Tim Hurdle and Josie Pagani: Former National Party senior advisor and political commentator ahead of Luxon's State of the Nation Speech

Economic growth and recovery is expected to be front of mind as the Prime Minister prepares to address business leaders in Auckland today. 

Christopher Luxon will share his State of the Nation speech, outlining what he sees as the country's challenges and priorities for the year ahead. 

Tim Hurdle is a former National Party senior adviser and told Ryan Bridge it will be all about the economy. 

He expects Luxon to outline what they've done so far and hopefully provide more certainty on their plan for the year ahead. 

Political commentator Josie Pagani says the government needs to better articulate how we grow. 

She says the Government doesn't want to spend more, doesn't have an industrial policy, and isn't keen on picking winners and interfering in the market, so it needs today to outline their theory of growth. 

LISTEN ABOVE 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Big day today for Christopher Luxon kicking off his political calendar.
I suppose he sort of did that with a reshuffle
on Sunday, but today is the State of the Nation address,
and if the cabinet reshuffle was anything to go by,
it looks like growth, growth, growth will be on the agenda.
There's been lots of talk, not much action. What's going
to happen, what will be delivered? Will find out. Tim
Hurdle is with us, the former National Party senior advisor,

(00:21):
and Josie beganni political commentator, Good morning, Good morning morning, Tim.
What do you think he's going to say today.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
I think he's going to try and create a story
around some of the actions they've taken as a government
and weave that into an economic plan and try and
give some confidence and certainty about what the government's going
to do in the next twelve months to drive economic
growth in the economy.

Speaker 1 (00:44):
Josie, will people listen to his message?

Speaker 3 (00:48):
Well, I think we're all saying I mean, over Christmas,
Ryan people talked about this all the time, right, I mean,
our kids are leaving the country, they haven't got decent jobs,
We're not growing. It feels like we're in a hole.
So I think he's talking about the right thing, absolutely,
And to paraphrase Paul Krugman, the economist, he said, you know,
productivity isn't everything, but it almost is. And that's what

(01:10):
we're really talking about, getting more value out of the
things that we put in. So that's labor, that's the
hours that we work, it's the jobs that we do.
So he's definitely talking about the right thing. And once,
thank god, we've stopped the kind of gibberous economics around
de growth, you know, the sort of circular economy donat
economics thing where we're meant to be richer if we

(01:32):
made less because we need the money to do the
things we love. Right I'm in schools, hospitals, building stuff
and higher wages. I think the problem they've got is
I don't really know what their theory of growth is
because it's not spending more. We know that they haven't
got an industrial policy like every other government does at
the moment, they don't like to have an active government

(01:53):
that invests, picks winners, you know, back certain sectors. So
I think we need to hear what is the plan,
what's your theory of growth? How do you think you're
going to grow the country. What are you going to
do about our current account deficit? And it can't just
be about tourism.

Speaker 1 (02:08):
No, they have said, to be fair that that is
a short term sugar hit. I suppose the tourism one
one that you can potentially turn around really quickly. Tim
is it important because what we're hearing is today he's
going to say, if you want all these great things,
the social services, the healthcare, etc. We're going to have
to do some stuff that you won't like, i e. Mining.

(02:29):
Is this the way that he needs to start framing
this debate?

Speaker 2 (02:33):
Yeah, Well, the problem is with the economy is that
the things that make money are not really tourism. Tourism
you get a lot of low wage jobs. If we
really want to be a high wage economy, we have
to be doing things, and the part of the economy
that makes the most money's actually mining. But really we
need to get into the tech sector and those high
tech jobs that are fueling economic growth around the world,

(02:56):
and the services sector. And so that might mean changing
what the emphasis is on some of the stuff we
do today and trying to find new sectors of the
economy that are driven off innovation growth and potentially initially
some of those extractive industries which are a bit of
challenge for KIWIS because we certainly haven't shown a big
apetite for mining in the past.

Speaker 1 (03:16):
No, we haven't. But I guess if you can reframe it,
then maybe you'd get some people on board. What about
the speaking of getting people on board, Josie, that poll
that had national down in twenty nine or something. Do
you think, because obviously there is a bit of discontent
out that you would have heard it from people over
Christmas too, over the summer break. Do you think that's
just the sign of the economic times or do you
think it's something to do with Luxeon in particular.

