Pattrick Smellie: BusinessDesk managing editor on the reactions to Labour's new Future Fund

Labour unveiled their first major policy a year out from the 2026 election, and it's prompted mixed reactions from experts.

Some have lambasted the proposed New Zealand Future Fund for being light on details, and Labour has yet to confirm which public assets will be managed by this fund.

BusinessDesk managing editor Pattrick Smellie offered his take on the proposed idea.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now, it's fair to say Labour's first new policy in
years has not been a total success. It's been met
with widespread criticism for being short on details and just
a bit of a rubbish idea. Patrick Smalley wrote a
particularly blunt opinion piece for Business Deskinies with us hallo, Patrick, Okay,
how do you market out of ten.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
Or about a three? I mean, you know, I think
the idea is not necessarily well. Some of the idea
bad idea, you know, ring fencing in an independent agency
or fund an infrastructure or maybe a startup fund which

(00:41):
politicians can't get their hands on and change their minds
about it all the time. That's fine, but this is
a very small fund. So talking about two hundred million
dollars to kick it off, and I mean, we don't
know exactly which cash generating state owned enterprises would be
kicking funds into the thing, but it'd be It's hard
to imagine that we have more than seven or one

(01:01):
hundred million dollars a year to spend and that's just
a drop in the bucket for the things that we
need to spend on infrastructure, and it's it seems like
it's more a kind of virtue signaling things saying we'll
never let government assets be sold, which you know reasonable
people will argue about. But it seems to be there
are some things that the government needs to build and

(01:23):
spend money on infrastructure in there, and it could do
that if it feed up some funds for some things
that doesn't actually need to own. So it's more about
the privatization rate than anything else.

Speaker 1 (01:33):
Well quite right, So is this actually about a policy
idea or is this actually more about politics, about setting
themselves up to be able to fight national on the
potential capital potential asset sales that may happen at the
next election, and also finding some common ground with New
Zealand First for a potential coalition. Is that really what
it's about?

Speaker 2 (01:52):
In some ways, I think it's actually more about the latter.
I mean, I could be obviously one hundred percent wrong,
but the one thing that strikes me the upcoming election
next year is it, just like every other election in
recent times, the only party that can really shift to
left or right is in New Zealand. First, they say
they wo work with cruscipients, but I suspect they would

(02:12):
work them if they worked with labor before. If the
circumstances arose where Labor looked like a good former government,
but it had a choice between the party Molding and
New Zealand First. It's not that difficult to imagine circumstances
with both Labor and New Zealand First would think that
wasn't a bad outcome to get back together. New Zealand
First could claimed to be sensible. Labor could say, with

(02:35):
lots of things we agree about, including having a crack
at the generated betailers and doing this kind of sovereign
fund idea. But remember Peter's idea for a sovereign fund
was one hundred billion dollars, whereas this thing starts with
two hundred million. It's chalk and cheese.

Speaker 1 (02:53):
Now do we not tell me if I'm wrong here?
But do we not already have a fund that does
basically what this fund is supposed to do, which is
invest New Zealand businesses. And isn't that fund the New
Zealand Growth Capital Partner's Fund.

Speaker 2 (03:05):
Well, I suppose that's where I find the whole thing
a little bit confused. Is it an infrastructure fund or
is it an early stage good ideas New Zealand business
investing funds it's both according to the material that they've
had arrested yesterday. And what concerns me about that is
it that says to me that they haven't really bought
their own way through what it's for very well. Yes,

(03:29):
And the other thing is, I guess you're right. There
are lots of pots of dough of about that sort
of two hundred million dollar size already available and doing
either good or mediocre work, depending on how well they manage.

Speaker 1 (03:43):
Now, Patrick, tell me, do you think that they will
be genuinely surprised at how badly this has landed.

Speaker 2 (03:50):
I'm not sure that it has landed as badly as
the commentariat people like me have had to crack at it.
But I see a lot of you know, a lot
of labor people like the like the sound of it.
It sounds good, sounds about right. And if you if
you don't think too hard about about the fact that

(04:12):
it's sort of the difference between ten cents one hundred
dollars in terms of the scale of the thing, then
you know, it can sound like a good idea. But
it's just it just does to me, it's not credible.
I've looked at too many policies like this being announced
before elections over god knows how many years now, and
it's a it's a tiddler of a policy.

Speaker 1 (04:34):
Yeah. Patrick, it's always good to talk to you. Thank
you so much for your time. That's Patrick Smelly, the
founding editor of Business Desk. For more from Heather du
Classy Alan Drive, listen live to News Talks. It'd be
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