2020 election: Labor Party criticizes National for failing to publish policy costs

Labor finance spokesman Grant Robertson is criticizing National for failing to disclose detailed costs of its policies, saying it reflects the “chaotic environment within his party.”

But National finance spokesman Paul Goldsmith responded by saying this was “more than rich” coming from Robertson, given that Labor did the exact same thing in the last election.

He revealed to the Herald that the economic consultancy NZIER would cost the party’s policies, which will be made public after the Pre-Election Fiscal and Economic Update (Prefu) in the coming weeks.

Some of the party’s policies have detailed some of the costs associated with their plans.

“But with our general approach, we need to see what impact Prefu has, given that things are changing so significantly,” Goldsmith said.

Robertson, however, said that this was not good enough.

“If you are making the promises now, you have to say how much they are going to cost,” he told the media in Tauranga this morning.

“The free national policy announcements reflect a chaotic environment within his party.”

The last election, when Labor was in opposition, they hired Berl to cost their policies.

The economic consultancy examined what the Labor Party was proposing and made sure there was enough money in the government coffers to fulfill its promises.

Goldsmith said NZIER has done the same for National.

Those cost calculations would show that “New Zealanders can trust us to be careful with their money.”

“I am not going to accept a sermon from a finance minister who burned the huge surpluses he inherited in two years,” he said.

Discarding numbers is not unusual for National and Labor before an election.

In the last election, then-Finance Minister Steven Joyce claimed that Labor had a “tax hole” of $ 11.7 billion in its costs.

Robertson questioned this and said that Joyce had misread the numbers.

Although many economists dispute the “tax hole” argument, there was fairly broad agreement that, based on Labor figures, there was very little room for maneuver for Labor to introduce new spending.

However, with the $ 50 billion in additional spending, funded by loans, that the government announced to help New Zealand respond to the economic fallout from Covid-19, that argument is now more or less moot.