Thomas Coughlan: NZ Herald political editor on Labour mulling over financial policy

There's growing speculation as Labour appears to be mulling over their Reserve Bank policy ahead of the election. 

The previous Labour Government changed the bank's remit, ordering it to focus on keeping inflation low - and ensuring maximum employment. 

The current Government scrapped the changes.

NZ Herald political editor Thomas Coughlan explained what Labour finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds could be considering. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Thomas Coglan, the Herald's political editors and for Barrisoba Hi Thomas.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
Had a good afternoon.

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Now, what is it that Nicola Willison and David Seymour
are so worked up about? Ree Barbara Edmonds.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
Yeah, look a number of things. So Barbara Edmonds did
an interview with me. Actually we published it in The
Herald on Monday. The interview basically runs through a whole
bunch of labor policy areas and essentially, as your listeners
will be very well aware, Labour doesn't really have a
lot of policy in these areas. Doesn't have a plan

(00:30):
to pay for the pay equity reversal. It's got the
policy to reverse the pay equity decision. It doesn't have
a plan to pay for the twelve point eight billion
dollars to fund. It doesn't have a policy around getting
rid of investment boosts. You know, will they do it,
will they not do it? It is looking at doing stuff
around the Reserve Bank, bringing back the dual mandate. But
essentially they just they criticized large parts of the interview.

(00:52):
They were particularly critical of the fact that there is
no plan to pay for that pay equity pay equity policy,
and they were also critical of that planned to bring
back the dual mandate, which Labour hasn't said it's one
hundred percent going to bring back that employment mandate. But
Edmund's remarks in now story she said it was an
idea with looking at which would suggest that they're very
keen on it.

Speaker 1 (01:11):
Now the dual mandates correct me if I'm wrong. But
that is not that contentious, is it? Because isn't this
pretty orthodox?

Speaker 2 (01:18):
Yeah, it's a fun I mean, I personally think it's
a bit of a storm in a tea cup. A
lot of countries overseas have a dual mandate for employment
and inflation. We obviously had it between twenty eighteen and
twenty twenty three. It was a period of high inflation
in New Zealand, but it was a high period of
high inflation everywhere, and people at the time said, like,
look at the margins, at the margins if you had

(01:39):
if you had that employment inflation mandate, it might have
made certain decisions happen at a different time. Maybe you
would have maybe you would have held off cutting so
you would have cut sooner. Maybe you'd hold off tightening
at the moment for longer, so you'd have lower interest
rates for longer. But really it's probably not going to
affect the direction of travel too much. So it is

(02:00):
it's it's certainly interesting, but I really don't think that
this policy, or Labor's policy keeping it or scraping it,
is really going to have a massive impact.

Speaker 1 (02:11):
Okay, Now, a prime a minister. Prime minister never wants
to go back to the House to correct the record,
so he wouldn't have want to have to do this.
But how bad is it?

Speaker 2 (02:20):
Look, it's it's not the end of the world. It's embarrassing.
It's very embarrassing to to sort of sneak into Parliament.
Close Swapert uses the word sneak, and I suppose there's
a bit of a sneaky snuck into Parliament last night
to correct an answer he made about this Iranian visa situation.
Iranians who are in New Zealand on visas will be
able to apply to have those visas extended on a

(02:41):
case by case basis. That sounds like the one hundred
and thirty one hundred and forty Iranians currently here on visas,
which which with visas that will expire in the next
eight weeks, will will probably have the the visas extended,
but the remarks that he made in the house about
that that extension being automatic were incorrect and he had
to go back to the House and correct them.

Speaker 1 (03:02):
It brings us to the question, why aren't they being
automatically extended? Why is it case by case?

Speaker 2 (03:06):
I honestly don't know. It would seems to me an
easy to tweak to make to just take it to
kebin at a paper which says like, look, you know,
we'll extend these visas by six months or a year
or something, And I honestly don't know why that's not
the case.

Speaker 1 (03:19):
Thomas, always good to talk to you. Thank you for
filling in it such all I noticed. That's Thomas Cogland,
the Herald's political edison. For more from Hither Duplessy Alan Drive,
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