National accuses Labour of hiding $18.2 billion in uncosted policy expenses, particularly around pay equity, school lunches, and rent subsidies, while questioning Labour's fiscal credibility and highlighting its own historical lack of detailed costings.
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How the news corpus has covered this same topic over the last 12 weeks. 9 articles from RNZ, Stuff, NZ Herald, ODT, 1News, Newsroom and The Spinoff. Click through to the press view for the full panel.
Verbatim segments from politicians speaking on podcasts and radio shows about this topic. Sourced via the voice-reference library — each speaker has been confirmed manually from their voice clip. Click play to stream the original audio from the publisher, pre-seeked to the moment the quote starts.
Okay, so we've had the first little parry of the election campaign with Nicola Willis calling that press conference yesterday to accuse Labour of numbers that don't add up, and then Barbara Edmonds responding this morning. And I'm going to call this by the slimmest of margins for Barbara Edmonds. I think she actually won this exchange purely by holding her ground, sounding confident and pointing out that she doesn't actually have to have public numbers that add up just yet. It's June. The election is five months away. Labor hasn't announced all of their policies yet. Heck, they've only announced about three or four. They are entitled to have a little bit of time to announce the full suite of policies and the full fiscal plan over the next few months. Now, this is not to say that Nicola Willis is wrong in her assertion. I think in time she's going to be proven right that Labour's numbers don't add up. That $20 a week public transport policy has been hugely undercosted. Reinstating pay equity will cost billions of dollars Labor doesn't have. They're just going to have to put that on the debt. The capital gains tax is not going to bring in the amount of money that Labour says it will. So Nicola is right. Labor hasn't got the money, but her timing is wrong. She has gone too hard too early. But Nicola Willis also has a significant side issue of her own here, which is that she doesn't hold the economic high ground. She doesn't have the money either for what the National Party has promised, particularly regarding the roads of national significance. They promised 17 of them. We are not going to get 17 of them while these guys are in power. These roads are now being downgraded, as in the case of Mill Road and one other, or by they're being delayed to the point that we only had one of these roads delivered in the latest budget. Now obviously, an early parry doesn't win an election. I think this is a case of Labour having, yep, sure, one won an early battle, but they're still going to lose the war. But what this should tell you is that Barbara Edwins Edmonds is maybe just a little bit better than some people would estimate her to be. And timing, as they say, is everything.
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contested spending claims centering on National's $11b cost estimate
National, Labour spar over hyped-up $18b in ‘hidden’ policy costsSpotted something wrong on this page? Report a correction.
