Point of Order: Buzz from the Beehive - 14/10/24

Polls dip for Nats but govt sticks to its guns on growth – and the restoration of “mauri” (but how is it measured?) plays a part

The phrase, “It’s the economy, stupid” was coined by James Carville, a strategist involved in Bill Clinton’s successful 1992 presidential election campaign against George H W Bush.

It worked for Clinton, whose team used it successfully to unseat Bush the elder, despite the fact that 90 per cent of the country approved of the job that the incumbent had been doing just a year before the election.

Point of Order: Sepuloni is chuffed with Flexi-Wage figures....

.... just a few months after Upston told us the scheme is a flop

RNZ earlier this year reported a National critique of the government’s Flexi-wage scheme and the claim it was well off track if the government wanted to get 40,000 people off a benefit and into a job in two years.

Revamping and expanding Flexi-wage was a key 2020 election promise for Labour, with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern giving the policy pride of place at her campaign launch that August.

Point of Order: Clark enlightens us about open banking

While Sio throws light (through a Maori world lens) on what once was blind justice

It’s the announcement we saw coming when Newshub revealed the Government was poised to announce a major change to banking, “which experts say will slash their profits”.

This news was broadcast as Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was adding her voice to the populist chorus of disapproval about those profits.

It so happened the government was working on a concept called “open banking”, whereby customers can move their bank accounts, direct debits and what-have-you between banks.