Like a waiter totting up the bill after an all-night blowout on someone else's credit card, Alex Holland has revealed the horrifying figures resulting from Labour's six-years at the Treasury benches:
- In 2017 when Labour came to power, crown spending was $76 billion per year. Now in 2023 it is $139 billion per year, which equates to a $63 billion annual increase (over $1 billion extra spend every week!)
- In 2017, NZ's government debt stood at $112 billion. Today, excluding an accounting trick, that debt is now doubled at $224 billion or $115,000 per household.
- Meanwhile, in 2017 individual tax payers paid the government $33 billion. By 2023 this had gone up 67% to $55 billion to help fund Labour's spending.
Any numerical predictions you'd like to put some money behind?
4 comments:
I'll bet $25 (NZ dollars; see what I did there?) that National will have *increased* debt and spending by the end of their first session.
If they're in coalition with ACT!, I'd be happy to bit that they'll hold debt and spending to current levels.
There shall be minor changes:
In 2000 we had 28,000 ‘crats for a population of about 3.8 million, one ‘crat for every 136 subjects. In 2020 the ratio is one ‘crat for every 83 subjects of the government.
So this basically means that National could drop the numbers back to about 36,000. I can imagine the screams and the pain, and that blue section of the graph indicates that it won’t happen.
Read the comments where my hope is dismissed by a National Party stalwart as "pie in the sky". Former Nat Cabinet Minister Wayne Mapp has said similar things on the same topic on Kiwiblog.
As I put it further in the comments in response to the "bigger battles to fight":
if you and National are not prepared to even make the argument against the most basic aspect of an ever growing state, being the number of civil servants employed, then you are going to lose on 3 Waters, the Health Reforms, education and He Puapua, for Labour’s changes to them – all involving greater and more centralised state power – will all be locked in place when next you come to government, defended and supported by that state and those vast numbers of civil servants, whom those things will empower further.
And when it comes to spending and taxation, you will also have no room to move, something that Luxon has already conceded. There will be no tax cuts in the near future, if anything I would not be surprised to see National increases taxation, for what other choice will they have except more debt.
I think we're fucked.
@Tom: I fear you're right. We are fucked.
As someone since said, the first thing we need is a revolution in people's heads. That's still to do.
@ Duncan: I fear you'll get the same outcome in both circumstances.
My fear is Luxon, thinking he is clever, has a strategy of using Winston to counter Act.
The laugh will be on Luxon for not ruling out Winston if Winston does his usual and puts Labour and the Greens in government. Or worse still supports Luxon but stops any reforms.
Paranormal
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