I have written an op-ed for the Herald on why the “Ratings Ref” yellow carded NZ.  Standard and Poors and Fitch agree on what is fundamentally wrong.  They say:

• First “very high external imbalances, accompanied by high household and agriculture sector debt” (S&P). These are mainly house and farm mortgages borrowed through the banks from foreign lenders to fuel our property obsession.
  • That’s not a new problem and it has levelled off a bit with the recession. But it is at historically high levels and makes New Zealand “an outlier among peers” according to Fitch.
• Second, “dependence on commodity income” says S&P.  Despite record milk prices we are still not paying our way in the world.  The current account deficit is a long term issue. But it will worsen to 6.9% of GDP while the Net International Investment Deficit (NIID) will grow from 78% to 85% over the next five years.
• Third “emerging fiscal pressures associated with (our) aging population” (S&P), including health and superannuation.  Suspending the NZ Super Fund pre funding hasn’t helped.

The reaction from Bill English on Q & A yesterday was uttlerly inadequate.  He maintains the government will keep on doing what it is doing.  As if that has done any good so far  – $37 billion extra debt, 47,000 more unemployed and 3.6% lower GDP now than when they were elected.

Here is the Government’s spin, and some perspective on it:

• “We have worked hard to control government spending and succeeded”.  The problem is that some $37 billion of debt has been added since the National Government took office – some $18 billion in this year alone.  While nobody blames any government for earthquakes – and the ratings agencies recognise that both sides of the political spectrum are exercising fiscal restraint, this is not enough to avoid a downgrade.   The agencies’ arenot swayed by the prospect of liquidating $5 billion of SOE assets.
• “We are better placed than some other countries”.   Being “better placed” than Iceland, Greece or Portugal is cold comfort.  Nor is it sufficient, in the face of paralysis in the US and chaos in Europe, to take refuge in Chinese and Australian expansion.  The risks of a slowdown in both economies are significant, and s the ratings agencies demand New Zealand  takes responsibility for its own future.
• “We are still on track for surplus in 2014-15.  So she’ll be right”.   As if.  The precise timing of short term fiscal balance is not the issue that has worried the ratings agencies.  The long term deterioration driven by poor savings performance, weak exports and the mountain of real estate debt is.  Clutching at such irrelevant straws only highlights the absence of better ideas. 

Proof of the bankruptcy of National’s ideas is in this sobering fact:  only one quarter of OECD countries have been downgraded by Fitch in the last three years.  The last time this happened to NZ was in 1998.  It is nonsense to say we are riding the waves better than most.  To the contrary New Zealand is highly exposed, and saddled with a government that has no plan.

Labour has the policies and the political courage to make a difference and to do what is needed: capital gains tax, strong saving policy, monetary reform and strategic economic development.  It is vital that we implement them before it is too late.

Be in no doubt: what happened on Friday is a very serious development that will have repercussions for many years.  I will write further on what this means for the average Kiwi family.

Regarding Government spending, Dr Brash said the current National Government had spent much more than the previous Labour Government.

Dr Brash went on to say that both the previous National and Labour governments had managed government debt well, meaning the current John Key-led Government started from a good point. However under Prime Minister John Key and Finance Minister Bill English’s watch, government debt has gone from bad to worse.

This reminded me of our debate with National MPs in 2009. National claimed that ACC was leaking millions of dollars under Labour, we argued that the figures do not back up the National Governments unjust cutting of services and upping of ACC levies and that National’s claims were nothing more than scaremongering.

But it has now proved that the ACC debacle of 2009 was just a pre-cursor that led to the National Government hiking ACC levies before they privatise the organisation should they get another term in office.

The world will be a much nicer place if politicians would say what the issues really are (as they are).

Bill English’s repeated lines such as “in the last long nine years” and “economic mismanagement by Labour” may give him an instant boost in his blame game, but the facts will be spelt out sooner or later – just as Dr Brash did this morning.

On the Saturday of the conference, which by the sounds of things Captain Panic Pants and friends wanted to be a total non event, Bill English was taken on about whether assets would actually stay in Kiwi hands. Just how he would ensure this has been the subject of numerous questions in Parliament, but Bill revealed his hand to the delegates.

His answers are incredibly waffly and weak, and the second questioner in the video even says he is not convinced by English’s answer to the first question. Basically he said he could not guarantee that assets will stay in New Zealand hands, does not know how so-called Mums and Dads will be at the front of the queue and even said that they will not finalise how this will happen until after the election.

The problem with that is the “keeping assets in NZ” pledge is a critical part of the policy. The reality is it will not happen, and English has now acknowledged this. New Zealanders don’t like asset sales because they know just how much value has been lost from them over the years, and we want to keep key infrastructure in New Zealand hands. The Nats sale plans are bad economics and bad politics, and even their members know it!

With Labour, we will own our future, and keep public assets in the ownership of all New Zealanders.

Cuts of up to 30 front line staff at Child, Youth and Family make a lie of National’s promise not to cut front line services.

Our community, our children deserve better. We cannot stand by and let these cuts occur.

In April, Bill English said National was ‘committed to moving resources from the back office to the frontline so we can deliver improved public services to taxpayers with little or no new money over the next few years’. *

Questions:

• How is reducing the number of frontline social workers in Dunedin “moving resources to the frontline”?
• How is making highly trained social workers redundant who support and protect our most vulnerable children going to “deliver improved public services to taxpayers”?

The Government needs to honour its promise to retain front line services. All New Zealanders should demand that the Government reverse this appalling decision.

