May 3, 2025 • 11 mins
This week on The Sunday Panel, Resident Economist at Opes Partners, Ed McKnight, and host of the Front Page podcast, Chelsea Daniels, joined in on a discussion about the following issues of the day - and more!
Over in Australia, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese secured a second term as Prime Minister. This comes days after Mark Carney won the role of Prime Minister - with experts claiming anti-Trump sentiment helped propel his win. Do we think anti-Trump sentiment helped boost these candidates?
Finance Minister Nicola Willis has refused to rule out means-testing for KiwiSaver ahead of the 2025 Budget. Do we agree with means-testing the Government contribution?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudgin
from News Talks EDB.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
But in the meantime, resident economists at Opie's partners, Ed
mcnight is with me.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
Good morning Ed, Good morning Francesca, and.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Host of the front Page podcast, Chelsea Daniels is with me.
She's also our newsroom resident Ozzie.
Speaker 4 (00:25):
Hi, Chelsea, Happy olbow day.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Oh is that what we're calling it? Are we?
Speaker 4 (00:31):
I just came up with it. But it's going to
ring to it, doesn't it?
Speaker 2 (00:34):
It certainly does. And let's start by talking about the
Australian election. We had Murray olds on at the beginning
of the show, and my goodness he gave us a
very colorful rundown of how things had unfolded over there. Chelsea.
But we've seen a couple of victories now for the
center left in the last week. Do you think it's
a sign of a shift in wild politics?
Speaker 4 (00:55):
Well, let's try and make it even more colorful, Francesca,
shall we? I mean, I think this writing was on
the wall for Dutton, right, We've got we heard about
the Trump bump in Europe last year and that's when
all of those center right and far right parties in
Europe gained popularity off the back of Trump. Now that's
waned over the last few months, especially with the tariffs
(01:16):
and the doge cats and his dealings with Ukraine and Russia.
And I think everybody, I don't think the liberal and
national parties in Australia realized how into US politics and
how worldly Australians have become. I suppose because he's been
trying for weeks to shake off these comparisons to Trump.
(01:40):
He was called the Timu Trump. At one stage he
labeled the country's state broadcaster hate Media. He's had a
major anti China rhetoric of late, also anti migrants, which
comes as no surprise, and his own wed doge thing
in the beginning of the campaign, job carts, ending working
from home, overhauling the woke school agendas. Now head a
(02:02):
backflip on a few of those. But like I said,
I think he's underrested mad how the Trump slump Essentially,
I wonder if this Australian election would have been held
perhaps in November, things would have been completely different.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Interesting, isn't it ed? I wondered too, whether he just
failed to read the room and that Australians are essentially
voting on domestic issues and they want it to be
dealt with in a sort of a noddy way. They
don't need a Trump's sort of style of politics.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
I think there's a bit of truth in that. The
big thing about Trump when he comes out aggressively against
other leaders, is that that gives the opportunity for the
incumbent in this case Albanezi, to stand up and look
really strong. And we saw this in Canada as well,
where Mark Carney has had the opportunity to come out
really strongly and stand up for Canadian values and they
(02:55):
came from way behind to suddenly slamming the election. And
it's been really interesting that the leaders in both Canada
of the conservative movements in both Canada and lost their seats,
with Peter Dunder and Australian peer Bolivia and Canada, and
just thinking about the Trump bump versus the Trump slump,
I think it's easy to come up with a story
(03:16):
before Trump gets in there. Oh, this would all be
great if Trump came and he'll be able to solve this.
But what we've seen over the first one hundred days
is it's caused absolute chaos in the sheer market and
really upsetting the world order as it stands.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
Justsea. I thought Steven Joyce made a really good point
this morning that any political party has to be very
careful about working within kind of a silo of people
who will believe that what you do was the right
thing and everyone's behind you, and you know, you know,
like you can get a bit called out on social
media if your algorithm sending you to everybody that goes, yes,
you're amazing, I love your ideas, You're brilliant, and you
(03:51):
tend to think, oh yeah, I am on the right
track here, and you're not listening to a broad audience.
