Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Barbara Edmonds: Labour's Finance Spokesperson on the Government's increasing deficit

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Barbara Edmonds: Labour's Finance Spokesperson on the Government's increasing deficit · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Government's books have sunk further into the red in the
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: year to June, partly thanks to high personnel costs at
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Health New Zealand and soaring acc claims. Treasury revealed the
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: deficit on the Crown books deepened by three point four billion.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: It was also one point eight billion worse than Treasury
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  Speaker 1: forecast that was only back in May, the total twelve
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  Speaker 1: point nine billion. Barbara Edmonds as Labour's finance spokesperson, she's
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  Speaker 1: with me this morning. Good morning, Good morning, Ryan, Good
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: to have you on the show. Is this a bad result?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a really grim read of the government accounts
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  Speaker 2: to anyone has the actual look at them. This is
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  Speaker 2: the largest annual deficit since the pandemic in twenty twenty.
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  Speaker 2: And if you go back to the GSC, what's a
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  Speaker 2: nominal term, as in the percentage of the economy. So
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  Speaker 2: it's not a great read. The fact that they've had
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  Speaker 2: to be revised a bit really shows that the economic
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  Speaker 2: management is very dubious.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, are you talking about Grant Robertson's So.
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  Speaker 2: No, this is Nichol Willison, So this is good last
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  Speaker 2: and your deficit since COVID. And then if you look
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  Speaker 2: at Grant at the GUS.
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  Speaker 1: But the numbers tell us Grant Robertson added five point
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  Speaker 1: six billion from budget twenty three. Nicola Willis took off
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  Speaker 1: one point one billion since her mini budget.
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  Speaker 2: Also, what you see is that the majority of this
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  Speaker 2: is during the month's time. And if you've read on
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  Speaker 2: page ten of the Fiscal Accounts, as you noted before,
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  Speaker 2: part of the spending of it is because of the
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  Speaker 2: higher cost of borrowing during obviously high inflation.
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  Speaker 1: And who did the borrough.
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  Speaker 2: Majority of its space?
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  Speaker 1: Who did the borrow? Who did the borough.
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  Speaker 2: Borough twelve point twelve billion for income sex cups? Yeah?
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  Speaker 2: But which lords?
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  Speaker 1: But which minister did the borring before that in budget
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  Speaker 1: twenty three? And see what I'm saying. So the numbers
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  Speaker 1: tell us that Grant added five point six billion from
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  Speaker 1: budget twenty three, Nicola Willis took off one point one
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  Speaker 1: billion since her mini budget. Do you disagree with that?
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  Speaker 2: But what I don't agree with is that borrowing for
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: text cuts have made this worse.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, I didn't need.
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  Speaker 2: To be as bad as it did. That those were
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  Speaker 2: the choices that this government have made, Okay, And the
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  Speaker 2: borrowing that right Robinson had done again that in your
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  Speaker 2: Giffert not this is higher than it was in twenty
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  Speaker 2: twenty at the height of COVID.
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  Speaker 1: All right, let's talk about because you said this is
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  Speaker 1: a bad result, right, it's too high. Should we be
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  Speaker 1: making more cuts to the public service?
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  Speaker 2: No, okay, it should have reason being is that should
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  Speaker 2: we be.
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  Speaker 1: Increased should we be increasing additional funding for cost pressures
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  Speaker 1: for our frontline services and our government departments.
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  Speaker 2: Will you ask the people who are struggling to see
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  Speaker 2: their GP because their GP costs have gone up, they
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  Speaker 2: would say that they would prefer that their TEXT cuts
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  Speaker 2: have gone to help with that capitation fund. Then that
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  Speaker 2: would say for their GP fees to the inflation has
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  Speaker 2: been pushed out to everybody that user pay system. That's
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  Speaker 2: what I mean by public service cut? How do you
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  Speaker 2: have gone too hard to fast?
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  Speaker 1: Too hard to fast? It's only been apparently three point
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  Speaker 1: three percent cut in the last six months, two thousand jobs.
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  Speaker 1: There's still sixty four thousand working there. But how can
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  Speaker 1: you have how can you keep the public servants increase
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  Speaker 1: the budgets in line with inflation, but also at the
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  Speaker 1: same time say the deficit's too big.
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  Speaker 2: So Ryan, And that's the point. It's not just public
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  Speaker 2: servants as in account of the people. It is the
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  Speaker 2: cut through the funding that flows to the very the
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  Speaker 2: different agencies that gets distributed to people to help them
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  Speaker 2: during the cost of living crisis.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, but how do you.
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  Speaker 2: Fund mean by public services.
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  Speaker 1: You can't have your cake and eat it too. You
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  Speaker 1: can't say, well, keep all the public servants, We'll increase
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  Speaker 1: all the budgets, but we'll also reduce the deficit.
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  Speaker 2: Can you. Well, that's because you don't need to borrow. Well,
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  Speaker 2: Labor could say that because you don't need to borrow
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  Speaker 2: for text cuts, the land lords coome text cuts or
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  Speaker 2: for text cuts with the better companies be the choices.
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  Speaker 1: All right, Barbara, we have to leave it there. Thank
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  Speaker 1: you very much for your time, Labour's finance spokesperson Barbara Edmunds.
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• 4:11
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