Source: New Zealand Parliament – Hansard
ORAL QUESTIONS
QUESTIONS TO MINISTERS
Question No. 1—Prime Minister
1. CHRISTOPHER LUXON (Leader of the Opposition) to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by all of his Government’s statements and actions?
Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Prime Minister): Yes, particularly the actions by this Government, which have led to record numbers of New Zealanders in work. Statistics New Zealand data out today confirmed that the economy has added 113,000 jobs in the June year. But that, of course, is not all; data released today also confirms that wages continue to outpace inflation, with average hourly wages rising by 6.9 percent to $39.53. We know that there are many Kiwis who are doing it tough out there, but the Government is continuing to work hard to lower costs, ensure that Kiwis stay in work, and that they get better paid.
Christopher Luxon: Was Grant Robertson right when he said in May that “we will return to surplus in 2025/26”, or will the pre-election fiscal update show bigger deficits and more debt?
Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: In answer to the first of the question: at the time the statement was made, yes.
Christopher Luxon: Has he received any advice from the finance Minister or any officials suggesting the return to surplus will be delayed again?
Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Well, of course, the PREFU numbers—the Pre-election Economic and Fiscal Update—are put together by the Treasury, independently of the Government.
Christopher Luxon: So are you saying that you’ve received no advice from officials or from the Minister of Finance on whether the return to surplus will be delayed again?
Hon Grant Robertson: It will be with your spending plans.
Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: It certainly would be if the member was the Prime Minister and was spending the huge amounts of money that the National Party have been promising to spend up and down the country, with no idea how they’re going to pay for it. But, of course, I have regular conversations with the Minister of Finance about the state of the Government’s finances.
Christopher Luxon: Why has the return to surplus been delayed twice in two years, and are more delays, debt, and deficits on the cards when he opens the books next month?
Hon Grant Robertson: Perhaps look around the world.
Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I’d encourage the member to look around the world at the deteriorating financial position around the globe. And I also might like to remind the member that our track record of producing surpluses is a significantly better one than the last National Government, where Bill English, year after year, promised that he was going to turn a surplus, and it took him a lot longer to do that than what he’d promised New Zealanders he would actually do.
Christopher Luxon: Why does he constantly blame global factors for his failure on the economy, when New Zealand is in a recession and set to borrow $20 billion this year but Australia is growing and running a big surplus?
Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: The reason that New Zealand is in a technical recession—if the member wants to read the statistics—is because of a natural weather event called a “cyclone”.
Christopher Luxon: Is he aware that that natural weather event happened long after the country went into recession?
Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: The member is simply economically illiterate if he’s going to make that claim. I’d be interested to know which quarters he is talking about, because the most recent quarterly statistics show that, actually, it was the cyclone that was the difference between New Zealand having negative GDP growth or positive GDP growth.
Christopher Luxon: Doesn’t Australia’s surplus show that countries in our part of the world can face a pandemic and global challenges but still come out the other side when they properly manage the economy instead of running it into recession like he has?
Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: No; it shows that they’re different economies, that the nature of their economies is different, and that New Zealand does not have the minerals part of its export market that Australia does, where they’ve been doing very well recently. We’re different economies.
Christopher Luxon: Can he confirm his Government will spend more this year making interest payments on debt than on primary schools or on the Police?
Rt Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Of course debt repayments have gone up as, globally, the cost of servicing debt has gone up. Interestingly, then, I’d be interested to know how the member’s going to pay for his nearly $10 billion worth of debt for roads, given that he doesn’t seem to have made any allocation for paying back the debt. He thinks that somehow the private equity markets are just going to give New Zealanders $10 billion in funding to build roads and not want any return from that investment.