Speaker 4 (03:56):
Yeah, Well, you've got to think whether Dutton's social media
team were kind of silo wing his social media accounts
and stuff. I mean, mister potato head came up quite
a bit on my algorithm at least. But I think
he just as like you said before, I think he
just failed to read the room. He's always been an
unlikable guy, even as Minister of Home Affairs, even as
(04:19):
Defense Minister. You'll remember back in the day Amber heard
and Johnny Gepp had to make that awful apology video
to the Australian government because Peter Dudden wanted to kill
their dogs because they didn't have the right paperwork in Australia.
I mean, he's been faced with these kinds of trials
and tribulations of likability over the entirety of his career
(04:41):
and he just wasn't strong enough and he's just not
likable enough. And then you've got Elbow on the other hand,
even referring to him, he's got a nickname. And that's
when you know Australians actually really like you, because they
give you a moniker. He was incredibly likable. He came
out with, you know, policy decisions that really spoke to voters,
(05:03):
you know, speaking on cost of living, women's health, which
is usually not spoken about in any kind of election ever.
So I'd really like to see the numbers as to
how many young people and women, how young people and
women voted in particular, and whether that really contributed to
that major swent, because it was The coalition has been
(05:23):
absolutely devastations this morning. I mean, I'd love to be
in some of those rooms with them this morning, being like,
where do we go wrong?
Speaker 2 (05:33):
It's funny, actually, it's funny. I was reading this last
night that the Sydney morning hereld was sort of writing
at six o'clock their time last night, or the Liberals
are already organizing meetings to discuss who's going to take
over from Dutton.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Lowe at all.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
That's a bit harsh, isn't it. That's a bit brutal.
And by the morning you were like, oh no, that's
just practical and organized. They needed that.
Speaker 4 (05:53):
They won this election in like fifty minutes. I was
expected there were all week. There was like going to
be hunger at government. We're going to have to wait,
you know, three weeks to know our PM No fifty minutes,
hundred an hour. You can't even get a Domino's pizza
on a Saturday night when a ball games on in
(06:14):
one hundred and fifty minutes.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
It's very interesting, isn't it. Hey, I want to talk
to you both about means testing Key we Save and
a loik Nikola Willis has refused to rule this out
on ZB this week, and of course we're heading into
its budget month. Twenty second of May will be budget
day ed. Would any change to key we Save A
contributions be a good move, do you think? Or is
it one of those things that New Zealanders do not
(06:39):
want the government to play with.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
Well, when you think about it, really as middle class welfare,
isn't it. We spent about one point one billion dollars
a year on this policy. And I was out for
breakfast this morning talking to a couple of my friends
about it and said, well, would you invest in key
we save a lessl would you put less money into
key we save if the government changed the policy? And
for a lot of people on good incomes, the answer
(07:03):
is probably know. So do we really need to give
an extra five hundred bucks a year to somebody earning
one hundred and fifty k or two hundred thousand dollars?
Probably not, So I think there is a really strong
argument to draw the line somewhere and say, at X
level of income, we don't really need this. And I've
been thinking, you know, in my mind, when you suggest
(07:25):
this topic, where should that be? I kind of think
it should be at the thirty three percent tax rate.
So once the thirty three percent tax rate cuts in,
which is at about seventy eight thousand dollars worth of income,
I think that's a fair place to draw the line
and say, look, we need to save some money because
we don't have a lot of money to spend at
the moment, so let's free up some and reallocate it.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
It does tend to make sense, Chelsea. If you're earning
a very good income, say you're learning over a couple
hundred thousand, you're you know, the corporate or the company
you work for is also contributing a good amount. Do
you really need that five hundred and seventy one dollars
from the government to motivate you. I feel like it's
probably a to people who are earning lease or a
(08:08):
freelancer like myself, a part time freelancer. I don't get
any money from m zid mee. That's my decision. So
I quite like that that's that's a motive motivates me
to stick with KI. We say, if I get that
that little yeah, but you.
