Latest / Best of Business / Jenee Tibshraeny: NZ Herald Wellington business editor on Nicola Willis' refusal to establish an independent unit to check on Government spending

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Jenee Tibshraeny: NZ Herald Wellington business editor on Nicola Willis' refusal to establish an independent unit to check on Government spending · Best of Business

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  Speaker 1: You're listening to a podcast from News Talks be follow
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  Speaker 2: The government is being told it needs an independent unit
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  Speaker 2: to make sure government spending is sustainable and to check
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  Speaker 2: cherry treasury forecasts and so on. Vast majority of OECD
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  Speaker 2: countries do have this kind of institution, but the Finance
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  Speaker 2: Minister isn't so keen. The Herald's Wellington Business editor jenetib
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  Speaker 2: trainees with us, Hey, your name.
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  Speaker 3: Hey Heather.
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  Speaker 2: Why doesn't she like the idea?
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  Speaker 1: Well?
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  Speaker 3: Nikola Willis reckons that the Treasury does a good job
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  Speaker 3: and also that the oversight provided by the Order to
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  Speaker 3: General is good enough, although it could be beefed up
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  Speaker 3: a little bit. Nicola Willis is open to establishing a
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  Speaker 3: new unit that checks political parties policy costings. You know,
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  Speaker 3: this is something that we've talked about quite a bit,
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  Speaker 3: because you know, every election, parties come along and we
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  Speaker 3: end up getting all tied up and whether their promises
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  Speaker 3: stack up in terms of the money, and you know
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  Speaker 3: that's potentially a distraction from us actually discussing the policies.
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  Speaker 3: So she is open to that, but she's not you know,
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  Speaker 3: particularly exercised to you know, progress something like that.
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  Speaker 2: So would this just be an agency that has a
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  Speaker 2: look if the government says we're going to do the
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  Speaker 2: following thing for this much money, it checks it over
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  Speaker 2: and goes, yep, that's reasonable. Is that basically what it
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  Speaker 2: would do?
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  Speaker 3: Well? Around the world. These sorts of institutions have different mandates,
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  Speaker 3: so some of them just do that. But what the
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  Speaker 3: OECD reckons and also someone who did a big review
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  Speaker 3: of our budget processes, they believe that we need a
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  Speaker 3: sort of more broader institution that checks the Treasury's forecast,
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  Speaker 3: you know, checks that the finances are on track, and
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  Speaker 3: also checks the political party's costings. Now Cameron Bagrie, an
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  Speaker 3: economist Allisses might might have heard a bit from. He
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  Speaker 3: made a point in a column recently. He noted that
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  Speaker 3: the Treasury at the budget assumed that in the future
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  Speaker 3: our productivity growth would be pretty high, like thirty year
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  Speaker 3: average high. But recently our productivity has been super low.
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  Speaker 3: So he raised the point that if our productivity growth
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  Speaker 3: continues to be as low as it's been in recent years,
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  Speaker 3: we should forget about getting the books back in surplus. So,
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  Speaker 3: you know, I thought that was quite a good point
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  Speaker 3: that Cameron made because the Treasury's modeling is based on
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  Speaker 3: the assumption that productivity growth is going to improve, but
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  Speaker 3: what if it doesn't improve? So this is the type
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  Speaker 3: of thing that the experts reckon. A independent unit could
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  Speaker 3: shed some light on interesting stuff.
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  Speaker 2: Jennay, thank you. I really appreciate it. Jene tib Trainey,
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  Speaker 2: the Herald's Wellington Business editor.
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