Ele Ludemann: Growth vs grab

It ought to have been a good week for Labour in breaking its policy drought. It wasn’t.

The Future Fund failed by leaving a gaping hole with no explanation of how health, education and other necessities would be funded when the money currently going to them was funnelled into the Fund.

Chris Trotter: Promises, Promises.

Labour's Future Fund recalls KiwiBuild, but with even less detail.

THE FUTURE FUND. Crikey, that sounds promising! How long has it been since a political party gave the future a first thought? Second thoughts are a dime-a-dozen in politics, but setting a firm priority, that’s a lot rarer. If nothing else, “Future Fund” is guaranteed to capture the voters’ attention.

And it just gets better. According to Labour (the party that’s just launched this brand-new policy) the Future Fund is intended to ensure that the job of securing New Zealand’s prosperity in the decades that lie ahead will be undertaken “by us, for us”.

Dr Oliver Hartwich: Labour’s Future Fund - Wrong tool for a real problem

Labour wants to funnel Crown dividends into a new sovereign wealth fund restricted to domestic investments. The stated goal is to boost domestic risk capital, but the design is terrible.

Labour says New Zealand lacks capital for investment. Maybe. But since there is plenty of capital in the world, the real question is what is stopping that capital from coming to New Zealand.