Labour promise economic incrementalism to win spooked center
Labour releases fiscal strategy, promises to slash debt
Labour has released their fiscal strategy for the election, promising to get back to surplus by 2029/30, slash debt and set up an independent Parliamentary Budget Office, if elected.
Leader Chris Hipkins said his party would “get the books back into shape”, but would not do it by “making life harder” and cutting services.
RNZ
Labour’s desire to strap themselves into the same neoliberal GDP debt straightjacket as National is the soft incrementalism we have come to know and dread from Labour.
National exist to keep Labour out of power.
Labour exists to keep the Left out of power.
Labour is good for Capitalism, National is good for Capitalists.
Here’s the good news, Labour’s plan will see $137billion in investment.
I don’t look to Chippy for the socialist utopia, that ain’t his bag. He is a decent bloke who believes in public service and wouldn’t have agreed to any of the malice of this Government.
After 3 years of cruelty, Chippy is our emotional support Labrador and Labour’s tax policy is there to not spook the exhausted centre.
Is it enough?
No.
As Bernard Hickey explicitly points out...
- Labour has unveiled its approach for Election 2026 to the bipartisan 30-30 rule on public debt and the size of Government that has strangled New Zealand’s investment in capital and people for at least two decades. Opting for a ‘low-target’ approach that preserves the longer-term fiscal policy status quo, Labour announced1 yesterday it had chosen to keep broadly the same approach it has had since 2017 and only slightly different to National’s approach.
- Labour pledged to achieve budget surplus by 2029/30, which is exactly the same timeframe included in the current Government’s Budget forecasts, albeit focused on a more traditional measure of the Budget balance.
- Labour said it would reduce a more traditional measure of net public debt, which includes the NZ Superannuation Fund but not other assets, over an unspecified time to 20% of GDP from a currently-projected peak of around 25% by 20282.
- It also pledged to keep the size of Government spending and taxation around its current level of 33% of GDP, which is up from its previous view that it should lowered back towards 30% of GDP, given the ageing population.
- In my view, all of those self-imposed constraints don’t allow room to repair decades of underinvestment in maintenance and expansion in infrastructure and business capital, and keep in place the chokehold of fiscal policy on any attempts to generate productivity growth or solve our inter-locking housing affordability, climate or poverty crises.
- Keeping broadly the same fiscal policy also keeps the economy starved of investment to grow the economy, given households and businesses are too indebted and lack confidence respectively to grow the economy in the absence of a larger Government sector, in my view.
…so as a backbone, Labour’s economic policy is great, but will it be enough for the ambitions of those needing transformative change?
No.
I appreciate Chippy has ruled out anything else, but the naked reality is that if Labour + Greens + TPM + TOP = 51%, is he REALLY going to take the country back to an election because he refuses to tax the mega wealthy?
Really?
The reality is that Labour, Greens and TPM tax policies won’t impact the vast majority of Kiwis and that fact must be repeated all the way to the election.
All criticism aside though, Labour at its most incremental is a billion times preferable to Luxon, Seymour and Winston.
The perfect can not eclipse the better this election,
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Labour says no to taxing the rich but yes to a new slogan and a free bus ride. And here have a Chippy grin during a cost of living crisis, grinning bloody Chippy with his accommodation benefit. And won’t you just think of the children. Labour will support the government on a social media ban weeks out from a freaking election, a government that gave support to a genocide on kids. If you want a ban on kid’s internet do it in your own time, it’s got nothing to do with most of us. What about a ban on fake politicians and their fake policies?
You can’t run on hope unless you actually offer some !!!
Eleven weeks till the election, and we’re now seeing daily stories about the complete collapse of the health system. Decades of austerity and underfunding and a Ministerial hiring freeze aimed at making short-term “savings” have left our hospitals unable to cope, and the usual winter flu season (something normally manageable with vaccination and a public health campaign) has pushed it over the edge. In Palmerston North, multiple key departments have simply collapsed due to lack of staff, while the emergency department – focus of all National’s metrics – has wait times of up to 27 hours. In North Shore, patients are left to lie in their own piss and treated in corridors because there is no-one to care for them and no space anyway.
This is what government looks like under National: nothing works, because they simply refuse to pay for it. Why have a health system or emergency accommodation, when the Luxons can have an eighth house and another holiday in Hawaii?
Meanwhile, today Labour unveiled their election slogan: “Better Starts Now”, an implicit message of hope. So obviously they’ll be fixing all this, right?
Well, no. Because they’ve also doubled down on their commitment to austerity, promising to keep National’s fiscal straitjacket which means government can’t do anything, and ruling out their potential coalition partners’ alternative policies. Because Hipkins and Edmonds apparently also think that the Luxons getting that eighth house and another holiday in Hawaii is more important than the rest of us having a functional health system and social safety net. The Labour Party which once promised cradle to grave protection is now politically indistinguishable from the party which destroyed that system and which wants to abandon us to the market.
And then they wonder why they’re bumping around 30%. Here’s a hint: because they don’t offer anything. Here’s another: because they lie about that. Sure, National will fuck up our lives and wreck the country even more. And with its commitment to austerity, Labour has effectively promised to do exactly the same – except they’re going to tell us all that its “better” and we should all be grateful to them or else we’d be having our lives fucked up by National. And then they wonder why people spit at them and vote for parties which actually offer some real change.
Labour doesn’t offer hope. They just offer more of the same, with a different bunch of managers collecting the big salaries. They’re so unimaginatively status quo their leader even has the same name as the incumbent. But swapping one Chris for another isn’t enough for me. I want change. And fortunately the Green Party is offering exactly that.
Dr Bryce Edwards of the Democracy Project captured the moment with clarity in his commentary on the 2025 NBR Rich List:
‘We have to face a sobering reality: New Zealand’s economic and political system is showing signs of capture by a wealthy elite. The Rich List, in all its glossy detail, is a warning sign. It reveals a stark power imbalance that should concern anyone who cares about egalitarianism, fairness, or the integrity of our democracy.’
Yet instead of confronting this reality, the political establishment offers voters a choice between different managers of the same oligarchic order. National promises more cuts, more deregulation, more tax relief for the wealthy. Labour promises gentler language and slower cuts, but ultimately defends the same economic model. ACT and NZ First offer reactionary distractions. The Greens will tag along behind Labour. And TOP, despite its recent rise, has not shown any willingness to confront entrenched power.
Faced with such a narrow spectrum of options, it is no wonder that more than 800,000 New Zealanders will simply not vote. They are not apathetic; they are alienated. They see clearly that the ballot box is offering them a choice between representatives of the same elite interests.
https://nzagainstthecurrent.blogspot.com/2026/07/new-zelands-economic-crisis-is-also.html
Adrian Orr told Jacinda & Grant to soak up the excess covid liquidity with taxes on the rich end of town, they refused. Instead we have had high interest, unemployment, cancelled hospitals, cancelled state housing supply and pro-landlordism tax incentives.
Key Property Statistics in Parliament
91 MPs own or have a stake in two or more properties.
63 MPs have a stake in three or more properties.
10 MPs own seven or more houses individually.
9 MPs do not declare ownership of any property at all.
2.2 properties is the average held per MP across the entire Parliament
And still the purchasing power of our money has fallen by 23% since covid.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/inflation-eroded-100-dollars-since-2019-by-country/
Labour have to do something if they get elected this time around FFS they can’t just get elected and do nothing like they normally do.