Speaker 4 (08:24):
Make sure, Yeah, you also have to make sure that
people are you know, we're talking about you know, middle class.
You know, depending on who you are and how you
grew up and how much money you have, everyone has
a different perception of what a good income is. So
if we're still talking seventy eight k in Auckland, for example,
(08:44):
I wouldn't say that that is particularly good. It would
be average, Whereas if you're talking seventy eight k somewhere
in the middle of nowhere, then yet you can afford
a lot more. I'd be saying, I'd be lifting that
a bit higher, being like, what over one hundred K
or over a one point fifty Those people definitely don't
need that what five hundred and twenty one dollars a
year towards their KIWI SAB. I like the idea actually
(09:08):
of making the minimum contributions a bit higher, going to
that four percent instead of that default three percent, because
there's been some commentary around how we're actually going to
live when we retire, and I'm talking people that are
still working now, and if the rate was increased to
a four percent member contribution, apparently that and your employer
(09:31):
matches that, So you're in the opportunity where your employer
matches that. That would allow funds to last twenty to
thirty percent longer, allowing a medium income earlier to maintain
their relative standard of living for another twenty to thirty years.
That's just a one percent bump.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
Yeah, I mean, I'd like to see them text can
we say the lease? But no one's saving any money
doing that, are.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
They Well, the trouble when you draw that threeshold at
one hundred and fifty k or one hundred thousand dollars
is that you don't end up saving that much money.
Here's another suggestion that might encourage people to save while
still giving them a tax benefit. So if you put
away three percent of your income and your employer contributes
three percent as well, the three percent that your employer
(10:16):
is contributing is taxed. Now a lot of people might
not realize that. They might think, Okay, if I own
one hundred K and I put in three thousand dollars
and my employer puts in three thousand dollars, then call
I get six thousand dollars in total. But no, no, no,
no no. That extra three thousand dollars that your employer
is paying you that gets taxed, and so you might
lop off another thousand dollars. Maybe a better use of
(10:38):
money would be to say, well, we're going to do
away with the government contribution, but if your employer is contributing,
we're going to let that be tax free. Because that
would be a real incentive for people to put money
away and to argue and negotiate for those extra employer contributions.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
Chelsea Daniels and Ed McKnight, thank you very much for
your time this morning, appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
For more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin, listen
lived to us Talks there Be from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudgin
from News Talks EDB.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
But in the meantime, resident economists at Opie's partners, Ed
mcnight is with me.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
Good morning Ed, Good morning Francesca, and.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Host of the front Page podcast, Chelsea Daniels is with me.
She's also our newsroom resident Ozzie.
Speaker 4 (00:25):
Hi, Chelsea, Happy olbow day.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Oh is that what we're calling it? Are we?
Speaker 4 (00:31):
I just came up with it. But it's going to
ring to it, doesn't it?
Speaker 2 (00:34):
It certainly does. And let's start by talking about the
Australian election. We had Murray olds on at the beginning
of the show, and my goodness he gave us a
very colorful rundown of how things had unfolded over there. Chelsea.
But we've seen a couple of victories now for the
center left in the last week. Do you think it's
a sign of a shift in wild politics?
Speaker 4 (00:55):
Well, let's try and make it even more colorful, Francesca,
shall we? I mean, I think this writing was on
the wall for Dutton, right, We've got we heard about
the Trump bump in Europe last year and that's when
all of those center right and far right parties in
Europe gained popularity off the back of Trump. Now that's
waned over the last few months, especially with the tariffs
(01:16):
and the doge cats and his dealings with Ukraine and Russia.
And I think everybody, I don't think the liberal and
national parties in Australia realized how into US politics and
how worldly Australians have become. I suppose because he's been
trying for weeks to shake off these comparisons to Trump.
