Business, investors hone focus on election policies
Investors are finally beginning to put September’s general election on their radar, broking firm Forsyth Barr says.
The election has threatened to be dwarfed by political developments in the United States and Europe. But Forsyth Barr’s head of institutional broking, David Price, said Kiwi politics was just now becoming a topic for discussion.
‘‘People are just starting to give a bit more focus to it,’’ he said.
‘‘At the moment it is in its infancy, but as we get closer and more detail of policies gets released, that will increase.’’
Labour finance spokesman Grant Robertson has said he would require the Reserve Bank to set monetary policies that maximised employment and ‘‘not just controlled inflation’’.
But he also said Labour and the Greens would carefully manage the country’s debt and ‘‘run genuinely sustainable surpluses’’.
ANZ chief economist Cameron Bagrie doubted there would be a ‘‘massive sea change’’ regardless of the outcome of the election.
‘‘The economy is in a pretty good space and we are used to dealing with change, and, generally speaking, life tends to go on,’’ he said.
A lot of the political statements being made seemed reasonable, he said. He did not envisage any major structural changes to the macroeconomic policy environment.
Bagrie said that in 2000 and 2001 ‘‘the business community did get a little bit worried about a change in government and business confidence collapsed’’. But it didn’t affect firms’ assessments of their own prospects and they just got on with things, he said.
One of Labour’s bigger commitments is to provide an entitlement to three years’ free tertiary education or training over people’s lifetime, which young people could exchange for a $20,000 business startup grant.
‘‘Quite often when you get into power there is a bit of a reality check,’’ Bagrie said. ‘‘You have got to find the money to write out the cheques.’’
Business lobby group Businessnz is about to step up its lobbying on political parties with the release of a ‘‘manifesto’’.
Chief executive Kirk Hope has his sights set firmly on Labour’s industrial relations policies, which he said could ‘‘take New Zealand back to the 1980s’’.
Labour plans to help facilitate ‘‘fair pay agreements’’ between businesses and unions that would set basic pay and conditions in each industry.
‘‘Whatever the terminology is, it is a move back towards a centralised wage-bargaining environment,’’ Hope said.
Nor did Businessnz think a skills levy on businesses proposed by Labour to pay for training was ‘‘much chop’’. But he said fiscal responsibility was important and the budget responsibility rules Labour had agreed on with the Greens were positive.