Ryan Bridge: How much are political parties willing to borrow after a disaster?

Welcome to New Zealand... land of earthquakes, stormy weather and absolute natural beauty.

Another reminder overnight of how shaky these isles can be.

Hope everyone's alright this morning. It's always a bit hard to get back to sleep after a decent jolt and it sounds like you had one.

We've always had storms, and damage from storms, in this country.

But of late we've had more, more often, doing more damage, according to the insurance companies.

We've got a bird with the flu in Petone, though it's not yet clear how that situation will play out poultry-wise.

But it's, again, another reminder of threats to industry that we can't control.

Like Foot and Mouth, which, if it took hold here, would be devastating.

All of this is to say the here are a lot of things can go wrong in this country, and do go wrong, and often enough that it's actually quite predictable. We're top 10 countries for quakes.

So, we need a buffer... need headroom for borrowing.

With the election just around the corner, it's about time we heard from political parties on their debt limits. How much is too much? When will you get us back to surplus? What's your track record on actually doing that?

Treasury tells us debt servicing is now the fourth-largest line item on the Government’s books.
Our annual interest bill? It was $3.6 billion in 2014. Now it's nearing $9 billion.

If you look on a per household basis, it's tipped to be more than $5000 every year. In interest alone.

Last night's quake, and the next storm, are natures reminder of the need for fiscal discipline and plan to deal with them.

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.