Right now there are very real and achievable solutions to the current hollowing out of our work force and the flow on effects this is having on the whole country, especially our regions.
Labour knows that for New Zealand to prosper, and for us all to have a society where we all have a stake in the future, we need change. Change in the way we manage the economy to ensure NZ prospers, overcomes our external deficit and stays in control of our own destiny.
This means paying attention to our main centres AND the provinces. Both have a role to play in re-establishing New Zealand as the place where our young want to stay, play, work and live.
New Zealand cannot thrive on the Auckland – Hamilton – Tauranga hub, important though they are to New Zealand’s economy. Similarly, Auckland – Hamilton – Tauranga will be held back if other regions do not succeed.
In other words, New Zealand needs balance.
Prosperity requires economic growth and opportunities in our regions as well as our main centres.
The current loss of productive New Zealanders is serious enough for demographers like Paul Spoonley from Massey University to warn that it is accentuating our aging population:
JESSICA MUTCH: Just finally, let’s touch on this ageing population that you talked about earlier. In 20 years’ time, 1.2 million people will be over the age of 65. What does that mean for New Zealand going forward?
PAUL SPOONLEY: Well, firstly, it’s a doubling. So we’re at 600,000, so we’re seeing the over-65 double. I think the second thing which is really concerning is what’s called the dependency ratio, which is the ratio between those who are in the workforce and those who are dependent on the state in some way. And we’re seeing that decline. There’s a big bite out of the younger New Zealand age groups because they’re going. I mean, 150,000 New Zealanders have left this country since the start of the economic recession, and that’s a huge concern. So we need people to stay here, and we need people to be working here to support that dependency ratio.
Q & A 22 July 2012
Shamubeel Eaqub, the principal economist at the NZ Institute of Economic Research, has said the country’s shrinking population under the age of 40 and the outflow of young people will have a bigger impact on the regions that are plainly now struggling to attract and retain talented labour.
On 30 May he was reported in the NZ Herald as saying “that slowing growth in young people under 40 is very troubling …The impact is disproportionate across the regions – rural areas are losing more younger people than towns….That will make it more difficult for rural areas to develop and retain a highly skilled and innovative labour market – all the bits and pieces that provide excitement and buzz….
Since then Statistics New Zealand has produced its breakdown of the 158,000 New Zealanders who left for Australia in the last four years.
Forty per cent of those who have gone to Australia are between 18 and 30 years of age – 62,000 young people in their prime giving up on New Zealand.
They are disproportionately from the regions. They are leaving because of a lack of opportunity and hope for their future here in New Zealand. The aging of our population in our regional towns is made worse.
As David Shearer outlined in his speech today, the remedies proposed by Labour to build the breadth of our productive exports will work well in the regions.
Our pro-growth savings policy will increased capital available for investment. A Univeral Kiwisaver will grow our capital base. Australia’s share market is three times the value of ours on a per capita basis. A major driver of this is Australia’s better work place savings.
Our pro-growth tax reform is fundamental to growing our productive export economy. Labour’s capital gains tax is both fair, and achieves this aim. Tax biases currently encourage investment in our non-productive speculative economy at the expense of our productive export sector. Removing that bias is seen by the IMF, the OECD, the Treasury, the Reserve bank and Labour as fundamentally important. National is in denial.
Similarly, our research and development tax credit will help drive investment into the productive parts of our economy.
Our willingness to address the out-dated orthodoxy around monetary policy and the exchange rate is another fundamental change that will help the regions.
The regions are rich in resources. Some, like Opotiki, are short of infrastructure. Others have infrastructure that used to, and can again, support more jobs. Those jobs in processing, manufacturing and the high value service jobs they sustain are often (not always) driven off the resource base that is in the regions. They in turn drive help innovation in other sectors.
National’s unwillingness to pull these levers – which only a government can – is hurting the regions as well as our cities.
Labour can and will make the hard decisions required to bring NZ back to prosperity.
So what are you actually saying you would do differently regarding monetary policy and exchange rates? Have government set the cash rate and fix the exchange rate?
Also all those other suggestions don’t sound hard, any government in power could enact those policies, what are the hard decisions you are talking about?
Moving forward together… are you are bringing DC with you?
In amongst the dog-whistle beneficiary-bashing of this speech, it might have escaped you lot that your activist base is confused, upset and furious with caucus over the recent Garner article – http://thestandard.org.nz/too-far-3/ – what are you going to do about it?
Bravo , At last a policy for the people.
The local economy is our only real hope.
Nationals’ answer of “Digging for Treasure” is no better than investing in Lotto Tickets and a damn sight more expensive.
+1 Tim G.
Will David Cunliffe be allowed to use his considerable intellect and talents to help Labour formulate the most advanced economic policies possible?
