Luxon’s delusional response to exodus of skilled workers highlights why this is happening

By
Martyn Bradbury
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21
647
The Prime Minister has "An Awesome Plan"

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says a ‘productivity problem’ is driving skilled Kiwis offshore

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says he has a plan to build a country where Kiwis want to stay, but healthcare, safety and productivity are holding us back.

Wait? WHAT!

Luxon is claiming the reason NZers are fleeing NZ in numbers not seen is because we are half back by healthcare, safety and productivity?

I thought skilled workers were fleeing because his idiot Government shut down the pipeline to public housing builds and infrastructure investment!

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This exodus is directly attributable to his Government’s decisions to shut down everything that was set up to provide certainty!

Blaming health care (which he is underfunding) and safety (which he is feeding with terrible social policy) and productivity that he is doing nothing to advance!

He refuses to see how his Government’s policies are creating the momentum to flee.

Add in the culture war revenge fantasies, and there is no wonder Kiwis are leaving as quickly as they can.

You can’t pretend 18months in that he isn’t responsible for what we are seeing.

His argument that it is these other issues and not his policy for what we are seeing is breathtaking in its audacity.

He actually said he has, and I quote, “an awesome plan” to build a country where Kiwis want to stay.

“An Awesome Plan”.

He manages to sound more like David Brent with every passing month.

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21 COMMENTS

  1. The awesome plan is to stop every productive thing that was happening before he was elected by the so called squeezed middle .Those idiots are now completly squashed with more to come .Remember the 12 cents per liter thats kicking in straight after the next election along with increased road user charges rego and ACC levies that will go through the roof .The sunken ferries ,and the cancelled social houses so more people can live on the street along with the starving kids at school everyday .
    Remember all those young tradies we trained under the last government whom the Australian government are pleased to have building homes and other big stuff while we go backwards at a great rate .Hell even Fonterra is doing a backflip they are so confident in the future and selling or closing as much of the business as they can .Wood and paper industry is closing along with meat works .If thats growth we have a serious problem .The economy is going so well we have to slash interest rates which is the first sign of a failing economy .No boats is leading the charge to no jobs and no homes .We are past the fiscal cliff soon to be stuck in the fiscal swamp .

  3. Hell, I only stay in New Zealand because our firearms laws are slightly less screwed than Australia. Otherwise I’d be taking my skills & qualifications back to mining, instead of slaving for peanuts here.

  4. Add in that it’s not just the Tradies or the bottom feeders leaving. No it’s now Senior civil servants like Mike Bush and Caroline McAnee.
    Not only cannot attract top people we can’t even keep our own.
    Not surprising when they are no longer able to do the work they are trained for because the Government and State Services are now totally ideology driven as opposed to fact and science based driven.
    Already we can see more accidents on State Highway 5 since the 80km speed limit was dropped.

  5. Well, you have covered most of the mess (gordon walker) Luxon is creating but he is also creating social division and inciting more racism. And I believe as we get closer to the next election him and those goons in the NZF and Act party will become even more divisive as they are all chasing the same voting pool which is the red neck racist and naive voters. The CoC will all turn one another, and the bald one will blame MMP claiming he had to make tradeoffs that is the nature of MMP he is so readable.

  7. ‘Healthcare, safety and productivity are holding us back.’

    So is the Coalition government doing anything about these things?

    Oh, that is right they put Lester Levy in charge of healthcare.
    They reduced police budgets and banned gang patches.
    High power prices are causing productive industries to close.

    But the government are National, ACT and NZ First, not Labour, Greens or Te Pati Maori.

    So that’s all right then.

  8. The Facts:

    Change the Names and the Country and the same applies here.
    This is from Australia ;
    I would like to offer an alternate version of James Morrison Dupree’s excellent post below:

