Remember, her target audience is the squeezed middle. This is the battleground. This is the fight for the soft centre at the election: Labour versus National. These are the voters both parties are targeting.
The Stats NZ figure for the year to the June quarter is 3.2 percent. Prices are up for the average Kiwi family. On the face of it, that doesn't sound like good news.
But for the roughly one-third of Kiwis who own a home, aka the squeezed middle, the number is better than it could have been. That's because this figure is based on the Household Living-Costs Price Index, not the Consumers Price Index (CPI).
CPI inflation is 4.1 percent. This measure is lower at 3.2 percent. Why? Because it takes into account the cost of mortgage interest payments.
And the mortgage-interest story is a good one. On these numbers, mortgage interest payments are 15 percent cheaper.
Just imagine how bad this figure could have been if interest rates hadn't fallen, or if the Reserve Bank hadn't had the headroom to cut rates.
You can see where I'm going with this.
If you're an average home-owning family with two kids in New Zealand, you know how important your mortgage is to your sense of financial wellbeing. The smaller it is, the better you feel.
So Nicola Willis will see this number as positive for two reasons. First, she'll claim some credit for helping bring mortgage costs down by 15 percent. Even though that's largely the Reserve Bank's doing, she'll argue that the Government created the conditions that made it possible.
Second, she'll blame Donald Trump for prices continuing to rise, which isn't entirely untrue. A third of the annual increase is due to petrol prices and that's tied to events involving Trump and Iran.
This helps National because it's running this election not only on its own record, which, let's be honest, has been patchy, but also against Labour's record. It's playing the "don't put it all at risk" card and it's playing that card hard.
You would have heard that from Nicola Willis on the show.
The only problem with these numbers is that they're backward-looking. Yes, interest rates have been coming down but they're starting to climb again. Westpac has moved on fixed rates and you can bet your bottom dollar the other banks will soon follow.
Ryan Bridge is a New Zealand broadcaster who has worked on many current affairs television and radio shows. He currently hosts Newstalk ZB's Early Edition - where this article was sourced.
7 comments:
Why is Ryan framing inflation being outside of target as a success? He isn’t moving the goalposts in favour of a useless National party minister, is he? Worrying and not just a little dystopian.
Oh dear Ryan. Middle NZ is bankrupting because National and Willis in particular gave monopolies everything they wanted. The banks lobbied for more relaxed capital requirements and got them, despite three top independent report writers including Sir John Vickers advising against it, supermarkets lobbied to avoid being broken up & Willis duly obliged, Fonterra lobbied like mad for retrospective law to shut down the Smith case and got it. Seymours chief of staff is jumping ship to help the monopolists. NZ is hurtling toward breakdown as it is carved up and you think middle NZ is happy with Nats? The party has no clue how it played with fire and burned ordinary Kiwis these past years. Blaming admittedly useless Labour as Willis does is no excuse.
Ryan, im one of the luckiest guys on this planet. I live a great life. Not too many worries shall we say.
I now give a lot back. I have a business or 2 and I (businesses) do a lot for charities and people that are struggling.
Here's where it gets interesting. I recognized a number of years ago that people were struggling to make ends meet. Stuff ran scaremongering stories about families not coping. (I refuse to read far left stuff now days).
I decided to help. Im not a financial advisor or planner, but im good with money, budgeting investments etc. However money is just a small part of the problem. Without the correct mindset, which can be changed, you just have to want to -is a big part of the issue.
I had a number of people referred to me and I helped them make their situation work for them. But what i discovered is that these people don't want to sacrifice or go without. Now im not talking big stuff here, im talking about junk food, eating out, alcohol, smokes, concerts, iPhones, bigscreen tv's, fancy cars they cant afford etc etc.
I recon that for 90% of them i could fix their situation.
The simple fact that these people can't work it out themselves means they have a real issue - also they dont want to hear what im trying to tell them. Pretty much none have taken the very simple basic advice I gave them which would have made their lives immeasurably better, tells me that these people want to be miserable but with a flash phone and a cigarette in hand. I just don't understand them. They unfortunately will be miserable , by their very own hand, for most of their time on this planet.
Oh, I will also state, imo there is no poverty in this country. It is a made up far left situation to take from those who produce and give to those that don't. Poverty imo is what you have in 3rd world countries where most don't know where their next meal is coming from. Not like here, where a kid with an iPhone 15 is in 'poverty' because they are 2 models out of date. That is NOT poverty.
We have a budgeting, fomo, and a live for now and entitlement problem.
Well said at 8.25 & 8.31. Those that are benefiting from lower mortgage interest rates will still complain and grizzle about the other cost of living costs because thats what they do. It is not in their nature to give credit where policies are of benefit to them. That's one of the problems with this country, not capable of logical thought.
The reality is the last two generations have been taught what to think not how to think. They now see Socialism and Communism as a wonderful way forward. That is how far the Overton Window has shifted left. NZ is an extreme case right now but much of the west is on the same track.
I doubt we can change track at this point. I believe we will have to go full totalitarian commie and then suffer economic collapse before people open their eyes.
It's refreshing to hear from people like Anon 8:25am who have actually worked with the so-called squeezed middle (and Anon 8:31am you're right on the money as well). All of our well-intended, hand-wringing wokesters just believe implicitly that the people crying poverty are just as conscientious and diligent as they are, but are battling insurmountable odds. They don't have a very good grasp of human behaviour unfortunately. Probably because they live in whites-only liberal progressive enclaves that are as far from lower socio-demographic reality as they can get. The next time I hear the Left championing the cause of some struggling family that is cruelly impoverished by the sadistic, psychopathic, mega-rich elite, I'd like to send in an auditor to examine just how much they spend on meth, KFC, coca cola, alcohol, cigarettes, the casino, scams, Sky TV, hot rods and smart phones, and how little they spend on their education, health, skills, and their children.
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