Or:
will the ‘tall poppy syndrome’ – apparently still prevalent in certain parliamentary mindsets – continue to undermine the chances of Labour having the opportunity to put their policies into practice in the next 5 -10 years?
+1 Tim G.
Will David Cunliffe be allowed to use his considerable intellect and talents to help ensure Labour formulate the most advanced economic policies possible?
Or:
will the ‘tall poppy syndrome’ – apparently still prevalent in certain parliamentary mindsets – continue to undermine the chances of Labour ever having the opportunity to put their policies into practice in the coming years?
Sorry about the repeat. It seems to have something to do with the edit function.
Could the problem be fixed please?
+1 Tim G. and +1 Anne and Anne’s ditto comment. In fact Anne, I was glad to see your comment repeated as it was something that really needed emphasising. Hope Labour can see, hear and inwardly digest!
Don’t hold your breath sica. I contemplated emailing a few MPs about the latest development and encouraging others to do likewise. I decided it would be a waste of time. I fear there are some in the parliamentary Labour team who are determined to learn the hard way and, as a consequence, NZ will end up paying a terrible price.
Unless of course, David Shearer puts his foot down hard on them and is seen to have done so. Then we may be in with a chance.
I hope the Labour caucus can “move forward and move forward together”.
Either resolve your differences or bring them into the open, so we know where we stand. Our patience – and your time – is fast running out.
I don’t think it’s about differences, but rather ambition. Cunliffe isn’t lazy, he has been a hard working opposition MP.
Shearer must fire Garner’s sources(s). Like Helen Clark would have. That’s what a leader does. And while he is about it, fire the long term incumbents. Labour needs new candidates. Desperately.
+1 Tim G & Anne
Labour, once again, goodbye and thanks for all the fish.
I’d love to know how Tim G feels qualified to gauge the mood of the activist base? All the NZLP meetings I’ve attended or heard reports from recently have been incredibly positive about the party’s reorganisation plans. But the longterm poll trends that made a Nat defeat in 2014 start to look possible was bound to unleash a vicious response from Labour’s enemies and here it comes – from left as well as right. What all these commentators share is an obsession with beltway rumours and a staggering ignorance of the grassroots reality.
Dorothy – you don’t have to look very far, at least not to catch the mood of the online activists. I have always fought in the MPs’ corner, through what is now known as Trotter’s “road testing” posts where he has basically dedicated himself to blackening the caucus, and similar stuff being repeated on the Standard.
Believe me it pains me to think that their are MPs in caucus who consider the Garner stunt to be acceptable behaviour. It is a pity that the reorganisation plans will do nothing to enable the party’s membership to bring the MP(s) to justice.
That has to be left to DS. Again – Goff did it when Chris Carter spat the dummy, DS must do it now.
And of course, if it is as you say, just a beltway rumour and in fact Garner was not relaying what he was told by two Labour MPs (in many respects, there is evidence of sloppy journalism in his article), I look forward to DS or others calling Garner on it and confirming that it was a fabrication.
Otherwise, all it does is provide fodder to the stupid right wing meme of Labour being the “nasty” party. We both know that it is not but apparently some of its MPs are.
“Our pro-growth savings policy will increased capital available for investment” Why should anyone invest here. Place you money in the bank and it has value destroyed not created from RWT and inflation.- and we al know that inflation understates the real cost increases experienced by households, as interest, land and property costs to name a few are excluded and the inflation figure has been dramatically kept low by importing tradables
Then how do we keep these investments in NZ and not being shipped offshore?
“this is particularly relevant because domestic and overseas investments have different tax treatments and have 46.9 per cent of KiwiSaver funds overseas as well as 65.5 per cent of non-KiwiSaver superannuation funds”.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/brian-gaynor/news/article.cfm?a_id=14&objectid=10772160
And then we have the issue of just being able to provide the essentials is difficult enough, and maybe beyond some, let alone to have a surplus to invest.
When will those moderating this site relent in the pointless moderation policy. It displays that MP’s are really indifferent in engaging with the electorate
In case you havn’t seen it Dorothy:
http://www.3news.co.nz/Opinion-Why-does-Labour-hate-David-Cunliffe-so-much/tabid/1135/articleID/264472/Default.aspx
This kind of mischievous crap from inside the caucus – assuming Garner is telling the truth – is what is angering the ‘activist base’.
Who are the festerers?
The Standard is correct. A clean out of the National light branch of the party is long overdue. New Zealand cannot afford them.
@ Anne, you should have worked out by now that Duncan is a journalitic anarchist. It’s why he is so bloody good at his job. Just take a look at the mini civil war he sparked. Game, ste and match, Garner. And you all fell for it.