    Deficits, Surpluses, and What They Really Mean
    In the early 1960s, then-Prime Minister Robert Menzies had no hesitation in highlighting the importance of running budget deficits. In a 1962 speech, he proudly referred to the role deficit spending played in supporting the Australian economy. In contrast, in 2024, Treasurer Jim Chalmers celebrated the achievement of two consecutive budget surpluses. This contrast raises a fundamental question: which approach better serves the public interest—Menzies’ deficits or Chalmers’ surpluses?
    It’s easy to approach this question with political bias, depending on one’s views of the leaders or parties involved. But setting politics aside, it’s worth exploring the underlying economic principles that drive these choices, and whether conventional narratives around “fiscal responsibility” truly reflect how a sovereign economy works.
    Many of us are familiar with political and media discussions about “balancing the budget” and managing the federal finances like a household or business. However, this analogy, while intuitive, doesn’t hold up under closer scrutiny. In fact, even within classical economic theory, there is no overarching model that requires governments to balance their budgets annually. What economists do consider is “fiscal sustainability,” which involves ensuring that a government’s debt doesn’t grow faster than its capacity to service it. Interestingly, this model often supports running small deficits rather than surpluses.
    Understanding how a sovereign government like Australia’s funds its spending is key to making sense of this. Unlike households or businesses, governments that issue their own currency, such as the Australian government, can create money through their central bank, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA). This money is issued into the banking system as reserves, which underpin the monetary system and enable banks to operate and provide credit.
    When the government spends, it injects these reserves into the economy, effectively increasing the financial resources available to households and businesses. Conversely, when it collects taxes, it withdraws money from circulation, reducing the private sector’s financial assets. Government bonds—commonly referred to as “debt”—are essentially interest-bearing savings instruments issued by the Treasury and purchased with money that already exists in the system, either from private banks or institutional investors. The interest on these bonds is paid by the RBA, which creates the necessary funds to do so.
    This leads to a few key insights:
    The government is the issuer of currency; the public are users of that currency.
    Tax revenue doesn’t “fund” spending in the conventional sense—it helps manage inflation and demand in the economy.
    Budget surpluses, where government revenue exceeds spending, remove more money from the private sector than they put in.
    Deficits, by contrast, add money to the economy and can support employment, growth, and investment, particularly during periods of economic slack.
    For example, when the government runs a surplus, individuals and businesses must turn more often to private banks to borrow money to meet their needs. This can lead to increased levels of private debt, as was seen during the Howard government’s surplus years and again more recently. By contrast, when the government runs deficits, it directly supports private incomes, savings, and investment.
    Government bonds, often misunderstood as a burden for future generations, are in fact financial assets held by the private sector. They function much like savings accounts and can be passed on as inheritance, providing value rather than cost to the next generation.
    To summarise the financial flows involved:
    Taxes reduce the money in circulation but add to central bank reserves.
    Government spending does the opposite—it reduces reserves but adds to private sector incomes.
    Bond issuance shifts money from the private sector to government reserves.
    Interest payments on bonds flow back to the private sector.
    Printing cash reduces electronic reserves but provides physical currency for the economy.
    And crucially:
    Budget surpluses result in a net drain on the private sector, as the government takes in more than it spends.
    This is why Menzies was proud to run deficits: he saw them as a tool for supporting the public and the economy. The current celebration of surpluses may appear fiscally prudent on the surface, but it also signals a withdrawal of financial resources from the private sector. Whether that’s beneficial or harmful depends on the broader economic context.
    Ultimately, understanding the real mechanics of government finance can help us move beyond simplistic comparisons to household budgets and evaluate fiscal policy on its actual impacts, not just its rhetoric.