* [Source: Minister of Finance press release, “Room for savings in state sector back office” dated 13 April 2011]

First the leader of the National Party, John Key, shrilly claimed it would be a “dagger through the heart” of western capitalism – or as Bomber Bradbury put it “aliens were coming to eat our pets”.

Then Bill English said it was a good idea in theory – but wasn’t comprehensive enough.

So with tweedles dee and dumb at cross-purposes, they called in the “cavalry” on Sunday – a Steven Joyce press release with some bodgied numbers from his Beehive hacks.

It tried very hard to construct a strawman and then shoot it down.   Trouble was, the strawman bore no resemblance to Labour’s policy.

First, Mr Joyce alleged that our tax plan had not replaced the capital value of the non-sale of SOEs:  “You see Labour done a big lie, and said it is a choice of asset sales or their tax package. But they have not calculated for any increased borrowing through no sales”.

John Armstrong made the same mistake in his Herald column: ”In May’s Budget, National cunningly “booked” the money from its planned post-election sell-off of such shares even though the money has yet to be realised.  Some of that “money” has been set aside for $900 million in capital spending.  Labour has exacted revenge for this trickery by simply ignoring it” .

Sorry John, our numbers do incorporate the asset sales revenue because it’s in National’s net debt track and our net debt track is based on theirs. Not getting that revenue is essentially the sole reason why our net debt track is above National’s in the first few years.

Second Mr Joyce  tried the line that we had not modelled in the cost of interest on debt.  Wrong again.  Interest costs are fully included.

Third, he argued we would achieve “$0″ on our tax avoidance crackdown.  Wrong again:  IRD says there is $3.5 bn in colleectable tax debt (of $5.5 bn total); and over $300m p.a. in avoidance through trust structures; as well as -$500m on the $200 bn invested in property.   Bill English says there is $5 back for every extra $1 in IRD tax collection.  IRD says 30:1.  It all makes our provosion that rises over 5 years up to $300m look pretty modest.

Three strikes and your credibility is out, Steven.

Bill English has admitted the government infrastructure plan released today does not contain detail on any infrastructure project that had not already been announced over the past 2-3 years.

That’s right this is actually a non-news story. The article goes on to say how there was little in the way of specifics or detail in the announcement. I am getting more and more feedback from all parts of the political spectrum of real concern that the National Party has no plan to lift the NZ economy out of its current state. This non-news announcement just adds to that.

Bill English has discovered social media. How on earth will he find time to answer one whole question per week?

Still, it’s more than he answers in Parliament…

The NZ Herald also suggested at the time the funding was part of an English-inspired effort to secure greater support for National amongst pacific voters. In the end they were forced to back down and a competitive tender process resulted in PEDA missing out completely.

Did they learn their lesson? It seems not. This year’s Budget allocated $2.4 million to Parents Inc, once again without a competitive tender process. The chief executive of Parents Inc, Bruce Pilbrow, was the Deputy Commissioner of the Families Commission (appointed by Paula Bennett) until he resigned just two days before the Budget. Why wasn’t the contract put out for tender? When did Pilbrow find out Parents Inc was getting the funding?

At the very least it’s a bad look for the government to set funds aside for specific organisations without going through robust processes to ensure the taxpayer is getting value for money. It leaves them open to charges of cronyism and looking after their mates, but then again, there are plenty of other examples of where the National Party are doing just that!

Part of this is due to National’s tax cuts, even accepting the rosy predictions English made about the cost of his tax packages, they still cost a significant amount (green blocks). This year the deficit has been worsened by one-off events in the form of the Christchurch earthquake and the South Canterbury Finance bailout (brown and purple blocks). But there’s still a huge difference between the 2008 projections and what happened that isn’t accounted for by the one-offs or the borrowing for tax cuts. What’s behind that?

When we look at the GDP growth forecasts vs reality for the same period, the answer becomes clear. Every year, National has projected that a return to strong growth is just around the corner which will mean more tax take, lower benefit costs  – and a smaller deficit. But it hasn’t eventuated. Instead, the economy has stagnated under National and every year National has evened up having to slap billions more on the taxpayers’ bill to cover for this economic underperformance (blue block).

 No doubt today’s budget will also contain rosy growth projections. Will the reality end up being more deficit blowouts?

Implications: The  growth upturn “hockey stick” just keeps getting pushed out into the future.  The so-called GST tax switch had no discernable positive impact on growth.  And the same rosy forecasts will be embedded in today’s Budget.  On this track record Budget 2011 growth  projections will not be worth the paper they are written on.

When the 2009 growth projections are added the picture gets even more interesting.  As this graph shows the actual GDP growth track has been so bad that it is back down to the proections made by Treasury during the darkest days of the 2008/9 global financial crisis.  

In other words, despite the international crisis having passed 18 months ago and NZ receiving record prices for our agricultrual commodities, our economy has performed so badly that it is back down to the track Treasury predicted during the darkest days of the crisis.   Quite simply, whatever the Govt has been doing is not working. 

In a future post we will decompose the relative impact on debt of this under-performance and otehr factors like earthquakes.

There is no coherent plan from National on how to manage debt reduction alongside needed investments in economic and export development, closing the savings gap, repairing the damage to middle New Zealand, and giving all Kiwis hope and confidence for the future.

Labour has an integrated economic strategy that will achive that withi a fully costed programme that will reduce net debt over a 10 year economic cycle.  You can see the direction we are heading in set out in a recent speech I gave to Business NZ  here.

For the wonks among you, here is the underlying data – all the Government’s own numbers.

 Sources: Budget relevant documents and Statistics NZ series