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Ryan Bridge: How much are political parties willing to borrow after a disaster? · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome to New Zealand, land of earthquakes, stormy weather, and
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: absolute natural beauty. Another reminder overnight of just how shaky
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: these aisles can be. I hope everyone's all right this morning.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: It's always a bit hard to get back to sleep
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: after you get a decent jolt, and it sounds like
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: you had a decent jolt in the Deep South last night.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: We've always had storms, of course damage from storms in
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: this country, but of late we've had more, often doing
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: more damage. That's according to the insurance companies. All right,
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: they came out and said that, and it's costing more.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: We've got a bird sick and patoni and people are
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: freaking out. It's not yet clear how that sitution situation
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: is going to play out poultry wise, but it is
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: again another reminder of threats to industry that you cannot control,
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: like foot and mouth, which if it took hold here,
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: would be devastating. All of this is to say there
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: are a lot of things that can go wrong in
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: this country and do go wrong in this country, and
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: often enough that it's actually quite predictable. You know, we
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: are in the top ten countries for earthquakes around the world,
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: so it's not surprising, although it is still shocking when
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: it happens. So we need a buffer, we need headroom,
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: we need room for borrowing. And this comes to the
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: point about debt, and the political parties haven't yet told
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: us where they are at with debt. Okay, National has
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: set out the trajectory as part of a government. But
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: when are we going to hear from labor about their
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: borrowing limits? When are we going to hear from New
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: Zealand first about how much they think we can handle?
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: Because debt servicing, this is paying for the interest on
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: the debt is now the fourth largest line item on
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: the government's books according to Treasury, and the interest bill
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: has gone from three point six billion dollars a year
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: in twenty fourteen to now nearing ten billion dollars a year.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: That's just servicing the interest. It's more than we pay
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: for police, for corrections, for Ministry of Justice, for customs,
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: and defense combined defense included. So I think it's high
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: time and last night was a good reminder that the
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: political parties come out and tell us exactly how much
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: they think we should be borrowing and when we should
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: be paying it back. For more from early edition with
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: Ryan Bridge. Listen live to news talks it'd be from
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: five am weekdays, or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio