NZ can’t help but import any global slowdown

and far from isolated.

Robertson, fresh from a trip to Davos, admitted the picture from counterparts across the world was clearly pointing to a slowdown. As strong as the fundamentals of the local economy are, with very low levels of government debt relative to other countries, low unemployment and solid growth, in the end as a trading nation, New Zealand cannot help but import the conditions which prevail overseas. ‘‘There is a heightened sense of risk from [global conditions], and for New Zealanders we’ve always got to be aware, we can do what we can do internally, but fundamentally these external trends are the things that will affect us,’’ he said.

Although Robertson talks up the underlying strength of New Zealand and moves to make the economy more resilient, in some respects he may be being overly optimistic.

New Zealand’s economy has already exhausted the easy sources of growth. Economists at Infometrics warned on February 1 that New Zealand was at the mercy of international economic trends more than at any time since 2011. ‘‘Net migration is slowing, the housing market has softened, and the tight labour market means that capacity pressures are inhibiting further growth.’’

For the time being at least, the economy is expected to expand at a respectable rate and, while unemployment may move up marginally, more jobs are still being added.

Robertson acknowledges a slowdown is happening overseas. While he is not yet at the point where the Government will pull levers to support job creation, he acknowledges that Labour’s budget responsibility rules always included room to change debt targets if the economy needed it. ‘‘We’re not at that place . . . but there is a slowdown happening.’’

As a starting point, low unemployment and Government debt is a positive one. Taking extra steps to support a slowing economy may indeed win much favour from the coalition’s traditional supporters, some of whom have been calling for more public spending for some time. But simply dealing with the pressures could represent a test of the Government which it has not faced yet.

Other areas of managing a Government have already been made to look like hard work, from coalition relations to flagship policy programmes such as Kiwibuild.

Add economic troubles to the existing complications and 2019 could conceivably make 2018 look easy.