I have to suspect that David Parkers post was all about the heading.
Labour is a ‘broad church’ and that can be both an asset and a curse. If the party cannot learn to compromise and work for the common principles it is doomed. The public for all its, at times, almost pathetic ignorance, can detect party dissention immediately. Of course mischievous jounalism as Garner enjoys may not help. But, it is a journos job to stir, although quoting anonymous comment can certainly be ethically suspect sometimes.
Labour supporters tend to wear their particular heart on their sleeves in a much more open manner than supporters of right wing parties, who “clench teeth” more effectively.
Please learn to appreciate each others strengths and become the ‘bundle of sticks’ rather than whip each other with every which one.
@KJT – ” A clean out of the National light branch of the party is long overdue”. Clean that lot out and you also clean out the votes that come with them. Governments change on the whims of the “middle”. The middle income familes that Labour has lost, the middle income earners who pay the most taxes and get the least from them. The fringes of society don’t vote and clearly don’t care. You can stand by your ideology, no matter how unworkable it may be on a point of principle, but isn’t the point to get elected? Loving the internal squabbles by the way, if its too hard to manage a party internally, how on earth will Labour convince the middle that they are ready to Govern?
@ Dave, well said. Key won’t lose a single vote over gay marriage, yet he will vote for it, and has said so out loud. He did not get a bunch of self-righteous intellectual superiors in his own party opposed to his view lecturing him on the error of his ways and belittling his stand. No, they accepted his view, however different, and got on with it. Maybe that’s why they are on 47 and the other lot are struggling to stay on 30?
Just take a look at the mini civil war he sparked. Game, ste and match, Garner. And you all fell for it.
No Jennifer we didn’t fall for it. Most of us knew it was a major beat-up by a journalist who thinks he’s too clever by half. Nevertheless a few individuals (who should know better) have fed him questionable ‘tit-bits’ from time to time which enabled him to do it in the first place.
The aim is to stop it from happening again and in that I think we’ve been successful.
@dave – that’s right, the people who pay the most taxes have a greater right to representation in parliament. Now, PFO back to blubberblog.
@jennifer – its not a question of ‘falling for it’, it’s a question of a handful of our mps letting us down badly. The cone of silence by mps since it broke shows how paralysed they are by having to deal with this. I, for one, will not join you in being an apologist for a poorly chosen, poorly managed caucus.
” Most of us knew it was a major beat-up by a journalist…” Really? you know that for a fact? If what Garner has said is untrue, why is he not being challenged on it vigourously by Labour acolytes who apparently know the truth?
“The aim is to stop it from happening again and in that I think we’ve been successful” How, exactly have you been successful so quickly? In the few days since this story broke, are you claiming there has been a crushing of personal opinion in the ranks, despite its veracity?
@TimG – Clearly there were some big words in my last post you didn’t understand, as I lack the ability to write in green crayon so you can understand I will say this; the people who pay the most taxes should at the very least have their wishes and opinions considered by the major parties, not dismissed out of hand as Labour and their apologists like yourself are so very keen to do. As you work overseas because money drives you, and don’t consider New Zealand a country worth your time and effort, I’m surprised you think your voice has any weight. Still loving the bickering though.
Dave, your putdown attempts are getting worse, bruv.
The thing is, as much as I’m against tory governments, and certainly ones propped up by stains like Banks, Dunne and soon that loony christian nut job selling the conservative party, I don’t see it changing unless the bods in the big room start actively opposing and quit with the ‘credible alternative’ stategy if enough people get sick of smug john.
As red as my blood is, the current top table is failing. Sort it, or gtfo and let someone else have a go is a fair call.
It’s quite simple. All the nats say is Labour is the party of tax and spend, just like the numbnuts that come on here always do. Work out what your answer is, and then start telling people. Letting the government define the opposition is giving up without a fight.
It doesn’t matter how far out we are from a vote. Obviously the lesson of Goff’s tenure hasn’t been learnt. A vocal attack and policy alternative should be on every mps daily agenda.
That’s the problem with politicians – They let politics ruin everything.
So that’s my vote of no confidence in Shearer.
Guess if you want something done properly
@Dave – thanks for your concern t::rolleyes::
Tim: its : roll : (without the spaces
)
@TimG and Anne, Nice come back
No appetite for a personalised flame war – sorry to disappoint you Dave. The truth is I couldn’t understand a word of your post because it wasn’t written in green crayon.
Thought so. Do consider coming back to NZ when money is no longer your raison d’etre.
Gosh, the bleating from Labour Sheep is almost as bad as the nothing from the Gnats.
Nauseating.
As if people need to be led to prosperity.
As if such a notion would be even possible.
I think there is a MOA in the room.