    • Once upon a time, unlike today’s neoliberals, Robert Menzies boasted of delivering large budget deficits, as he did in his August 1962 speech. By way of a complete reversal, the Labor government’s Treasurer, Jim Chalmers, in September 2024 boasted about delivering two back-to-back budget surpluses. So the question is, who knows what they were talking about, Liberal’s Robert Menzies or Labour’s Jim Chalmers?
      Having lined the question deliberately up that way, in the era of the most significant Labor win in history, I will be making this both difficult to accept and biasing your instinctive answer to your current favourite Treasurer. That is where you are going, isnt it? So, if you don’t like swallowing difficult pills or conceding ground to the politically unlikable, you had better move on to read something else.
      Nowadays, we all hear the rhetoric about “balancing the budget”, “fiscal responsibility”, and all the types of things that try to connect a federal budget to a business or household budget. It is a flawed analogy, but the media, politicians and orthodox economists often use it. Would it surprise you to learn that even in classical economic theory, there is no theoretical model in existence that provides grounds for a balanced budget? There is a theory for “fiscal sustainability” that suggests the primary budget balance (government spending minus taxes, excluding interest) should be sufficient to prevent the debt ratio from rising without bounds. This, it turns out, implies that a small primary deficit (not surplus) is preferable. Now, I am not going to go into that because it involves a far too nuanced understanding of “debt serviceability” that the average punter wouldn’t have a clue about. However, be aware that no orthodox economist can defend a “balanced budget” within their own theoretical models. Look it up if you are curious enough and have some economic knowledge.
      Moving on. As any Wall Street primary dealer involved in monetary operations and purchase of bonds or the equivalent in Australia knows, the funds to buy Government Securities (bonds) come only from the Government. The Government issues the Reserves through its Central Bank (the RBA), which are the basis for the entire monetary system; without these reserves, banks can’t operate or manage the credit (loans) they create. Federal Reserve monetary operations are the primary source of economic exchange and transfer, not taxpayers or banks. A simple illustration from the past. I am old enough to remember the change from the Australian pounds, shillings, and pence in Dad’s pockets, to the Australian decimal currency. Where do you think the public got the Australian Dollar? The Taxpayer? FFS, if you really think that’s the answer, stop reading because you’re too foolish to comprehend what will follow. Like all currencies issued by governments that mint their own, it was issued by the Government.
      First premise: The citizens of a monetary sovereign country are the users of currency, and the Government are the issuer of currency. That status is the primary distinction that makes all the difference in the world to understand the fundamentals of money. If you can’t accept that premise, stop reading!
      The Government first gives the banking system the money it uses, which are called “Reserves”. Without a prior reserve funding from the Central Bank, payments can’t be made within the banking system, which in Australia is the “Exchange Settlement system”, which is on an Alpha VAX/VMS O.S. computer system; I personally, along with others in the RBA technical computer department, rebuilt in-house in the early 2000s to reverse an outsourcing management of the Reserve Bank’s RITS system. (You can look that up for yourself.) The base monetary system, known as “M0 money” or “vertical money” or “Reserves”, exists as computer records in the RITS system in Australia, and every (non-shadow) legitimate registered Bank or financial institution in Australia has an account on that system with a bank balance for that bank/institution. That money is the sole creation of the Government and is supplied by the Government, where all transfers between banks originate and from which, all printed currency is produced. Your taxes also go there to “die”, but more on that later.
      To put it bluntly, money sourced from Taxpayers is known as counterfeit and carries penalties of up to 14 years imprisonment for individuals and fines for corporations; therefore, please refrain from using the “Taxpayer’s money” narrative. Australian currency doesn’t come from China, America or anyone we trade with; it comes from the Reserve Bank. Any story of an alternative source is either BS or counterfeiting! OK? Moving on.
      Government Securities (bonds) are an asset swap of money issued by Central Banks or credit issued by private banks for an interest-bearing “note”. The Australian Treasury issues these notes, and the Reserve Bank pays the interest debt (or coupon rate) when it becomes due. In the same manner, you may lend your cash to a bank for a long-term deposit that bears interest; investors lend their money to the Treasury for a bond that also bears interest. This is what we refer to as “government debt”.
      Treasury securities are fundamentally savings accounts with the Government that contribute reserves to the Central bank (because the investor gave his money to the Government in exchange for the Bonds, and they earn interest paid by the Central Bank. As an investor, you are not leaving that debt to your grandchildren; you are leaving it to the Reserve Bank. And the Reserve Bank issues and creates “money” (or have you forgotten that already) and pays the interest. What you can leave to your grandchildren is the “bond” because Government Securities are transferable. It would be like transferring your long-term deposit to your grandchildren, although that is far more legally problematic than transferring a bond. If anything, that is a bonus for your grandchildren, as they can swap it back for money or simply enjoy the interest. Not a burden to your grandchildren, so let’s lose that narrative.
      Second premise: The “borrowing” of the Government to cover deficits in spending is an asset swap with the private sector that drains money from the private economy and “lends” it to the Government for its central bank (which issues money) to pay the interest on bond maturity later.
      Every central banker involved in monetary operations understands that it is their job to generate the money the Government spends first into the bank accounts of its citizens or firms. When government funds are unavailable, citizens turn to banks to borrow money. This money is known as “M1 money” or “horizontal money” and is the liability of private banks.
      Borrowed credit is transferred between bank accounts through the reserve accounts that banks hold with central banks and ultimately ends up in the private accounts of citizens or firms, as deposits in their private bank accounts. Citizen borrowers are then responsible for paying back the credit supplied and interest on “maturity”. Does that sound like something else I have mentioned? Then, at some point, some of that money from either source is used to pay taxes and is returned to the Reserves of the Central Bank. It is effectively removed from the private economy and no longer operates within it. It has “died”!
      So, how do all these transactions affect the accounting balances of the private economy and the Government Reserves?
      (1) Taxes drain money from the economy but add to the reserves.
      (2) Government spending drains money from the Reserves but creates a surplus in the private economy.
      (3) Treasury’s bonds add money to the Reserves but drain money from the private economy.
      (4) Debt servicing (interest on bonds) drains money from the reserves but adds money to the private sector.
      (5) Printing hard currency reduces the reserve accounts of banks and the Reserves of the Central Bank. It supplies hard currency to the citizens of the economy via the private banks.
      And finally – and this is where Menzies understood what Chalmers seems oblivious of:
      (6) Surpluses mean taxes (drains from the private economy) are larger than spending (feeding money to the private sector), and so they drain money from the private sector and add to the Central Bank Reserves. The net movement of funds is a reduction of money in the private economy.
      So where do citizens go when the Government restricts the money supply by running a surplus? They go to the Banks and loan money! And what happened when Howard had a surplus? The same thing happened when Chalmers had a surplus. What happens to private debt in the economy? I am not going to answer this because if it isn’t apparently ℬ|⚇⚇dÿ obvious, or you can’t look it up and find out for yourself what happened, you shouldn’t be reading my posts.
      Final Premise: Deficits put money into the private economy, and Surpluses take it out.
      So, providing more money to citizens is why Menzies boasted about deficits, as he was supplying money to the people. Chalmers, on the other hand, boasting about surpluses is just Fµ℃|☇ęd, because he is draining the private economy of financial resources.

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