(01:40):
He was called the Timu Trump. At one stage he
labeled the country's state broadcaster hate Media. He's had a
major anti China rhetoric of late, also anti migrants, which
comes as no surprise, and his own wed doge thing
in the beginning of the campaign, job carts, ending working
from home, overhauling the woke school agendas. Now head a
(02:02):
backflip on a few of those. But like I said,
I think he's underrested mad how the Trump slump Essentially,
I wonder if this Australian election would have been held
perhaps in November, things would have been completely different.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Interesting, isn't it ed? I wondered too, whether he just
failed to read the room and that Australians are essentially
voting on domestic issues and they want it to be
dealt with in a sort of a noddy way. They
don't need a Trump's sort of style of politics.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
I think there's a bit of truth in that. The
big thing about Trump when he comes out aggressively against
other leaders, is that that gives the opportunity for the
incumbent in this case Albanezi, to stand up and look
really strong. And we saw this in Canada as well,
where Mark Carney has had the opportunity to come out
really strongly and stand up for Canadian values and they
(02:55):
came from way behind to suddenly slamming the election. And
it's been really interesting that the leaders in both Canada
of the conservative movements in both Canada and lost their seats,
with Peter Dunder and Australian peer Bolivia and Canada, and
just thinking about the Trump bump versus the Trump slump,
I think it's easy to come up with a story
(03:16):
before Trump gets in there. Oh, this would all be
great if Trump came and he'll be able to solve this.
But what we've seen over the first one hundred days
is it's caused absolute chaos in the sheer market and
really upsetting the world order as it stands.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
Justsea. I thought Steven Joyce made a really good point
this morning that any political party has to be very
careful about working within kind of a silo of people
who will believe that what you do was the right
thing and everyone's behind you, and you know, you know,
like you can get a bit called out on social
media if your algorithm sending you to everybody that goes, yes,
you're amazing, I love your ideas, You're brilliant, and you
(03:51):
tend to think, oh yeah, I am on the right
track here, and you're not listening to a broad audience.
Speaker 4 (03:56):
Yeah, Well, you've got to think whether Dutton's social media
team were kind of silo wing his social media accounts
and stuff. I mean, mister potato head came up quite
a bit on my algorithm at least. But I think
he just as like you said before, I think he
just failed to read the room. He's always been an
unlikable guy, even as Minister of Home Affairs, even as
(04:19):
Defense Minister. You'll remember back in the day Amber heard
and Johnny Gepp had to make that awful apology video
to the Australian government because Peter Dudden wanted to kill
their dogs because they didn't have the right paperwork in Australia.
I mean, he's been faced with these kinds of trials
and tribulations of likability over the entirety of his career
(04:41):
and he just wasn't strong enough and he's just not
likable enough. And then you've got Elbow on the other hand,
even referring to him, he's got a nickname. And that's
when you know Australians actually really like you, because they
give you a moniker. He was incredibly likable. He came
out with, you know, policy decisions that really spoke to voters,
(05:03):
you know, speaking on cost of living, women's health, which
is usually not spoken about in any kind of election ever.
So I'd really like to see the numbers as to
how many young people and women, how young people and
women voted in particular, and whether that really contributed to
that major swent, because it was The coalition has been
(05:23):
absolutely devastations this morning. I mean, I'd love to be
in some of those rooms with them this morning, being like,
where do we go wrong?
Speaker 2 (05:33):
It's funny, actually, it's funny. I was reading this last
night that the Sydney morning hereld was sort of writing
at six o'clock their time last night, or the Liberals
are already organizing meetings to discuss who's going to take
over from Dutton.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Lowe at all.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
That's a bit harsh, isn't it. That's a bit brutal.
And by the morning you were like, oh no, that's
just practical and organized. They needed that.