Speaker 3 (03:39):
I think Luxeon's got nothing to lose now right. He
needs to step up into a real leadership role and
that means exactly what Tim was saying, where you've actually
got to make tough choices. And the thing about growth,
if you're going to make growth the number one priority, growth, growth, growth,
then there's some things you're not going to do, or
you're going to do some things that might be a
bit unpalatable for some people. And that's leadership. So you know,

(04:03):
leadership isn't actually being liked or being popular all the time.
It's actually going right, we've got a real problem, and
we're going to prioritize you know, X, Y and Z.
So I think if he can do that, and if
you can take the country with him, that's the kind
of vision that we've been looking for from him. And
he needs to look at countries like you know, South Korea, Singapore.
We talk about these all the time. You build out

(04:24):
from your point of unique difference. South Korea they create
the government invested heavily in auto industries in the seventies.
Singapore they said, right, we're a port. We're going to
build out from that, and now they're a financial hub
and a pharmaceutical hub globally. So that's the kind of
vision we're looking for from him. And yes, there will
be tough decisions to make.

Speaker 1 (04:45):
Tim. What's one really unpopular policy you think you should too,
he should do?

Speaker 2 (04:50):
Oh, that's not the kind of thing I like to
advise on. I just think that we need to think
a lot more about the We tend to spend a
lot of time thinking about growing sectors we've already got.
We need to think a lot more about getting involved
in the sectors that are growing the economy. What's the
biggest wealthiest parts of the American economy today, it's it's
the it's the tesla's, it's the inveders, it's the it's

(05:14):
the meta. Those are the ones that worth the billions
of dollars. They're not growing dairy cows or trying to
grow more fruit. They're really thinking really hard about how
do you transform into an economy that creates high wage jobs.
And those are quite different things from probably what we
target in New Zealand. We still talk about existing exports
a lot.

Speaker 1 (05:33):
Yeah, well, should we offer them tax breaks to come here?

Speaker 2 (05:36):
I mean, I think that's what the worst thing is.
The worst thing is government's trying to pick one is
it just never works. And you can go through the
examples over and over again of governments deciding they know
what they do and they end up investing in stuff
that goes horribly wrong, and then it's on the front
page of the New Zealand Herald or Ryan Bridges interviewing
someone about about how much money was wasted.

Speaker 1 (05:57):
Some e byte company, And to.

Speaker 3 (06:00):
One thing I'd say about that low tem is that
you're right, you know, governments can't just pick winners on
their own. They've got to do it in consultation with business,
with communities, with you know, experts in a particular sector.
So that's right, but they do if you look at
countries like South Korea, like Singapore, they did ACT, the
government was very active and intervened in the market. And

(06:21):
some of the problem for national I think and definitely ACT,
is that they don't actually believe in active governments doing much.
So that's the problem. You can't do transformation unless you're
going to do that. The key is to also let
losers go. So that's what you know. Tesla had a
lot of government support in terms of the R and
D in Tesla, so you back that. But then the

(06:44):
company that fell over recently that did solar panels had
also had government backing in the US what it's called
now Solnin or something. That was one where the government
should have dropped it straight away the minute it wasn't delivering.
And so you've got yes, I think you can pick,
but you've got to let the losers go. But the
problem for this government is they I don't really believe

(07:05):
in intervening in the market at all. So you know,
they've got a.

Speaker 1 (07:08):
Problem and the other thing, I suppose they've got a
bit of a rock and a hard place situation between them.
You know, they've got the sort of more nationalist approach
from New Zealand first on one side and then the
free market liberals on the other. Tim Hurdle, thank you
very much for your time this morning, former National Party
senior advisor and Josie Biganni political commentator. That speech from
lux and if anyone wants to go, it's one hundred
and forty issues sold out, but it was one hundred

(07:30):
and forty dollars a ticket to go and have lunch
and listen to the State of the Nation's speech by
our Prime Minister happening at one o'clock today. For more
from the Mic Asking Breakfast, listen live to news Talks
it'd be from six am weekdays, or follow the podcast
on iHeartRadio.