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Barbara Edmonds: Labour Finance Spokesperson dosen't take blame for the worse than expected economic update · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Barbara Edmonds, who is Labour's finance spokesperson, joins us. Right now, Hallo.
• 0:03
  Speaker 2: Barbara, good morning Andrey. How are you very.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Good at your phone? You use works, unfortunately Gavin's does not. Okay, Well, look,
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: we had some grim readings for the Treasury's half year
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Economic and Physical Update. The books will stay in the
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: read until at least twenty twenty nine, a year later
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: than previously predicted. And Finance Minister Nichola Willis is blaming you, saying,
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: in the past five years Labor added more than one
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: hundred billion dollars to our debt. So you have the
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: chance to rejoin to that. What do you reckon?
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: Yes, I heard the question posed by one of your
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: listeners earlier. So do you look at government financial statements
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  Speaker 2: going all the way back to say nineteen ninety nine,
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: meaning obviously its sorry to donate. With the change in government,
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: a debt had tracked from around twenty billion dollars had
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: gone up over sixty billion dollars. That was to cover
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: the GFC and to cover christ Church rebuild. We clearly
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: had a pandemic and that increase debt to just over
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: our hundred billion dollars. What we saw is that as
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: a percentage of debt to GDP that started to come
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: down in the same way that most government starts to
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: pay down that debt. As certain as that sort of
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: crisis is over, what has happened so far is that
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  Speaker 2: Nichol Willis is borrowing more, has more debts and a
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: larger deficit. And that's because we're not sure why she's
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  Speaker 2: borrowing more, except for obviously tax cuts, which really said
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: are unaffordable. She chose bringing back interest productibility for landmarks
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: and then tobacco companies obviously with their tax break. So
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: for me, it is her reputation that intestinesn't out well.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: My text that you heard me read the text out
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: from Hugh. He actually did a two parts and one
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  Speaker 1: whether you felt any embarrassment for the position you put
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: in New Zealand in while you were in charge of
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: the benches. He also went on to say, while you
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: can argue the Coalition hasn't got their recovery right, if
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: the Labor Party of the labor governments hadn't been so
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: profligate with the money during the panic and over that
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: period of time, we wouldn't need the recovery in the
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: first place. So do you take any part responsibility for
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: the situation this country finds itself in today.
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: So I take responsibility for the funding that we gave
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: out as part of COVID to help people with the
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: wave SUBSODI, to help businesses with the wave Subjedy, so
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: that employees and employees that could stay connected. The COVID
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: Residents Support scheme is obviously people needed them money as
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: they were losing jobs because of COVID and also because
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: of the small business Casher Loan scheme. The issue was
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: this of they're borrowing more and it was the tax
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: cuts which were unaffordable. The plan that they came up
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: with the budget this year, those figures have been revised
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  Speaker 2: and they're worse than what they were. So we're not
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: seeing any plan countries from this government and the plan
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  Speaker 2: is clearly not working.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: Okay, isn't it just rich as well?
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  Speaker 2: Though?
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  Speaker 1: You know, you blame or you say that they can't
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  Speaker 1: blame you, but you when you're talking about what you did,
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: always blame COVID. But there was an awful lot of
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: other funding and spending decisions that were made that were
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: not because of the pandemic but because of your ideological stance,
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: whether it was you know, increasing the minimum wage or
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: worrying about the conditions of workers and et cetera. You know,
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: there was a lot of that spending that was also
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: could be considered considering the books and considering the economic
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: situation to be profligate that you did for ideological reasons.
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: So those two examples that you've used are examples of
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  Speaker 2: where the cost is on the employer in order to
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: pay a bit more those that they had the minimum wage.
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: So again, when you look at the debt trajectory for
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: New Zealand since the mid two thousand, there have been
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: three major crisis which governments have borrowed for. So we
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: again going back to the deficit. Nicole Wills's deficit is
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: worse than what Brent Robinson in Iran except at the
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  Speaker 2: height of cope. In your I apologize to carry on
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: the current.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: You don't apologize for that.
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: I don't apologize for the wage subsidies that was absolutely
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: needed at the time.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: Okay, So had you stayed on in power, would the
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: financial situation of this country be better now than it
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  Speaker 1: is in your opinion.
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  Speaker 2: Well, based on the economic fiscal forecast that we left
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  Speaker 2: when we were in government for the books, both in budgets,
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: both in prefood So in twenty twenty three they were
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: stronger than the numbers that were given here. And part
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: of the reason why we're stronger is you look at
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: the numbers. You look at the spending that happened, that
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: was happening in infrastructure, which your school builds, housing builds,
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  Speaker 2: hospital builds for example. That's all money that gets recycled
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: back into the economy through jobs. So the construction sector
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: you've seen since the government has come in, there are
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: twelve thousand fewer construction roles. All right, sort of stimulus
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: is needed.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: Barbara, We've got to go. But guess what, because we
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: had a favure of a phone unit with our UK correspondent,
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: you've got a good old crack to get to go
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: back at what happened over course of yesterday. And I
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: thank you for your time in for Waking Up for
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: more Family Edition with Ryan Bridge. Listen live to News
• 5:01
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• 5:04
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