Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Geof Nightingale: On officials being told to take a look at the financial impact of our ageing population

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Geof Nightingale: On officials being told to take a look at the financial impact of our ageing population · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: To Carolyn McLeish. She probably don't know her name, but
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: she is the Treasury boss. She's the outgoing Treasury boss
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: going back home to Australia after a five year term here,
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: and she says we have a structural deficit in New
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Zealand and things are so bad. She reckons we need
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: a capital gains tax, comprehensive capital gains tax to try
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: and fix it into the future, and we need to
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: change our pension age. Jeff nightingales with us this morning,
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: Independent tax advisor Jeff good morning.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: Good morning Ryan.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: Does she have a point here?
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes she does. Unfortunately, it's very consistent with what
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: Treasury has been saying for well a better part of
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: five or six years now. They publish every four years
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: a long term fiscal position, and that's consistently showing The
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: last one they published was twenty twenty one, and that's
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: consistently showing that we're spending more than we're collecting and
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: that results in unsustainable levels of debt into the future.
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: So she's unfortunately, she's right.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: She's also linking it to COVID quite pacifically as well,
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: isn't she. When she talks about the structural deficits. So
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: we're currently at forty three percent of GDP, well up
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: from the sub twenties before COVID.
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: That's right. So the COVID expenditure has bumped us, bumped
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: our debt levels up from sort of twenty forty to
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: sustainable debt. But it's the outward looking trackly worries and
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: particular and healthcare when we're all aging, our population is aging,
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: more of us will draw down on national super it's
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: a universal benefit, and the aging population is going to
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: need more healthcare. So the projections on those two crown
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: expenditures are pretty frightening over the next sort of thirty years.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: Is this not somebody's text And why can't we just
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: keep cutting? Is this not something we can just cut
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: our way out of.
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: Well, we could. Look, when you're dealing with public finances,
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: there's only three believers. There's more tax there's cutting expenditure,
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: or there's debt. The debt is pretty unsustainable. We've been
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: drawing on that. This current government's doing a little bit
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: of expenditure cutting, but it's not really addressing that structural deficit.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: So that really leaves us in the position of more
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: taxes and none of us like.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: That, certainly not, Jeff, Thank you for that. Independent tax
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: advisor Jeff Nightingale.
• 2:19
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• 2:22
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• 2:24
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• 2:26
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