
seeing any plan countries from this government and the plan
is clearly not working.

Speaker 1 (02:47):
Okay, isn't it just rich as well?

Speaker 2 (02:49):
Though?

Speaker 1 (02:49):
You know, you blame or you say that they can't
blame you, but you when you're talking about what you did,
always blame COVID. But there was an awful lot of
other funding and spending decisions that were made that were
not because of the pandemic but because of your ideological stance,
whether it was you know, increasing the minimum wage or
worrying about the conditions of workers and et cetera. You know,

(03:10):
there was a lot of that spending that was also
could be considered considering the books and considering the economic
situation to be profligate that you did for ideological reasons.

Speaker 2 (03:20):
So those two examples that you've used are examples of
where the cost is on the employer in order to
pay a bit more those that they had the minimum wage.
So again, when you look at the debt trajectory for
New Zealand since the mid two thousand, there have been
three major crisis which governments have borrowed for. So we

(03:43):
again going back to the deficit. Nicole Wills's deficit is
worse than what Brent Robinson in Iran except at the
height of cope. In your I apologize to carry on
the current.

Speaker 1 (03:55):
You don't apologize for that.

Speaker 2 (03:56):
I don't apologize for the wage subsidies that was absolutely
needed at the time.

Speaker 1 (04:01):
Okay, So had you stayed on in power, would the
financial situation of this country be better now than it
is in your opinion.

Speaker 2 (04:11):
Well, based on the economic fiscal forecast that we left
when we were in government for the books, both in budgets,
both in prefood So in twenty twenty three they were
stronger than the numbers that were given here. And part
of the reason why we're stronger is you look at
the numbers. You look at the spending that happened, that
was happening in infrastructure, which your school builds, housing builds,

(04:33):
hospital builds for example. That's all money that gets recycled
back into the economy through jobs. So the construction sector
you've seen since the government has come in, there are
twelve thousand fewer construction roles. All right, sort of stimulus
is needed.

Speaker 1 (04:47):
Barbara, We've got to go. But guess what, because we
had a favure of a phone unit with our UK correspondent,
you've got a good old crack to get to go
back at what happened over course of yesterday. And I
thank you for your time in for Waking Up for
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