Speaker 4 (05:53):
They won this election in like fifty minutes. I was
expected there were all week. There was like going to
be hunger at government. We're going to have to wait,
you know, three weeks to know our PM No fifty minutes,
hundred an hour. You can't even get a Domino's pizza
on a Saturday night when a ball games on in
(06:14):
one hundred and fifty minutes.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
It's very interesting, isn't it. Hey, I want to talk
to you both about means testing Key we Save and
a loik Nikola Willis has refused to rule this out
on ZB this week, and of course we're heading into
its budget month. Twenty second of May will be budget
day ed. Would any change to key we Save A
contributions be a good move, do you think? Or is
it one of those things that New Zealanders do not
(06:39):
want the government to play with.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
Well, when you think about it, really as middle class welfare,
isn't it. We spent about one point one billion dollars
a year on this policy. And I was out for
breakfast this morning talking to a couple of my friends
about it and said, well, would you invest in key
we save a lessl would you put less money into
key we save if the government changed the policy? And
for a lot of people on good incomes, the answer
(07:03):
is probably know. So do we really need to give
an extra five hundred bucks a year to somebody earning
one hundred and fifty k or two hundred thousand dollars?
Probably not, So I think there is a really strong
argument to draw the line somewhere and say, at X
level of income, we don't really need this. And I've
been thinking, you know, in my mind, when you suggest
(07:25):
this topic, where should that be? I kind of think
it should be at the thirty three percent tax rate.
So once the thirty three percent tax rate cuts in,
which is at about seventy eight thousand dollars worth of income,
I think that's a fair place to draw the line
and say, look, we need to save some money because
we don't have a lot of money to spend at
the moment, so let's free up some and reallocate it.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
It does tend to make sense, Chelsea. If you're earning
a very good income, say you're learning over a couple
hundred thousand, you're you know, the corporate or the company
you work for is also contributing a good amount. Do
you really need that five hundred and seventy one dollars
from the government to motivate you. I feel like it's
probably a to people who are earning lease or a
(08:08):
freelancer like myself, a part time freelancer. I don't get
any money from m zid mee. That's my decision. So
I quite like that that's that's a motive motivates me
to stick with KI. We say, if I get that
that little yeah, but you.
Speaker 4 (08:24):
Make sure, Yeah, you also have to make sure that
people are you know, we're talking about you know, middle class.
You know, depending on who you are and how you
grew up and how much money you have, everyone has
a different perception of what a good income is. So
if we're still talking seventy eight k in Auckland, for example,
(08:44):
I wouldn't say that that is particularly good. It would
be average, Whereas if you're talking seventy eight k somewhere
in the middle of nowhere, then yet you can afford
a lot more. I'd be saying, I'd be lifting that
a bit higher, being like, what over one hundred K
or over a one point fifty Those people definitely don't
need that what five hundred and twenty one dollars a
year towards their KIWI SAB. I like the idea actually
(09:08):
of making the minimum contributions a bit higher, going to
that four percent instead of that default three percent, because
there's been some commentary around how we're actually going to
live when we retire, and I'm talking people that are
still working now, and if the rate was increased to
a four percent member contribution, apparently that and your employer
(09:31):
matches that, So you're in the opportunity where your employer
matches that. That would allow funds to last twenty to
thirty percent longer, allowing a medium income earlier to maintain
their relative standard of living for another twenty to thirty years.
That's just a one percent bump.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
Yeah, I mean, I'd like to see them text can
we say the lease? But no one's saving any money
doing that, are.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
They Well, the trouble when you draw that threeshold at
one hundred and fifty k or one hundred thousand dollars
is that you don't end up saving that much money.
Here's another suggestion that might encourage people to save while
still giving them a tax benefit. So if you put
away three percent of your income and your employer contributes
three percent as well, the three percent that your employer
(10:16):
is contributing is taxed. Now a lot of people might
not realize that. They might think, Okay, if I own
one hundred K and I put in three thousand dollars
and my employer puts in three thousand dollars, then call
I get six thousand dollars in total. But no, no, no,
no no. That extra three thousand dollars that your employer
is paying you that gets taxed, and so you might
lop off another thousand dollars. Maybe a better use of
(10:38):
money would be to say, well, we're going to do
away with the government contribution, but if your employer is contributing,
we're going to let that be tax free. Because that
would be a real incentive for people to put money
away and to argue and negotiate for those extra employer contributions.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
Chelsea Daniels and Ed McKnight, thank you very much for
your time this morning, appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
For more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin, listen
lived to us Talks there Be from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio
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