This is crazy. What happened yesterday is not Nicola Willis's fault. It is the Reserve Bank's fault. It is not a matter of opinion. It is a fact.
The Reserve Bank ratcheted up the official cash rate to slow down the economy and engineer a recession, to quote Adrian Orr. It's what he wanted to do. It is what he has actually done successfully.
We now have had an enormous recession, and we are struggling to come out of that. That is not Nicola Willis's fault.
Now, sure, I can lay some blame at Nicola Willis's feet. I can blame Nicola Willis for not doing enough to fix the state of the government's books.Probably not doing enough to get rundown places like Auckland Central going again, but that GDP number, that is fair and square, largely the Reserve Bank's problem, so she should not quit over what happened yesterday.
However, I am prepared to admit that the fact that this discussion is even happening does speak to the enormous political pressure that she is under at the moment, because it is enormous. She is under a lot of political pressure. She is very much playing at a political disadvantage because a lot has gone wrong for her this year. Buttergate was all Nicola Willis pulling in Miles Hurrell for a chat, Gavin the cameras run after him. She created that.
She has only just managed to save herself from being accused of being all talk and no action over the supermarkets, redeemed with a Hail Mary at the last minute.
And for all the criticism that she lobbed Grant Robertson for spending too much, she spends more than him every single budget, and here we are two years into this administration, still waiting for their big plan as to how we turn this economy around.
That is as finance minister and economic growth minister, her job, but she doesn't need to quit over what happened yesterday.
Look, the bar for any minister to quit is very high, but for a finance minister, even more so.
Just have a look at how badly Rachel Reeves in the UK is stuffing things up and crying in public.
She is still in her job.
Nicola Willis is nowhere near that, mainly because the GDP figure out yesterday is not her fault.
And the fact that this is actually a discussion is somewhat mind-blowing.
Heather du Plessis-Allan is a journalist and commentator who hosts Newstalk ZB's Drive show HERE - where this article was sourced.
6 comments:
So I take a deep breath and apologise to the Moderator for echoing an older post as this is a variant of a previous post to this forum. However it is total germane to this article. With the limits to growth inexorably working away in the World, our politicians who still think we can grow our way out of the pooh are totally deluded and PM Luxon is leading the charge on that. The 2023 Recalibration of limits to growth: An update of the World3 model is at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jiec.13442 - in that Figure 3 is quite telling as it would appear the modelling is indicating that our World (NOT JUST little NZ) has already jumped off the Seneca cliff when it comes to Industrial Output and our PM is dangling out there with no visible means of support. On the Te Karere, the ruddy Maori TV indoctrination 'program', Minister Potaka said that One Billion dollars of Government money is being put into Maori language programs so National is not helping us economically, it is doing the complete opposite. The old paradigms and 'normal' behaviours of economies will gradually prove to be completely ineffectual as this new reality really sets in and the overshoot leads to an eventual collapse of production and our living standards. A very hard lesson on survivability is inevitable. People talk of soft landings and hitting the bottom of the curve, how we deal with it carrying on its downward path after that 'bottom' is the billion dollar question. Denial is pure hopium for the masses. Personally and for the sake of New Zealand as a whole, getting us as close as possible to a soft-ish landing will require an URGENT and COMPLETE shut down of the ENTIRE Maori elite gravy train with a sudden end to all further claims and settlements - we in New Zealand simply cannot afford to mess about with this any more! If Luxon wants to remain relevant, he will need to grow a pair and deal with the the biggest problem New Zealand now faces - race relations! It will also require a calculated approach to looking after ourselves when our 'energy slaves' in the form of fossil fuel start to take a long holiday (oh heck, they already have ...). Our fiat currency (and that of all other Countries) is tanking, cost of living is rising and any incumbent government will no doubt bear the blame, so they need to stop the self inflicted haemorrhaging of the NZ economy. Unfortunately, this downward trajectory is beyond the control of our politicians who continue to emulate King Canute in trying to control the tide. Sadly I fear that National will fail in this endeavour and likely open the door to our other brilliant fiscal managers who also don't have a Scooby Doo (clue).
Well, Heather. Your article proves you are clueless about how the Reserve Bank works and simply spout empty repetitions of John Key's slimy propaganda.
May I remind you that Bell Gully and high-cost-of-living oligarch's friend, Finance Minister Nic Willis, changed the law when she came into office in 2023 specifically forbidding the RBNZ from cutting rates with the aim of boosting economic growth / employment (which was the legal requirement under the previous dual mandate).
Instead Willis gave the RBNZ a new legal mandate that required it to focus solely on keeping inflation low (the single mandate). Inflation in NZ is just below 3% as we speak. It is close to beaching the upper bound. By law, the RBNZ cannot cut lower for that reason.
Not that Willis, nor you, Heather, have one clue about such matters. NZ is failing and stagnant because it is stuck in a death loop that swings around the same old inbred group of chums regurgitating the same old crap, time after time. You are part of that group, du Plessis.
Go well & keep jumping onto those bandwagons. Maybe Nic will reward you for such blind loyalty.
"journalist experts" offering "opinions" is best summed up as GIGO.
Whilst it's true a recession was necessary to purge the effects of another H Clark advised taxpayer money laundering scheme (the revently released waiparera trust investigation confirmed my suspician it is another Clark era tax money misuse scheme) , there was plenty a competent and honest minister of finance could have done to soften the blow.
Luxon's claim his government is results focussed, certainly isn't reflected in his ongoing support for ineffective Ministers: Willis and Van Velden.
Support which may cost National the election.
The financialist "kill chain" of sovereign nations can be broken down into seven key steps:
1. Infiltration and Influence: Gaining access to a nation's political and financial systems.
2. Debt Entrapment: Encouraging or enforcing unsustainable sovereign debt.
3. Asset Identification: Cataloguing a nation's public utilities, natural resources, and land.
4. Economic Destabilization: Triggering inflation, currency crises, or social unrest.
5. Debt-for-Asset Swaps: Forcing the fire-sale privatization of public assets to service debt.
6. Extraction and Exploitation: Stripping the acquired assets for maximum profit.
7. Abandonment and Collapse: Leaving the nation impoverished and devoid of its wealth-generating resources.
https://emburlingame.substack.com/p/the-weaponization-of-demographics?
Du Plessis-Allan manages to write a whole article on the drop in GDP without once pointing the finger at the real culprit, Donald Trump.
New Zealand is a trading nation and relies on a rules-based international trading order. Doing business demands certainty, but Trump's bull-in-a-China store approach to trade policy has destroyed that order and with it, certainty and business confidence.
Without confidence, business doesn't get done. Being just a bit-player on the world stage, New Zealand pays the inevitable price. If there was any doubt that Trump is a major threat to our county's economic well-being these GDP figures remove it.
And to make it worse, Trump's illegal tariffs have not yet been reflected in GDP. Those tariffs comprise a deliberate act of aggression every bit as unfriendly as Russia's drone incursion into Poland. Unlike Poland however, we don't have NATO to call on for help. If Trump has his way we won't even have the World Trade Organisation either.
And neither Willis, nor the RBNZ, can do anything about it.
Wow Heather!
All the economists are coming out now. Can't agree on anything as we all watch the country blowing about in winds of political spin .
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