Kerre Woodham: What will it take to bring NZ out of its funk?

Finance Minister Nicola Willis all but invoked the old adage ‘the beatings will continue until morale improves’, when commenting on the state of the economy yesterday. In a stand up with Prime Minister Christopher Luxon after the Reserve Bank cut the OCR by 25 basis points to 3%, she blamed the sluggish economy on doomsayers from the opposition benches who were talking the economy down, and all but instructed Kiwi households to be more jolly.

Dieuwe de Boer: It's The Economy, Stupid

New Zealand is in a recession and we have been for two years now. Our per capita recession has surpassed the Great Financial Crisis in length after contracting for seven consecutive quarters.

I'm not a fan of GDP as the be all and end all economic figure, but a decline in our yearly economic activity by 0.5% is a serious thing, even more so when you factor in that our per capita GDP has shrunk by a massive 2.7% in that time.

Professor Robert MacCulloch: The World Bank confirms 150 Developing Nations are on Track to overtake NZ....

The World Bank confirms 150 Developing Nations are on Track to overtake NZ, as a succession of National and Labour governments have turned NZ into one of the planet's worst performing economies

If there is one graph that symbolizes the relative economic decline of NZ, then I believe it is the one below. It measures NZ GDP per capita from 1990 to 2022, and compares it with all other nations in our Asia-Pacific region. Its a good comparison, since it controls for the effect of geography, and how the rise of many Asian-Pacific nations should, but haven't, been strongly tied to NZ fortunes (China having become our biggest export partner):