Weekend Herald

Stark contrast in finance ministers’ answers to key stat

- Liam Dann Business editor- at- large

What’s the most important economic statistic? We put it to finance candidates — National’ s Steven Joyce and Labour’s Grant Robertson — at the Mood of the Board Room this week.

The answers were stark and offered some insight into their different ideologica­l approaches.

For Joyce it is debt: “Despite the fact a lot people don’t go around counting the debt, that drives everything else in terms of interest rates, the opportunit­ies that New Zealand has.

“Frankly it drives the ability to deal with the issues that we all care about.”

For Robertson it is child poverty: “It is the number of children in poverty, we have to be able to lift them out, because in the end our economy i s simply a means to an end for delivering a decent life for New Zealanders.”

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