I’m going to call this - by the slimmest of margins - for Edmonds. I think she actually won this exchange purely by holding her ground, sounding confident and pointing out that she doesn’t actually have to have public numbers that add up just yet.
It’s June. The election is five months away. Labour hasn’t announced all its policies yet - heck, it’s only announced about three or four.
They are entitled to have a little bit of time to roll out the full suite of policies and the full fiscal plan in the next few months.
Now, this is not to say that Willis is wrong in her assertion. I think, in time, she’s going to be proven right that Labour’s numbers don’t add up. That $20-a-week public transport policy has been hugely under-costed. Reinstating pay equity will cost billions of dollars Labour doesn’t have; they’re just going to have to put that on the debt.
The capital gains tax is not going to bring in the amount of money that Labour says it will.
So Willis is right - Labour hasn’t got the money - but her timing is wrong. She has gone too hard, too early.
But Willis also has a significant side issue of her own here, which is that she doesn’t hold the economic high ground. She doesn’t have the money either for what the National Party has promised, particularly regarding the Roads of National Significance. They promised 17 of them. We are not going to get 17 of them while these guys are in power.
These roads are now being downgraded - as in the case of Mill Road and one other - or they’re being delayed to the point that we only had one of these roads delivered in the latest Budget.
Now, obviously, an early parry doesn’t win an election. I think this is a case of Labour having - yep, sure - won an early battle but they’re still going to lose the war.
But what this should tell you is that Edmonds is maybe just a little bit better than some people would estimate her to be.
And timing, as they say, is everything.
Heather du Plessis-Allan is a journalist and radio broadcaster who hosts Newstalk ZB's weekday Drive-Time Show – where this article was sourced.
1 comment:
English major, former Fonterra lobbyist and NZ (Oligarch's) Initiative Director Willis is playing shallow soundbite dinky debating style empty politics. She's presiding over a fiscal blowout, as confirmed in writing by her own Treasury's Long run fiscal forecasts. Public debt will explode to 100% of GDP over the next couple of decades due to ageing population pressures on pensions & healthcare given her own settings. Willis wont raise taxes and says she wont cut public welfare.
She personally told me to go jump in the lake when I proposed years ago the only viable way out was super savings for all via an Australian Keating style scheme, lauded there by left & right alike. Pensions are going to 2 percent of GDP in Aussie yet rising to 8 per cent of GDP in NZ. Willis is sending NZ bankrupt doing silly PR / marketing / comms stunts saying its Labour that's the party with no plan. She has no plan. She thinks this is a debating moot she can win using cheap shots. Kiwis know we're going backwards.
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