There are decent pros and cons towards a country having an investment fund. We already have one – the NZ Super Fund. Their job is to get the best returns on their assets.
Labour is proposing basically a giant corporate welfare fund, which can will either lend money to, or invest in NZ companies. Beyond doubt, they will pick favoured industries for the fund. So it will just be another version of the corporate welfare we already have.
Temasek Holdings invests around the world. It has 14 global offices from China to Mexico to the UK to France etc. Only around 27% of its investments are in Singapore.
The Government currently gets around $1.5 billion a year in dividends from various companies. These are currently used to fund health, education, police etc. Labour is promising to take that $1.5 billion and instead stick it in a corporate welfare fund. So they will need to either increases taxes by $1.5 billion a year, or borrow more for health, education, police etc.
David Farrar runs Curia Market Research, a specialist opinion polling and research agency, and the popular Kiwiblog where this article was sourced. He previously worked in the Parliament for eight years, serving two National Party Prime Ministers and three Opposition Leaders
Temasek Holdings invests around the world. It has 14 global offices from China to Mexico to the UK to France etc. Only around 27% of its investments are in Singapore.
The Government currently gets around $1.5 billion a year in dividends from various companies. These are currently used to fund health, education, police etc. Labour is promising to take that $1.5 billion and instead stick it in a corporate welfare fund. So they will need to either increases taxes by $1.5 billion a year, or borrow more for health, education, police etc.
David Farrar runs Curia Market Research, a specialist opinion polling and research agency, and the popular Kiwiblog where this article was sourced. He previously worked in the Parliament for eight years, serving two National Party Prime Ministers and three Opposition Leaders
3 comments:
David, hang on, you use the word 'promising '. Please don't. As soon as any politician uses that word we know they are lying.
Imo it's a sliding scale, I don't believe much that comes from national.....but further down the BS scale lies labor, greens and at the bottom of the heap tpm.
If Chipkins has said I 'promise', you know he's lying. If you don't believe me, go back and check his past record and history. As with anything he touches it fails.
"... will pick favoured industries..." you betcha! And quids are, especially with the likes of Willie & Co in the background, the Maori economy will be in for another boost at the expense of everyone else. As you've highlighted David, the money doesn't come from nowhere and it has all the hallmarks of robbing Peter to pay Paul. Moreover, as anon@7.57 indicates, Chipkins truly has a lousy record with everything he's touched, and why would this be any different?
It ended up as a playground spat.
Chris Hipkins called reporters “lazy.” Christopher Luxon called Labour’s policy “drivel.”
And with that, New Zealand’s two main contenders for power gave the country a glimpse of the intellectual diet we’ll be fed between now and the election: cheap shots, no substance, and a shared allergy to detail.
Labour’s “Future Fund” is supposed to be a visionary vehicle for national growth. Instead, it’s a patchwork of borrowed ideas and bureaucratic fog. When pressed for numbers, Hipkins called the omission “an oversight.” When asked for examples, he said it would be “significant.”
When challenged about transparency, he accused journalists of not showing up.
It’s the same pattern we saw under Ardern — fluent but fake) empathy, vague nouns, and a proud refusal to quantify anything. Barbara Edmonds’ language could have been written by ChatGPT in soothing mode: “The fund will invest in New Zealand for the benefit of everyone.”
It says everything and nothing at once.
Luxon, for his part, didn’t rise above it. His “bunch of drivel” line may play well in caucus, but it’s hardly the voice of a prime minister-in-waiting. For a man who styles himself as corporate and credible, this was the language of a tired CEO at a bad AGM — long on indignation, short on insight.
Both men are campaigning by insult now — one from opposition, one from the Beehive. Their exchanges are less about vision than about scoring the nightly sound bite. You can almost hear the comms teams polishing lines for social media while the country waits for a policy that actually explains something.
Meanwhile, the real machinery of government remains untouched. Each new “fund” or “authority” will require another layer of bureaucracy, another handful of advisers, another 20 000 civil servants to monitor the last batch. Labour calls this progress; National calls it waste. Neither ever seems to stop doing it.
So here we are: a contest between a man who can’t define his own policies and another who can’t describe his without sneering. God help New Zealand if either of them is running the country this time next year.
If this is what passes for leadership, the Future Fund should invest in dictionaries — it’s the only way we’ll get clarity from either side.
—PB
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